Intuitive Review of Strieber's "The Key" (4) Conclusions

During my recent series of posts on Whitley Strieber’s book The Key, I said that I would write one final post outlining what I feel are some problematical aspects of the text, including things that, according to my own experience, are wrong or limited. I have explored intuitive realms of consciousness for a couple of decades, including undergoing intensive ‘training’ in this area, and developed a high degree of clairvoyant capacity. I’m not going to try to explain or justify that here – you can read about it in my book Discover Your Soul Template (out in December 2011) if you are interested. If you are in a hurry you can now find my self-published version of the book on Amazon.com, under the title Sage of Synchronicity.

There are also a few more interesting truthful statements from The Key that I will also discuss in this blog post. So I will divide this final discussion of the book into two parts, “pros” and “cons”. Again, I have placed a sub-heading above each discussion point for ease of reading, as you may not want to read all of this post.

I prefer a gentle and open-minded approach to life’s big questions, so feel free to add your own insights in the comments section below, or state where you think I am incorrect.

Re-cap and overview of The Key

In The Key Whitley Strieber recounts a slightly bizarre tale of how a stranger burst into his hotel room at 2.30 in the morning, and proceeded to recount the meaning of life the universe and everything. After initially trying to get rid of him, Strieber eventually suspects that the man – whom he comes to call The Master of the Key – is actually relating some profound spiritual knowledge. Later Strieber wrote about the encounter and the Master’s knowledge claims in The Key.

The Pros

The lesson of darkness

The Master says that humanity is in chains, but it is the chains which can teach us freedom:

Love your enemy, for he is your best friend. Without the darkness, you would never know the glory of the firmament… You should bless your jailors, because without them you could never find your freedom. When you, as a species, remember why you have been imprisoned, and you face what you did, you will be free. (no page no.: 50% of the way through Kindle edition)

There’s a lot of truth to this. As I have previously written, the idea of being in chains is an archetypal human motif. In a sense we are all slaves to the limited amount of our innate intelligence that we express and the dark consciousness fields that so many of us are trapped in (despite the fact that most are unaware of their intelligence potential, nor aware of the consciousness fields in which they are entangled).

Learning to love our fear, including the fear of pain and darkness is a key to freedom. To love darkness does not mean to wallow in it or worship it, but merely to accept it for what it is; to hold it close such that we do not need to run and hide from it. It is when we shine the light of awareness upon the darkness that it loses its power over us. Then darkness becomes light. When we try to run and escape from darkness, it overwhelms us.

Intelligence versus consciousness

One distinction that the Master makes is one I have long noted in my own books and writings. He says that while human beings can construct intelligent machines, we are a long way from creating conscious machines.

Intelligence is the manipulator of knowledge, while consciousness knows itself. (56% of the way through Kindle edition)

This observation - relatively simple to any layperson - is the fundamental error that lies behind the transhuman movement – the idea that humans are going to upload their minds onto computers and achieve immortality. (Despite the silliness of this, it would make for an interesting story. Maybe the next of my short stories will deal with this!)

The other major error of the transhumanists is their failure to understand the complex nature of consciousness, and that it is not merely a flat property generated by the physical brain. The non-localised nature of consciousness (extending beyond the brain and into other dimensions) and the existence of the etheric body need to be taken into account. Fascinatingly, the Master touches upon this as he explains how an intelligent machine might be made:

By duplicating the attachments between the elemental and energetic bodies that occur in nature in a purpose-designed machine, a controllable conscious machine can be devised. A living soul attached to a machine will be conscious… (57% of the way through Kindle edition)

This implies a dualist system - mind and brain/machine as separate things - but that in itself is no reason to dismiss it. My experience leads me to conclude that consciousness and the brain are indeed two different phenomena, though intricately interrelated in human life on this planet. It is certainly possible that they may both be an expression of a fundamental underlying construct, but that is purely an intellectualism on my behalf – I have no direct perception of it.

The Master of the Key also says that we need to amplify human intelligence a hundredfold, and that intelligent machines will help in this respect. Fascinatingly, the single event which really launched my own exploration of the frontiers of human intelligence and consciousness occurred about nineteen years ago, when a female spirit guide with long brown hair appeared in my room during light sleep, and passed some important messages to me. She told me that I was using precisely three per cent of my innate intelligence. Since then I have seen that this retardation of our potential intelligence is pervasive right across the human race. I have always maintained that a significant development of Integrated Intelligence can help address this deficit in our innate intelligence. However, the Master indicates that artificial intelligence can also be a powerful boost to intelligence. I have no argument with that, merely to suggest that in order to utilise that machine intelligence appropriately, our spiritual nature must be more fully expressed. As the Master states, we are currently “soul blind”.

Consumerism and death

One other timely warning from the Master is that the consumer society is destructive:

After the suffering you are about to endure, mankind will never again lust after material wealth. You are about to suffocate in your own garbage. (51% of the way through Kindle edition)

Terrible as the metaphor is, this is not an earth shattering conclusion to draw, and I have to concur with the essence of it. It truly amazes me that even as the evidence for the horrendous pollution of oceans, land and air mounts, we are still investing energy into turning the planet into a giant consumer machine. In Asia, almost every nation seems to be following the same insane path to destruction: China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Mongolia… Those that follow the path and register high GDP levels are “rewarded” by the economic system. The rest of the world envies their “growth”. Investors from abroad rush in to make a “killing”. Yet these countries are the winners in a loser’s game (as are we all). The irony is that the whole system is rotten. Hyper materialistic futures are what I call “Money and Machines Futures” (as opposed to Deep Futures), and they are “impoverished” futures in the full sense of the word. The filth that is currently being pumped into the rivers, oceans and air in Asia is beyond imagining.

The Master links all this to our having a “death wish”.

People give up on themselves. They do it down deep inside, in places that the elemental mind, that is contained in the brain, cannot access… They do this when they see themselves committing the same errors they have returned to correct. When they give up on ascension, they devote themselves to the ‘acquisition” of material. But what does this really mean – that they can be near coveted objects while they are in the physical? The obsession with material is a symptom of despair. (60%)

The death wish is a genuine component of many a mind. I have found it within my own shadow. Freud was right (and despite the fact that he is out of fashion in mainstream cognitive science, I have seen that Freud was right about many, many things, despite his getting the big picture wrong). The Master may well be correct that the current most common expression of human culture is guiding us towards doom, and that deep down we already know it.

Sin is..

The Master says that sin is “denial of the right to thrive.” Personally, I think this is an excellent working definition of what drives much of human evil. That denial is a function of the desire for power and control over others and nature. But it’s a chicken and egg situation. What came first, the power and control complex, or the rejection of Spirit? My answer is that this problematique represents a dynamic feedback loop, constantly reinforcing itself.

The Cons

Now, let’s take a look at just a few problematic aspects of The Key.

Meditate or disintegrate!

The Master tells Strieber that if a person does not establish a close relationship with the radiant body via meditation or some mindful process, the soul disintegrates and is lost. Personally, I do not feel that this is entirely correct. Firstly, I have had many instances of intuitive communication with relatives of mine who have passed on, including some who I can only describe as “extremely unconscious” – alcoholics, wife bashers, those who committed suicide, the mentally ill and so on (thanks God for the tests!). As one extreme example, my maternal grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, and barely had a spiritual molecule in her body. Yet I have directly perceived her psyche on numerous times since she died. If anybody was going to “disintegrate”, it would be her! To be honest, sometimes I wish she would disintegrate, as her psychic projections are very difficult to deal with! What I have seen of her leads me to believe that she may be undergoing some healing in whatever space she finds herself in. Thus it seems to be that we can continue to explore and grow even after death, in the space between lives.

However, it is true that if a person’s psyche becomes extremely scattered, they effectively lose control of their minds. They become insane. Healing is then required. Meditation and mindfulness could be extremely beneficial for such people, but it is also true that some degree of medication may be required to get them to the point where they can assume responsibility for their minds. Once a person reaches a certain point of insanity (disintegration), it is very, very difficult for them to come back. I know this from personal experience with relatives. Thus it is better to be mindful before “losing it”, rather than after!

The dead cannot influence the living

The Master states that the dead cannot influence the living, saying: “They have not the knowledge or wisdom to make themselves heard.” (23%). This is definitely not correct in my experience. The dead continue to influence the energy fields of the living, especially those whom they have had strong relationships with while they were alive. For example, my father’s energy still influences me from time to time, as I have not processed all the emotional issues that I developed with him over the years while he was living; and he has certainly not dealt with all his own baggage! Minds tend to become psychically entangled with those whom they have emotional connections to. For example, if part of you is (consciously or unconsciously) angry at your late mother for her failure to adequately love you, chances are you will retain strong psychic links to her after her death. In some cases such psychic links can be quite destructive, if these issues between the living and dead are intense.

Compassion is giving to others

The Master says that compassion is;

Finding what others need the most and giving it to them…In a (compassionate) world, it is everybody’s duty and delight to find what every other they come into contact with needs most from them, and give it to them.

I think that there is a profound truth in this, and selfishness and narcissism have become real problems, right across the world. Nonetheless, there is the potential for the Master’s definition of compassion to be used in a self-limiting way. Many people do not know what their spirit needs, and simply giving them something they think they want may be assisting them in a self-stultifying behavior. One must exercise discretion, and not simply submit to the will of others’ demands.

The other factor here is that the act of spiritual empowerment is “selfish” in a certain sense of the word. Seekers has to be vigilant in the refusal to submit to the control and power that others attempt to exercise over them. Many others will not understand the journey you take, so saying “no” to them is crucial.

Escaping the earth

There is a recurring theme in The Key that “escaping” the earth is crucial to the survival of our species. For example, the Master says:

Your enemy does not want it to end. They fear you too much. When you see UFOs, you see prison guards. They also act within your society to confuse you about your own past, and to prevent progress in areas such as propulsion, which might enable you to spread into the Heavens. This is all done to prevent you from escaping. (49%)

Perhaps this is true. Yet my own understanding is that enlightenment – “Heaven” if you like – is already here on Earth, right now. We just have to allow Heaven to descend by seeing through the delusions of the mind, and its constant attempts to escape the present moment by moving attention to a non-existent future or a (distorted) remembered past. One of the prime delusions of the mind is that it can escape. The truth is there is no escape. There is no better “up there and beyond.” Again, this is one of the aspects of the text that I feel have been somewhat distorted by Whitley Strieber’s personal issues. And it is an absolutely crucial one. Enlightenment happens here and now, or it never happens.

Conclusion

Despite imperfections, The Key has more than enough stimulation, and more than enough useful information to make it a very worthwhile read for many spiritual seekers. It does not offer any simple solutions, nor offer a definitive roadmap forward. Does this reflect the Master’s lack of desire to spoon feed us? Or Whitley Strieber’s imperfect rendering of his message? I shall leave that for the reader to determine.

Let me just end this post with a quote from the book which sums up for me why this book is well worth reading and contemplating. Strieber writes:

The Master of the Key offers clarity where there is now confusion, and if one is open to his message and the new ideas it contains, unexpected vistas of discovery present themselves, as one is led toward the promise of new knowledge, where questions beckon that are as yet scarcely imagined among us.

I am not sure that the Master’s message is always clear, but he certainly does invite one to open up to new vistas of knowledge, while pointing the reader in directions that are, in my humble opinion, well worth exploring. Finally, one statement of the Master‘s is well worth meditating upon.

You human beings are right on the edge of becoming a conscious species. That is why we are here. We’re midwives to your birth.

            

The Master of the Key says that the fate of humanity will be decided in the next 100 years. There will be, he says, sudden and massive catastrophic changes. If that is correct, it is all the more reason why all of us need to pay careful attention to the voice of Spirit within and beyond us.

Marcus

Martin Rees and the Frontiers of Knowledge

The cosmos: it's bigger than your worldview

For those with a fascination with frontier science, you might like to listen to this Martin Rees lecture entitled, “What we’ll never know”.

The audio can be found on the BBC website.

The talk has also kindly transcribed online and can be downloaded here. 

It’s part of a series of lectures called the Reeth Lectures. Rees is the President of the Royal Society, or at least was at the time of the lecture, with his retirement imminent. I find Martin Rees to be a refreshingly open-minded scientist, with a strong ability to accommodate those with differing scientific and cultural views. He is certainly no Richard Dawkins, and expresses his strong belief that science and religion must learn to must co-exist.

In this lecture Rees discusses some of the cutting edge domains of science, and addresses the limits of human understanding. Topics he covers include the discovery of life elsewhere on the universe, space programmes, time travel, the big bang and much more.

As I have often opined on my blogs and in my writing in general, there are limits to the human intellect in its typical current state of development; but this development does not represent the limits of human perception in its current potentials. One thing Rees does not address is whether there are other ways of knowing which can deliver understanding of some of these frontier domains of inquiry. My experience with meditative and visionary states, and the development of Integrated Intelligence, have allowed me to see that such other ways of knowing exist and are available to all of us. 

 Martin Rees grasping the point. But are the big questions like water: the harder one grasps, the less the mind can hold the answers?

It costs billions to fund scientific endeavors like space programmes to attempt to answer the fundamental questions that martin Rees addresses, yet there are at least partial answers to them available via a strong commitment to expanding the intuitive capacities of the mind as they exist today. Integrated Intelligence won’t deliver mathematical answers or empirical proofs, but it does enable a deepening into relationship with the world and cosmos; and in that empathic state, there are profound knowings that are available.

Martin Rees represents the affable limits of open-minded rational inquiry, or what I like to call critical rationalism. There is certainly much more that we can and will know using critical/rational inquiry, so I not suggesting we desist in its deployment.

The one statement Rees makes which epitomises the limits of scientific inquiry as they currently exist, is as follows.

Some have speculated that other universes could exist 'alongside' ours.  Imagine ants crawling around on a large sheet of paper (their two-dimensional 'universe'). They would be unaware of a similar sheet that's parallel to it. Likewise, there could be another entire universe (with 3-dimensional space, like ours) less than a millimetre away, but we would be oblivious to it if that millimetre were measured in a fourth spatial dimension, while we are imprisoned in just three.

Because of the way his cognitive development has been delimited by modern science and education, Martin Rees, somewhat ironically, cannot see just how true that statement is, that the there are indeed other universes sitting right before us, and that intelligent life is already interacting with us from other realms of existence.

I certainly don’t pretend to understand more than a tiny piece of the scope of those other dimensions, but I think it is reasonable to assume that one day science will come to explore and understand them at a much greater level, and with that exploration, we will allow ourselves to relax and permit other ways of knowing to inform our understanding of the cosmos. Intelligence is not confined to the brain, and mental influence is not confined to local space and time. I have seen this to be true beyond any doubt.

It is perfectly reasonable to assume that other intelligent life forms from other worlds and other universes and dimensions know this at a level far beyond what any human can perceive, and that they currently utilise this non-localised space/time and integrated intelligence to connect with other life in the cosmos – and us. This would certainly help to explain many of the things that I have seen and experienced in my own lifetime (UFOs, spiritual entities, ESP, out of body experiences etc), and those experienced by mystics, alternative researchers and teachers such as Whitley Strieber, Esther Hicks, John Mack, Rupert Sheldrake and so on.

Undoubtedly we (I’ll include myself and the reader as lesser known explorers in the same waters) are making mistakes in our thinking and perception. Yet unless we step offshore to explore the oceans of the cosmic mind, not only will we never make mistakes, we will never learn from those mistakes.

Still, I suggest you take the time to listen to Martin Rees lecture and to the teachings of other learned scientists and thinkers who may not necessarily hold a spiritual perspective on life and cosmos. We have much to learn from each other. The truths that I write about here will make themselves known in greater scale sooner or later, and in the meantime we should relax and listen to each other in the spirit of open-minded and humble exploration.

Marcus

Review: The Cosmic Scale of "The Tree of Life"

The Tree of Life is a complex and beautiful Terrence Malick film which verges on the brink of greatness, yet in the end is hampered by its own grandiosity.

The movie is as much a piece of art as it is storytelling. The story is relatively simple. The setting for most of the film is Waco, Texas, perhaps around the early 1960s. The date, like much of the film, remains deliberately unstated. A young man is killed, presumably in the Vietnam War, and we see the family mourning his passing. In particular we are led into the psyche of the grieving mother (Jessica Chastain), as she questions her Christian beliefs, pleading to God, demanding an explanation as to why her child has been taken from her.

Behind this there is a strangely removed narrative of the dead boy’s brother, played by Sean Penn in the present day. Jack O’Brien is a middle aged architect in a large city of metal and glass towers. Upon his face he wears a look of constant bewilderment, haunted by the death of his brother many years before. We see the older Jack wandering through huge office spaces and cavernous walkways. The contrast with the setting of his idyllic small town childhood could not be more stark. I assume Penn wasn’t paid by the word for his role in the movie, as he  barely opens his mouth in the small amount of screen time he does get. As the story unfolds we see much of the narrative through the eyes of the young Jack, played by Hunter McCraken.

Despite its weaknesses, I do recommend this film. This is a quintessentially spiritual experience  which attempts to weave together the unimaginably vast universe which has been revealed by modern scientific cosmology and biology, and the spiritual worldview of Christianity and religion in general. For me, by far the most profound and memorable part of the film is the breathtaking scenes of cosmic frontiers which inexplicably burst forth onto the screen just after we have been confronted with the family's grief. We see planets moving across a boiling sun, the moons of Jupiter orbiting the colossal planet, whirling galaxies stretching to infinity. And all displayed with an angelic, operatic soundtrack which lifts the soul into a souring mystical climax. Then we are witness to the beginnings of biological life itself, the fertilization of the egg, the dance of living cells as they reproduce and multiply. We see an asteroid crashing into the earth, ice ages, and even dinosaurs. The Tree of Life is indeed a creative work on an epic scale.

And then we are brought back to Waco, Texas. But even this mundane world is transformed into an almost celestial beauty by superb cinematography, from sunlight streaming through windows, soft and intimate close ups of faces, children playing and laughing as they run through the spray of a water sprinkler, the planting of a tree… We see the mother playing with her growing child, and eventually the family produces three boys.

Did I mention Brad Pitt is in there too? Pitt plays the classic, overly stern patriarch, tormented by his own demons and unfulfilled quest for personal fulfillment. I’m not a great Brad Pitt fan, but I have to say this was an entirely convincing performance by him. I’m sure many of us now in middle age will relate to a time when fathers were quite different from the typical family patriarch of today. Certainly I could see elements of my own father’s iron fisted ways in Pitt’s tough performance.

The Tree of Life will divide audiences, I suspect. In the day time session I attended here in Hong Kong, some people got up and left - bored, I suspect, with the slow pace of the movie. But the vast majority stayed, and several were weeping near the end.

Even if its entertainment factor does not live up to the grand scale of Transformers 2 (yes, that’s sarcasm), The Tree of Life is not a film you will forget quickly. Indeed, as I reflected upon this movie today, it struck me that this is a piece of cinema that could potentially stir the latent spiritual yearnings amongst those cognitively locked inside the iron cage of the modernist scientific worldview. The movie paints a grand, breathtaking cosmos which honours the vast frontiers of scientific knowledge even as it renders resplendent the spiritual longings of the mystic attempting to answer the eternal questions of life, death and what it all means. 

(warning, slight spoiler in the remainder of the paragraph) In the film’s climax the mother surrenders in an archetypal act of grace. She says, “Lord, I give you my son.” This follows on from the opening scene of the movie, where a voiceover implores that there are two ways of the universe: the way of nature, and the way of Grace. The way of nature is conflict and death. The way of Grace opens us to the eternal.

This could have been a better film, a classic indeed, with tighter editing, and perhaps a tighter reign on the director’s ego! For the artist, leaving stuff out is always difficult. If the movie had been cut back by 20-30 minutes I think it could have been much more powerful. Instead, it does get slightly confusing in places, and the narrative is not always explicit. There are elements of surrealism too, and it is not always easy to separate the real from the psychic (in the broader sense of the term).

But then again, maybe that is the entire point. Life rarely delivers answers in neat blocks of reality.

Just a few weeks ago a childhood friend of mine sent me an email. I had - a few months previously - given him details of my websites and blogs. He wrote to me and said, “I am confused. Are you for religion or for science?” I felt somewhat sad that a man in his mid forties has lived so long bearing the false science/religion dichotomy on which modern western thought is premised. It is for people like my friend that The Tree of Life might bear the greatest gift. That is, the awareness that science and spirituality are part of the one seamless whole, and that it is only the split in the modern mind that has torn them asunder.

As has been noted, the universe is not only vaster than we think, it is vaster than we can think.

Intuitive Review of Strieber's "The Key" (3) Darkness & Light

This is the third part of my extended intuitive review of Whitley Strieber’s The Key. Click here for Part 1, click here for Part 2. I will cover quite a few different ideas in this blog post, and the next, which will be the final one in the series.

Although this is my first official intuitive review, I have previously done many intuitive readings of people’s Soul Issues and karma - mostly face to face, but many others by long distance. It’s part of what I do as an intuitive. Readers might be interested to know that I have previously done a similar intuitive reading of Julien Assange of Wikileaks fame, who came out looking slightly less rosy!

I realise readers might not want to read the discussion of every point, so below I have placed the points into subheadings for ease of reading.

There is no “supernatural”

The Master of the Key says that there is no such thing as the supernatural.

…only the natural world exists, some parts of which we understand and some parts of which we don’t. (location 256)

I believe that this is spot on. The labels “supernatural” and “paranormal’ simply highlight the misunderstandings of contemporary science and the limitations of current scientific culture and method. They are a reflection of the limitations of the mechanistic paradigm which dominates not only mainstream science but the way ordinary people in modern cultures have been programmed to see the world.

Consciousness is electromagnetic

One significant claim by the Strieber’s Master of the Key is that conscious energy is essentially electromagnetic in nature. This is interesting because there is the discrepancy that according to experimentation in parapsychology and much common human experience, psi (whatever it is) appears to be non-local, transversing space and time. Conversely, electromagnetism is confined to conventional space-time, as are all the four known forces of nature (gravity, and the strong and weak forces being the others).

Yet I have also seen from many of my own visions and direct intuitions that electromagnetic fields greatly affect the human energy field. For example, if I use a laptop and physically sit it on my lap, it has a significant effect on my energy field. This effect is extremely hard to communicate in writing, and I cannot explain it in scientifically sensible terminology, because such terminology does not exist. What I can say is that there is a kind of “charging” of the consciousness field which opens it up to non-local psychic influences. For me, this involves an increased sense of disembodiment, or consciousness beginning to split off from the physical body. This in turn makes one susceptible to the energy projections of other people’s minds, and from entities in other astral planes. This is why I avoid extended exposure (especially physical contact) to electrical devices.

I have also mentioned how, in out of body experiences, the etheric body is attracted to electricity. So there is definitely a strong connection between the human consciousness field and electromagnetic fields.

The importance of developing a relationship with the radiant body

The Master of the Key calls the soul the “radiant body”, and says it is “formed of conscious energy”. He says that it can be manipulated. The Master adds that that “a relationship must be formed with it if one is to really engage with it” (location 328). Again, this is consistent with my own understanding and work with the human energy field. Your energy field can be very easily manipulated by others via their unconscious projections (they do this unconsciously). Spiritual entities can do the same, and this includes “dead” relatives and friends. In fact this is happening all the time without most people knowing it, because the psyches of human beings are intimately entangled with the minds around and beyond them (mostly via emotional bonds and co-dependencies). Perhaps I should mention that you too are also manipulating the consciousness fields of others, again unconsciously. So you are not merely a victim!

The Master tells Strieber that “the undiscovered country can become your backyard”, and Strieber then adds that this will change “our world in very fundamental ways if it happened”. Strieber writes that for humanity it’s as if two halves of a single brain have been split. I must say that I absolutely concur with all of this. Humanity exists in a state of severe dissociation from the body and spirit, and in turn from the spiritual realms. Part of my work has been to try to get people to realise this, and empower them with processes which can help them connect with Spirit. I agree with The Master and Strieber’s belief that this process of spiritual reconnection is vital if humanity is to survive the present crisis in its cultural and spiritual evolution. I outline simple ways to this in my book Discover Your Soul Template.

Pivotal times

One message that Strieber and The Master consistently repeat is that these are absolutely pivotal times, and that there is a need for a change of vision. Strieber writes that the Master’s teachings:

…come at an opportune time, because the human world and human civilisation face a profound bankruptcy of vision that is sorely in need of renewal. We have done all we can with our ideas of reality as they exist now. If there is to be another step taken in the human journey, a step upward, new visions are essential. (17%)

The phrase that really hits home is “a profound bankruptcy of vision”. This is an accurate description of where we now sit in our history. In my daily life here in Hong Kong I move amongst people who are barely present in their bodies, let alone connected to Spirit. For Hong Kongers there is nothing, absolutely nothing in the twenty odd years of their public education (to university graduation level) that assists in their becoming conscious of any deeper world beyond work, distraction, entertainment and acquisition of wealth. This is a situation that we find throughout the modern world, and it is indeed a bankrupt system. Hong Kong is in many ways an exaggerated caricature of the modern developed world.

The most incredible thing is that people are so blinded by the illusion that they cannot see it. The world is in desperate need of teachers who can communicate spiritual knowledge. Even more, it is in need of cultures and societal systems which permit those teachers to be heard.

Soul blindness and the body

As the Master of the Key says:

There is a much larger world behind your backs. It is the world to which man is blind. Man is soul-blind and God-blind. (19%)

“To gain access to the powers of conscious energy, you must evolve a relationship with it.” (20%)

I couldn’t have put it better myself. However, it is very important that human beings understand that the way to connect with Spirit is not by discarding the body and focusing on something “beyond”. Instead we need to be still, be present, and to develop a strong connection with our bodies and, somewhat ironically, the five senses. The Master appears to understand this, when he tells Whitley Strieber that the way to connect with the radiant body is to pay attention to the immediate perceptual field, to sensory feedback. He refers to “the imprinting of essence with experience” (which requires) “effort and attention”, including “paying attention to physical sensation/energetic sensation.” (21%)

Being awake to oneself and one’s surroundings increases the intensity of the impressions so that they are present in the nervous system. In this context, being awake means being aware of one’s own self while at the same time absorbing impressions from the outside. (21%)

This is precisely true. By bringing attention to what one is in relationship with in the immediate environment and in the present moment, the mind is brought into still presence. The connection with Spirit follows.

It is these kinds of practical truths which lead me to conclude that the content of The Key is not simply creative fiction. The book either describes a genuine encounter with a wise entity, or at the very least represents a channeling of genuinely advanced spiritual consciousness.

Surrender to God within

At one point Strieber asks the Master “How can we change?”, to which the Master responds “Surrender to God.” Again this is true. Releasing the ego’s illusion of control is an absolutely vital part of spiritual awareness.

Strieber then asks the Master why people don’t surrender. He is told:

“Self-will, the illusion that you can act and must act on your own behalf, prevents you from entering the will of God. And the God of which I speak is not a distant being off in some heaven. You yourself are the distant being you seek. (24%)

This is also my understanding. The belief that God and enlightenment are distant in space or time prevents the actualisation of enlightenment.

The Master emphasises that we have a very small sense of ourselves, as the identity we carry in our everyday lives. This prevents us from seeing the full immensity of what we really are. Again, this I sense is true.

Finally in relation to the idea of surrender, the Master highlights one of the great paradoxes of the human journey.

If physical beings don’t struggle, you die. So you cannot surrender. If you continue to struggle against nature, you will die. But if you don’t struggle, you will die. This is tragedy of the word in physical form, and is the essential human problem. This is the problem you must solve, if you are to avoid going extinct. (47%)

This point is relevant for many people in the world who are trapped in dark spaces, physically or metaphysically. Despite the requirement of surrender, intelligent action and even the need to fight are required in certain circumstances. The key is knowing how to bring the right energy to the fight, so that one is not lost in the energy of conflict, rage and blame. In my own life I was born into immense darkness in my energetic environment. I have had to fight hard for my spiritual freedom, and I still have to fight. Learning that aforementioned right relationship with the warrior within is a key part of my journey. I know spiritual teachers who have told me to simply surrender, but their circumstances are quite different from mine. This is something I am still learning about.

Death

The Master’s account of the death process precisely mirrors what I have perceived as an intuitive. The Master also says that the dead cling to the “immediate surroundings of their lives, clinging to what they can of their memories, attempting to preserve their lives…” (22%). This is precisely what I have perceived.

The Master states quite plainly that death does not immediately elevate one into glorious Heaven. He writes that “You die into your expectations” (23%), and that “sin” follows us into the afterlife. As I have written elsewhere on this blog, this is precisely in line with what I have witnessed about the dead. (42%)

Fascinatingly, the Master says about the deceased:

After a time, you will not need instruments to detect them, once you become attuned to their presence around you. But don’t expect them to offer you endless wisdom. Many of the dead who wait in the world have less than you do, by a very great deal. But not all. Some are exceedingly rich, and can report to you even about the true past and the logical future, and can share themselves with you in ways that you can hardly imagine now. (39%)

I concur with the essence of this. Just because one drops dead does not suddenly make one the fountain of all spiritual wisdom. So, for we embodied humans, the information received from “the other side” has to be assessed for its value.

Once what I call Integrated Intelligence is developed, you can become aware of the influence of the departed upon everyday consciousness. Teaching this innate human intuitive intelligence is a big part of what I do. It is possible to call upon the dead to communicate knowledge to them. I do this regularly with some of my own deceased relatives, usually to try to prevent their attempts to seek power and control over my own psyche, which is a game the dead love to play with the living. Communicating compassion and forgiveness is also very important.

The darkness and the light

Strieber asks the Master to name some of the demonic leaders of the world. His response is a wise one.

Find the demon in your own heart, then I will betray the demon rulers of your world to you. Remember that the devil also serves me. Without evil, you could not taste of the good. (45%)

Much of my own work has been with the shadow side of myself, and encouraging others to befriend their own dark side. There is no light without bringing forth the darkness. This does not mean to focus unnecessary attention on it. What we focus upon expands. But we do need to befriend the demon in ourselves, as The Master suggests.

Okay, that’s enough for today. Feel free to discuss any of these points below. I will answer any questions I feel qualified to answer.

Marcus

Intuitive Review of Strieber's "The Key" (2): Are the Aliens Here? And Why?

In my last post I gave my intuitive overview of how Whitley Strieber’s psyche has influenced the knowledge presented in his book The Key. Now I am going to turn to some of the specific knowledge claims in the book. When I decided to do this review of The Key, I thought I’d write just a thousand words or so. Well, it turns out that there are so many fascinating ideas and concepts in the book, that this little project has become much bigger. I did plan to write about the specific truth claims in the book in a single post, but I am now breaking it up into several posts. Nobody reads blog posts over a thousand words, so that’s why I am doing this. I know that some of Whitley Strieber’s fans will read at least some of these posts, as Whitley has kindly placed a link on his own site leading to my previous post. 

There are lots of ideas in The Key that I am not going to write about, and mostly those are the things that I don’t have direct experience with, nor sufficient knowledge of. In this post I am going to deal with a single passage from the book which is rich with important information. In the posts that follow, I will probably discuss several ideas at a time. Now let’s take a look at the relevant passage.

At one point in his encounter with The Master of the Key, Whitley Strieber is told that:

The body of man is being altered so that the barrier that presently prevents you from knowing one another‘s thoughts will fall. You are being put under pressure in order to increase the speed of your evolution. An attempt is being made to induce an evolutionary leap. Only desperation will do this. There will come a time when your planet is dying and you are dying, and you will see these aliens all around you. But they will not help you, no matter how hard you beg… Their inaction, however, is their help… they do it out of compassion, for without it you will not succeed in the mission of this age, which is to open the elemental body to ecstasy. Mankind, over the next two thousand years, is destined either to go extinct or ascend. The elemental body will become transparent to the radiant body, which will shine with the light of God. (37% on Kindle version)

I find this passage to be a fascinating one, and I have some reasons to think that part or all of it may be true. Before you read on, do consider that there may be multiple "alien" and etheric influences on humanity at this time in our history, and I make no claims to know about all of them.

Firstly, I have little doubt that there are “alien” influences upon the human collective mind at this time. I have had my own close encounter of the second kind (sightings) with UFOs, as I have written elsewhere, when I witnessed two completely different kinds of UFOs within an hour of each other on a single night, on the East coast of Australia in 1993. Perhaps the most amazing part of that story was that a clairvoyant friend of mine had told me to go out at 2.00 am that night because there would be UFOs about – and she was right! The first UFO was a large ball of glowing white light, while the second was a formation of read circles which flew right over my head, in a “V” formation. This experience was what really kicked off my interest in exploring the frontiers of human intelligence.

I have also had numerous experiences with what appear to be “alien” forms of life in the etheric realms. I have written about a few of these here and there on my blog, and in my book Extraordinary Mind.

Perhaps the most notable experience occurred during sleep, when I was taken out of my body in late 1999, while living in Taiwan. Not long after going to bed I found myself being extracted from my body on what appeared to be some kind of energetic beam (which I wrote about here). This was somewhat unsettling to say the least, but I used my intuition to sense whether the event was benign or hostile. I sensed that it was OK, so I let go and allowed things to take their natural course. I was then transported into a “room” where I found myself lying down on a table, with about five figures standing over me, performing some kind of procedure on my body. In this etheric state, they looked to be Asian men, but I don’t think this was their literal form. I think this is just the way my psyche represented them. I asked them what they were doing, and I was told that they were reversing the polarity of the atoms in my body. I relaxed and lost all awareness, to awaken later in my bed.

At the time I was going through a type of rebirthing process, and my sense was that these “alien” intelligences were assisting me. However I cannot say whether they were spiritual beings (as in spirit guides) or beings from another dimension or planet. But I chose to trust them on that occasion, based on pure gut feeling. If I had not trusted them, I would have pulled away from the experience. Also during this time I became aware one night that someone, or something was operating on my brain as I slept. Again, my intuitive sense that I was being helped to adjust to a new vibration of reality, or literally helping me to develop my intuitive abilities. Of course some skeptics might suggest that I should ask for my money back, given what I now write in my books and on this blog.

Perhaps these are the same beings who Whitley Strieber has experienced meeting in his abduction experiences. I don’t know.

What I have written seems to contradict The Master’s claim that we will not be helped by them, but I suspect we are referring to different contexts. The Master’s take on being helped is perfectly consistent with my understanding of the way Spirit works (and there is good reason to lump all these encounters under the term “Spirit”, although this is something that is open to questioning). Generally, they will not intervene in specific events, except on special occasions. They are more likely to lead you into a challenging situation than to then try to rescue you from it. It’s a bit like the mother bird pushing the newborn out of the nest. Its fly or die. I understand perfectly the confusion and anger at this seeming cold indifference, but I also understand that it is for the highest good of our spiritual evolution. We can seek spiritual guidance through prayer and meditation, and will often be given information. But rarely will we be told precisely what we should do or how to do it. We are given hints, and we have to develop our innate intelligence and wisdom well enough to find solutions to the problems we have created.

The final part of the passage above, where it talks about the coming “transparency of the elemental body”, also makes sense to me. Presently humanity walks in darkness, blind to its radiant self. We turn away from ourselves and create “the shadow”, by hiding from our light. We lie to ourselves and deceive ourselves almost completely. The way to become “transparent” is to turn ourselves inside out, to expose ourselves completely to the light, to the truth. It is guilt and shame, and the trapped pain of the emotional body that prevent this opening. At another level, societal and cultural mass delusion, along with government and organisational cover ups, work against the opening to truth. Most people are too busy fiddling with gadgets and making money to look within, or listen to Spirit.

There is a bit of an irony here, isn’t there? When Whitley Strieber transcribed the passage above he didn’t think there’d be a guy peering into his soul a few years later and writing it up on his blog as if he was indeed transparent!

Yet the truth is that most of us are not ready to be transparent. It is too much for the ego to handle all in one go. How would you feel if you walked into a room and everybody there could see right into your soul and know everything about you? I have been there and done that. There are people on this Earth that can see straight into the soul, and they taught me how to do the same. You might think that this would be cool, but let me tell you the reality of what happens when you are surrounded by people like this. The ego becomes terrified, because it is placed under pressure to reveal itself fully. But the real problem is that transparency exposes pain. Once the delusions of the ego fall, one is left without a game to play to attempt to avoid feeling one’s trapped emotional trauma. A great deal of the thinking that we do in life is actually an attempt by the ego to control pain, and stop it from rising through the body. Once the games are exposed, the ego tends to panic. Because the pain is simply too much to deal with in one go, the ego attempts to create dramas with others as distractions – blame and guilt trips, control and power games – to avoid feeling. This effectively creates chaos in the energy field of the individual, and it stirs up enormous amounts of dark energy. Chaos reigns.

So, we have to take baby steps towards the light. I can say this with absolute authority because I have probably done more work with the human shadow than all but a handful of people on the planet. I can tell you that it is demanding work which requires great courage and commitment. If spiritual and “alien” forces were to make themselves known today and bring forth the transparency that the Light of God necessitates, we would self destruct. I suspect that this is why the work they do is slow and subtle. Nonetheless, the Master of the Key suggests that we are being given the hurry up. We cannot afford to get lost in distractions.

In my next post (click here) I will look at several other claims from Whitley Strieber’s The Key, including life after death, the nature of God, and the relationship between light and darkness. 

Marcus