edgar-mitchell

Down and In 119
lifting a finger. Psychoactive people, either naturally or through training,
have a greater range of actions they can intentionally and directly initiate
with their mind. I was coming around to see that there is actually nothing
more complicated conceptually about these unusual processes than that.
Psychoactivity is merely a means of managing energy and the patterns of
energy that we term information. However, there are many subtleties involved
in training oneself to better employ the process, particularly outside
the body, and considerable complication in explaining how it fits within
the theories of physics. There is also still considerable mystery as to how
the brain actually accomplishes these feats. The processes are not simply
the mechanical processes of gears and levers, nor the electrical processes
of moving charges, as classical theories would have it.
I suspected early on that when these capabilities are utilized, they require
no moral or ethical considerations different from those of ordinary
awareness and intentionality in daily life. That is, the morality and ethics
required are just those contained in the belief system of the practitioner.
Psychoactive people can be wonderful and saintly or scurrilous and demonic,
just like the rest of humanity. The energy involved pertains only to
its quantum mechanical properties. Similar to electricity, it can toast your
bread or power an electric chair. It requires no special dispensation from
supernatural authority. And it is precisely for this reason that virtually all
the world’s established esoteric traditions require practice of self-discipline
and acquisition of “spiritual” values first, allowing the psychic capabilities
to manifest when and if they naturally emerge. The idea here is to have a
more compassionate and wiser individual in possession of such abilities.
The more ancient rites, such as the Voodoo of Africa and Haiti, and the
Shamanistic practices of South American tribes, routinely use the capabilities
against enemies as well as for friends. The morality is that of personal
and tribal survival.
Years ago, Puharich carefully investigated a case of an alleged Shamanistic
vendetta against a South American tribal woman. She was an outcast, banished
because of a family dispute, and had apparently fled her village so
that she might escape the Shaman’s spell. Apparently her flight was to no
avail, as shortly thereafter she was afflicted with dozens of tiny needlelike
metal shards deep within the flesh of her body. They required surgical
removal and left a welter of scars, but continued to reappear for a period,
seemingly spontaneously.
After having seen what I’d seen and having heard what I had heard
from credible scientists, I grew certain that these increased levels of
psychoactivity are most likely latent, evolutionary, and emergent in our
species.