A Radical Spiritualist Finds a Mystery Among the Ruins of the Old Kelly Mine

The remains of the old Kelly Mine near Magdalena, New Mexico.

Pull up a pew and lend an ear while I mull over some peculiar happenings that occurred in New Mexico, the state beloved by film-makers, artists, spies, atom bomb makers and throngs of curious tourists who seek the Indian pueblos. The wide expanse of desert, dotted with red cedar, the perfectly blue sky that attracts many artists, including Georgia O’Keefe, appealed to my sense of finding a place to meditate and ponder life, death, the Universe and everything.

When I first started mulling over the maps and booklets on Albuquerque and New Mexico, for some strange reason I was drawn to a place called Socorro. It’s been around for some 400 years and it sits in the Rio Grande Valley, about 75 miles south of Albuquerque. A small City at 4,600 feet, it’s surrounded by a number of extinct volcanoes.

When it comes to big bangs however, Socorro has had its share. A short 35 miles away to the south-east at a place to be called Trinity, humankind on July 16th 1945 detonated the first atomic bomb test. It ushered in a new era for the planet. It was transported to the site in what is now the White Sands Missile Range in a 200 ton steel container with walls 14 inches thick. A chunk of it survived and can be found in the Socorro plaza. If you place your hands on the chunk and perform psychometry you will receive powerful vibrations. My partner Betty Lou felt the vibrations through her body. I sensed two blasts, one initial small one, followed moments later by a tremendous blast. The chunk is still alive with memories.

Was this why I was drawn here? I didn’t think so. One place I had hoped to see was the ruins of the old Kelly Mine, but I was really reluctant to drive another 30 miles on some questionable roads to see ruins that guide books said there was not much to see.

After wandering around Socorro and taking a coffee, I said to my partner Betty Lou: “Not much here, let’s get back to Albuquerque.” Well, it didn’t happen. A lively lady in the City Tourism Bureau told us about an intriguing place called Magdalena tucked away in the Magdalena mountains, some 27 miles to the west. Early Spanish settlers claimed to see the image of Mary Magdalene in the rockface of one of the mountains—when the sun is right. Curious, we drove to Magdalena but the sun wasn’t right, so we drove around the small town, somewhat disappointed. In late October most places are closed. We observed an absence of street signs. “Let’s get back to Socorro and have lunch in the micro-brewery,” I said. Magdalena was almost deserted, as if Gary Cooper was coming at High Noon. Instead of getting out of town immediately, Our curiosity took us cruising through the residential area. Suddenly, my GPS told me where we were – on Kelly Road!

“It must be a sign,” I told Betty Lou. “But heck, It’s another five miles,”
In spite of my growing reluctance we drove on, even when the road turned to gravel. If it had not been for my GPS identifying the road, we would have called it a day and returned to Socorro and Albuquerque. The road uninviting, rapidly deteriorated and it kept on getting worse by the minute. I was worried about the car – it was a new rental from Enterprise.

Reaching the brow of a hill, we found a very old church with a sign “St. John the Baptist, Kelly N.M.” It stood alone on a plateau like a sentinel, surrounded by steel fence. We parked the car and wandered around. The church is a gallant relic of the old community of Kelly, long since gone to dust. Still, services are held here once a year we discovered. There was no sight of the illusive old mine.

Disappointed I stared at the heavily rutted track going up the mountain. It was probably too rough for any all-terrain vehicle, let alone our rental car. “I’m not going any further,” I told Betty Lou and she agreed we had had enough. We spotted a man on a horse in the distance. He looked like Clint Eastwood in one of those Italian westerns. He was too far away to hear us. Returning to the car I was about to start the engine when a young man on a bicycle appeared--almost out of nowhere.
He parked his bike against the church fence and unstrapped his helmet. “The Kelly Mine? You’re almost there. A quarter of a mile up the track.” He said he lived “nearby” and had come from West Virginia some three years before.

“Could we hike up,” I asked cautiously.

“Sure. It’s just up the track. No problem.” He seemed enthusiastic for us to go on.
Well, that quarter mile was the longest we had ever climbed.We noted the problems. That quarter mile is at an elevation well over 8,000 feet, so the oxygen is not as plentiful as at sea level. The track ran a steady incline over rough rocks. The sun beamed mercilessly out of a perfectly blue sky that would have made George O’Keefe tremble in ecstasy. The sun was burning at 80-degrees. Add to this the fact we had no water, and we are both in our mid-seventies, and you have weird situation.

I kept telling myself, “Egby your nuts! Why are you torturing your body like this?” Twice, our lungs felt seriously short of oxygen and we had to stagger over and rest under the shade of a red cedar. Finally, we reached the sign that proclaimed “Kelly Mine.”

I told Betty Lou, “I’ll just get some photos of the sign and we’ll head back down. This is plain stupid. We should not have come.” A battered sign declared that visitors must acquire a pass in Magdalena if they wished to visit the mine. Ha! Now they tell us! I took some photos of the sign and the distant buildings by telephoto lens and was ready to turn back, totally unimpressed when something happened.

Voices! Not physical voices. Spirit voices. They came in softly at first, then their enthusiasm grew. “…hear us…he can hear us,” one man’s voice said several times. “He thinks we’re ghosts…that’s what the others said…I think we should take cover…”

“Spirits!” I told Betty Lou. “There are spirits here.” Suddenly, my body discovered the energy to walk through the gate into the mine works area. The old mine buildings and machinery stood brave but desolate in the New Mexican sunshine. It seemed strange to think that in another age – spanning fifty years, that a whole community had lived here, mining lead, zinc, silver, copper, gold and later smithsonite. Production totaled over $30 million. There were hotels, saloons, stores, brothels, stables and offices.

I asked the clamoring entities to be quiet while I found a concrete wall on which to sit while I recovered from the climb. Earth-bounds are spirits that have left their physical bodies upon so-called death and become blocked, you might call it snagged in transition of a full passing into the spirit world. For a variety of reasons some spirits, vacating dying physical bodies are reluctant to cross over into the sanctity of the Spirit World. Reasons include an acute desire to stay in the known physical world, wanting to stay with loved ones still living in the physical, a strong disbelief in the afterlife, or a powerful skepticism about the existence of Heaven and even God.

“Who is in charge?”

An entity who had once been a shift manager, came forward. He called himself “Tom” and when I responded with “Thomas” he corrected me and insisted he was named “Tom.” He had a vague Welsh accent.

How many of you are there?

“Eight,” he responded promptly. Betty Lou working with a pendulum had already dowsed the number.

I wanted to know how long they had been here.

“Ah, we’ve been here ever since the mine closed a few years back. We worked the mine and lived locally after she closed. Then most of us got sick and that’s when funny things happened. Some of us said we were dead, others claimed we were dreaming. I don’t know really. Are we dead? I don’t feel dead, just sort of funny. I get terribly depressed at times and I like to find a quiet place down in the mine.”

The group had obviously lost track of time. Tom’s observation that the “mine closed a few years back” was in reality almost eighty years before. Earth-bounds are notorious for losing track of time, and can spend decades and even centuries wandering around repeating similar questions to visitors, particular rock hunters. Their favorite was: “We are waiting for the mine to reopen. Any idea when this will be?” No one ever answered because no one ever heard them.

Tom stared at me. “Truth is we are dead. Is this all there is?”

I told them about the Spirit World, Summerland, Heaven as some call it, and said they should all be there, not wandering around the ruins of the Kelly Mine looking for work. “There are loved ones, sweethearts, friends, who have gone on and are still waiting for you. They are ready to help.”

Most of my communication was telepathic, which is the communication medium of spirits, but when I started talking about loved ones and sweethearts, the scene changed, as if someone had flicked a switch. Warm, vibrant energy, more powerful than the sun came surging in. “We’ve just been joined by whole lot of angels…” I said, noting the arrival of spirit helpers who said they brought miners’ loved ones with them.

To Betty Lou I said: “The miners can’t see spirits from the spirit world because they are depressed and looking down.”

“There’s a woman in spirit here.” And so there were, it was a gathering of spirits, all ready to help with the miners.

The problem with earth-bounds is they become victims of depression, and the challenge is getting them to look up, raise their vibration. After years of isolation, many mechanically look down, tuning into the earth. If only they would look up, workers from the spirit world would be able to assist them in crossing over without having to rely on spirit rescuers, like me in the physical.

“Are you all ready to join your loved ones?” I asked Tom, but he hesitated. “They’re all discussing what’s happening. Wait while I talk to them.” Suddenly there was a quiet in the ranks. “It’s time” he said slowly. “It’s time to leave.”

I noted my spirit guides Paul and Chiang were close by. In a prayer of protection to Holy Spirit, I asked for guidance, strength and protection and to open the way, the light for these miners to make their last journey home.

Then addressing the eight, I described the Summerland, the Spirit World and how it is a place where they can be free again, be with loved ones and friends, and advance in their spiritual lives. “It’s time to let go of the Earth, lift your heads and gaze up into the beautiful white light shining above you.” I mentally repeated these words several times and finally felt an upward movement – a vibration change -- within the group. “The light is the gateway to your home,” I told them. “Go with the angels and loved ones. They will guide you all home.”
The heaviness that had existed around the miners started to clear. A few moments later, we knew that all eight had crossed over successfully.

My spirit guide Paul called out “All clear. Good job. Glad you came?”

Then I realized I had been used again. Ever since I picked up the New Mexico printed matter months before while sitting in upstate New York, and started reading about Socorro, Magdalena and the Kelly Mine, it was all predestined. I had been reluctant to come at all stages. Even our friends in Albuquerque had queried us going. I kept wanting to turn back, but it never happened. Even when we reached the Church of St. John the Baptist on the old Kelly Road, I had wanted to turn back.

I recalled a time years before when I was trekking to a holy place called St. Just in Roseland in Cornwall, England, I had experienced the same reluctance to go on, until a boy on a bicycle appeared out of nowhere and urged me to go on, pointing to a rainbow in the sky. I wrote about it in “The Quest of the Radical Spiritualist.” Coincidence?

“That young man at the church…on the Kelly Road…did you have anything to do with that?” I growled at Paul.

A peal of laughter seemed to roll around the Kelly Mine site. “Robert, I’ll never tell,” cried Paul. “Cosmic secrets.” Mystics have a saying: There are no such things as coincidences, only occurrences of energy we fail to understand.”

As we walked down the rough track to the old St. John the Baptist Church, we stopped to look at the ruins, shells of buildings with 16-inch rock walls that had once been part of the mining community of Kelly, New Mexico. The place still holds energies of bygone days. The akashic records are still strong. If you are quiet you may well hear the horses panting and coughing as they drag the ore-carts down the dusty track to Magdalena and the rail head. You can still hear the mine whistles, men walking home after shifts underground, women chatting, and children laughing.

In the eternal akashic records the old Kelly Mine is still alive, still working, still vibrating in time. We helped eight earth-bounds that hot October 17th, 2009, but I do have a strong feeling, there are more spirits still earth-bound lurking amid the ruins at 8,000 feet, still waiting for assistance to get home to the Other Side.

Thank you for sharing this space. Just a note in parting: Spirit rescue is a subject I mentioned in my second book "The Quest of the Radical Spiritualist." I am currently working on a sequel devoted to healing, and the above article will appear in the book, because as we know, spirit rescue is also spirit healing. Love, Light and Blessings. Robert





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"RADICAL SPIRITUALIST" DRAWS NATIONAL "BEST BOOKS" AWARD

NEWS RELEASE: NOVEMBER 5th 2009

“Quest of the Radical Spiritualist” Honored as Finalist
In the National “Best Books 2009” Awards


CHAUMONT, New York. A book aimed at helping individual students walk a path through metaphysics, to understand and read sacred energies, learn from spirits, including loved ones in the Afterlife and practice astral projection, has been honored as “Finalist” in the “Spirituality: General” category in the National “Best Books 2009” Awards.

The award was announced by USA Book News, the premiere online magazine and review website for mainstream and independent publishing houses.

Published June 1st and written by upstate New York author, Robert Egby, “The Quest of the Radical Spiritualist – The Journey Home,” sets new challenges for the individual Spiritualist, creating new thoughts and offering new philosophies for the future. Egby weaves a kaleidoscopic path through the world of psychic energies and deep spiritualism designed to entertain and nourish beginners and advanced questers alike.

Jeff Keen, President and CEO of USABookNews.com says this year’s contest yielded an unprecedented number of entries, which were then narrowed down to over 500 winners and finalists. There are 140 categories. This is the 6th Annual National “Best Books” Awards.

Author Robert Egby says he was researching his next book in the deserts of New Mexico when he heard the news of the award. “Back last summer my spirit friends suggested we enter the book. Never thought it would get anywhere, even when we started to receive good reviews on Amazon. So, the USA Book News award blew me away.”

A complete list of the winners and finalists of the National “Best Books” 2009 Awards is available online at www.USABookNews.com . Information on the book and the author can be found at http://www.threemilepointpublishing.com/

The book is available at all mainstream and independent bookstores throughout the United States, and is available in the United Kingdom and various countries of Europe.

About the Author

Robert Egby has studied and taught Mysticism and Metaphysics for over thirty years. A former journalist and award-winning broadcaster in the Middle East and Canada, he trod the corridors of government public relations in British Columbia before settling in the United States twelve years ago. He is a Spiritualist-trained minister and now lives in Chaumont, northern New York State. He is also the author of “Cracking the Glass Darkly” which formed a background for his second book “The Quest of the Radical Spiritualist.” His next book is provisionally entitled “The Healing Paths of the Radical Spiritualist.”

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TELEPATHY WITH A PSI!

By Robert Egby


It was a chilly March evening in 1977 and I was feeling crushed and tired standing on a commuter bus in Vancouver. People read books, snoozed, or conversed in muffled voices above the sounds of the bus’s diesel. I clung to the passenger rails. Suddenly a voice came out of nowhere: “Bobby...Bobby...” It was as clear as a bell. I twisted round. It sounded like my father. But he was in England, half way round the earth. Naturally it wasn’t him. I felt foolish.

The voice came again, urgent and insistent. “Bobby...I just wanted you to know I love you, son.”

Confused and shaken by these vivid thoughts, I reached home. A few minutes later, my sister Diane called from Bournemouth, 7,000 miles away in England. “Dad died about half an hour ago,” she said. “He asked for you.”

Telepathy or thought transference, or as the Russians call it, biological communication, is the inter-communication between mind and mind, or as one used to consider in the early days, between brain and brain. When one considers all the various aspects and classifications of psychic phenomena there is none that succeeds in attracting attention more than telepathy, or thought-transference. No, it’s not mind-reading as some of the uninformed might readily suggest.

Early researchers realized there is practically no department of psychic phenomena on which it has not some bearing. Having said that, it is also recognized by clinicians and scientists that telepathy can stand alone as a field of psychology, where researchers can work unhampered by an “unknown” spirit world, which would automatically draw sharp criticism from orthodox quarters.

Thought-transference was practiced by the ancients, but it was only with the advent of modern Spiritualism and the study of psychic phenomena that serious attention was given to telepathy, as F.W.H. Myers termed it.

Professors Crookes and Barrett did some early work, and both submitted reports to distinguished organizations -- Crookes to the Royal Society, and Barrett to the British Association -- and both received blunt rejection, because they did not denounce Spiritualism.

The Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1882, and much of its early research work was devoted to an experimental investigation of thought-transference because they believed it demonstrated survival. Over the years, various researchers, some of them distinguished people, conducted research into telepathy and extra-sensory perception (ESP).

The three principle aspects of telepathy that have lent themselves towards study are Waking, Dream and Hypnotic States. These three are suitable for laboratory testing which involves “control situations.” These were subjected to research by Dr. Joseph Rhine at Duke University through the 1960s and into the 1970s.

There is another state that scientists find difficult to study and that is Spontaneous Telepathy. It is akin to Crisis Telepathy, which incidentally provides the most accurate and most often recorded. Such was the case involving my father.

The best telepathy demands emotion and researchers find that difficult. This point has been raised over the years, but none so pointedly as that given by Mrs. Hewat McKenzie at the British College of Psychic Science in October 1929. “We notice that the emotions are often concerned in successful transmission, but there is nothing so difficult to repeat as an emotional experience,” she said. And that brings up the question of repeatability.

Is telepathy possible through spirit communication? Considerable study has been done since the days of Crookes, Myers, Lodge, Barret and Hyslop, and continues to this day. The problem exists in what is known as the “repeatability factor.” Telepathy, as it is recognized, requires mind-to-mind transmittal. However, there are those who feel that spirit communication to mediums and others on the earth plane, is also a form of telepathy.

Emanuel Swedenborg wrote of spirits communicating with each other by thought processes, and the psychic researcher and author Hereward Carrington wrote “...if disembodied spirits converse with one another by this means, it is only natural to suppose that this is frequently the method of communication resorted to between embodied and disembodied spirits, and all trance-mediums know this.”

Although all credit for publicizing telepathy and ESP must go to the Rhines and their prolonged studies at Duke University in the 1960s, telepathy was not a stranger to the average man and woman prior to that.

The highly esteemed American socialist and author Upton Sinclair, much against his publisher’s wishes, wrote a book called “Mental Radio,” -- another name for telepathy. Sinclair’s wife, Mary Craig Sinclair, had been studying telepathy and psychic phenomena, and one day, she was sitting quietly doodling while her husband was in the next room reading. Mary made a drawing of a well defined clover blossom, noting it was red. Her husband entered, noticed the drawing, and exclaimed: “I have just read a passage which said: The red clover had blushed, and he would return home with a handful of clover blossoms.”

From that point on, the Sinclairs conducted many experiments and research in telepathy and clairvoyance, and Upton Sinclair had the book published under the title “Mental Radio.” The year was 1930. The book was translated into European languages, and in the introduction to the German edition was written: “The results of the telepathy experiments which are carefully and plainly described in this book, stand surely far beyond what an investigator of nature considers possible.” The writer? Albert Einstein wrote a very compelling introduction.

What causes telepathy? How does it work? During Mesmer’s investigation into animal magnetism, it was generally believed that a universal fluid joined all living things. Mesmer found that telepathy occurred while clients were in a trance state, hence it was assumed telepathy and mesmerism were inseparable. Professor Charles Richet, a French physiologist demonstrated that telepathy could occur apart from the state of mesmerism or hypnosis, as it was later termed. You can have waking telepathy, said Richet. Well, he’s both right and wrong.

There is a fine line between a waking state and hypnosis. If you measure brain activity with an electroencephalograph (EEG) there are four primary brain wave patterns - Beta, (14-33 cycles per second) which is the normal waking consciousness, Alpha (8-13 cps) which is light to medium hypnosis and meditation, also the Sunday morning half-awake, don’t-have-to-go-to-the-office feeling. Theta (4-7 cps) is the first and intermediate levels of sleep, deep meditation, deep trance, dream state, and Delta (1.5-3 cps) is deep, profound sleep.

Our average Beta level is 21. It’s higher if stressed and you are driven by a demanding occupation. However, when we day-dream, even when driving a car, the Beta level drops close to an Alpha state. It also happens when we watch a good movie, are absorbed by a musical concert or play, or are watching a good television show. When a person is relaxed, they are conducive to concentration and new learning. That person is open to suggestions. Major marketing firms know that, hence repetitive advertisements on the screen. You may well think you are wide awake, but you’re also in light Alpha, one of the best stages for receiving psychic messages, even telepathy. So was Professor Richet, right or wrong when he said you can have waking telepathy?

People who are highly stressed in the waking state are unlikely to receive telepathic messages. Mediums, although to all intents and purposes are awake while delivering messages in Spiritualist churches, and working in an altered state of consciousness, the Alpha State, or close to it.

Research into telepathy continues to this day. Laboratory conditions have changed since the Rhines worked at Duke University. They use computers for analysis and even provide an opportunity for visitors to work in ESP.

The Koestler Parapsychology Unit at the University of Edinburgh is researching ESP on the internet, and can be found at http://www.koestler-parapsychology.psy.ed.ac.uk/Psi.html. A fascinating point: The years may have changed since the early researchers presented their findings, but the attitude hasn’t. Witness the opening paragraph of a major study (four years ago) at the Koestler website: http://moebius.psy.ed.ac.uk/~

“Most academic psychologists do not yet accept the existence of PSI,
anomalous processes of information or energy transfer (such as
telepathy or other forms of extrasensory perception) that are currently
unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms.”

Crookes, Myers, Lodge, Richet, Rhine, Moss, Garrett, and a host of others, must be shaking their astral heads in wonderment. Perhaps regarding our ESP development with a sigh! After all, telepathy is their standard routine for communications.

-- Ends --

DISCOVERING THE POWER OF THE COSMIC SELF

Thoughts by Robert Egby

If you can look into a mirror and gaze straight into your eyes, and say without flinching or feeling guilty: “I love you and accept you completely,” you really do not need to read this article, or attend my workshops.

When you love yourself unconditionally, good things happen. You become a center of love. Your energy vibrations increase, and the benefits are felt at all levels of your being, physically, mentally and spiritually. You are somewhere on the road to Cosmic Awareness, a consciousness that embraces all things.

What makes it interesting is that you do not have to tell people you love yourself. They will know it. They will sense it. They may not know how they are sensing it, but they will wish to gravitate towards you. They will want to share your space, share your secret.

Some who cannot gravitate towards you will tell you: “It’s not right to love yourself. You’re an egotist.” So let me share something about egotists. An egotist is someone who needs your love, needs your attention, and he or she will always demand it. An egotist is like a black hole -- it absorbs everything but returns nothing.

When you love yourself, you not only have love for youself, but you have love for others. You radiate love. And the world needs love. Some people may think this is weakminded. It’s just the reverse. The Cosmic Self does not bow to the whims and fancies of others, but choses their actions from a position of strength.

Human beings have a peculiar habit of conditioning the minds of their offspring. From the day a person is born, that person is usually presented with a barrage of negative thoughts -- “You’re not lovable,” “You’ll never get anywhere in this world,” “You’re bad and we don’t love you.” Many parents, perhaps well intended, re-affirm these abusive statements, undermining the child’s self-esteem, self-confidence and love of self. Because children learn from imitating role models, they also learn and copy such negative behavior as anger, worry, fear, panic, criticism, bitterness, conceit, jealousy, etc. Love of self sits on a distant back burner, if at all. Some people may call these aspects “human nature.” That’s a pathetic excuse.

The interesting thing is that people who are enmeshed in negative behavior suffer lower vibrations, which seemingly get out of control in crises. A negatively conditioned person becomes contracted, hardened, and is unable to be in the same space as others.

When we love ourselves we experience an expanded vibration manifesting itself as awareness, comprehension, and understanding. Keep on expanding your love vibration and you attain your own form of Cosmic consciousness. Thaddeus Golas in his gem of a little book “The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment” said: “Love is the strongest magic of all.”

Golas also wrote: “When you learn to love hell, you will be in heaven.” If you think that strange, ask yourself why you think that way. When you learn to love something, it means you have no fear of that. For instance, when you love a fear, you are no longer at its mercy, you cannot be subjected to its power. You can apply cosmic thinking to just about anything.

Ever since the dawn of peoplekind, the great teachers have told us: “Love yourself.” Paul the Apostle wrote a wonderful essay on that in 1 Corinthians, chapters 12 and 13, but who took notice? Certainly not the mainline churches.

You cannot suppress for any length of time the various faces of the negative ego -- anger, jealousy, bitterness, worry, fear, revenge, boredom, ignorance -- but there are powerful techniques that will help you to dissipate those negative faces, and embrace the true self, which is also the loving self.... and you do it without judgment! It’s like magic, really. The Sufi mystics of Islam teach it, so did Gurdjieff, as did Vernon Howard and Jean Klein.

In my workshops “Discovering the Cosmic Self” I share the teachings of the Masters, and in Meditation take participants to the point where they can meet and love themselves -- unconditionally. Most people “live” in the past or the future. We teach the value of living in the here and now, the present. Vernon Howard put it this way: “If you look forward to being happy you will never be happy. Life is now, right now, and that is where you must be to enjoy life and to have life." If you wish to know more of these teachings check my books “Cracking the Glass Darkly” and “The Quest of the Radical Spiritualist,” both available through many bookstores and at Amazon. You might also want to check “The Mystic Path to Cosmic Power,” by Vernon Howard, or “I Am” by Jean Klein. You will be glad you did.

Thanks for sharing this space.

Robert

THE RADICAL SPIRITUALIST FINDS STILLNESS IN THE DESERT

(This is a sequel to my earlier blog: The Radical Spiritualist Seeks Enlightenment in the Desert)

A Blog posting edged onto my computer the other day. The heading boldly declared “There’s No Such Thing As Silence,” and it went on to explain there are too many interfering sounds around us. Upon reflection, I paused to “listen” to the sounds in my environment.

Even as I write this my awareness is connecting with the hum of the computer, my fingers tapping on the keyboard, the sound of my body breathing, the clock ticking on the wall, movements in the home, the next door neighbor mowing his lawn, the sounds of distant cars, distant voices, a dog barking down the street. There are many sounds going on around us that we accept as “life” without being fully aware.

Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, even reading this, take time out to listen to your environment. Notice the sounds around you. They may be the gentle patter of raindrops against the window, perhaps a breeze rustling through the leaves of the trees outside. The more you “listen” objectively the more you hear. It’s an interesting fact that the more you go into trance or meditation, the more you hear, like a dog barking two blocks away, a sound that will escape a listener without objective hearing.

Listening is a form of meditation, an action which takes one into trance, a relaxed mode. Some philosophers suggest it is the Soul’s desire to be with the Creator, the Source of its Being, Universal Mind, God. If you believe the Universe was created, it had to be created out of Silence, therefore silence assumes a quality of mystery.

There’s no such thing as silence says the blog writer, and in our modern helter-skelter world with the human desire to stay productive and busy, it’s difficult to imagine silence. But it’s a fact, all sound has to start within the silence. Music for example would be a cacophony if the notes had to compete with other sounds. If there were no silent spaces between notes, there would be no melody.

As I explained in an earlier article, deserts are great places for seeking the silence and higher awareness. If you have access to a desert, or are planning to visit an area where there are deserts, you might wish to perform these meditations. If it’s impossible, you can sit quietly at home and imagine a desert.

EXERCISE: A PLACE IN THE DESERT
If you can do it safely, find a location in a desert, away from highways, homes, commercial malls, highways, a place where there is only desert. Early morning or as the sun begins to sink in the west, are good times. Find a rock where you can sit, back straight, legs together, hands unclasped on your lap.

Survey the landscape as if you have never seen it before. Quietly gaze at the horizon. Study it. Allow your gaze to survey any plant life, animals, birds, all the time allowing your ears to gather any sounds of the desert. Get the feel of the desert. Make a note of how your body is feeling. If your false self – the ego – suggests this is all a waste of time, impartially observe the thought and let it float away. When you are in tune with your environment, gently close your eyes.

You may achieve a very good level of being conscious of the silence. It is unlikely to be very quiet, but whatever the sounds or lack of sounds are, mentally observe them. Be conscious of the place and its vibrations.

At some stage in the process, if you feel nervous, say a prayer of protection to whoever you pray to, or surround yourself in a cocoon of white light. I always assume the Quester lives on a good, positive vibration.

If you perform this listening-to-the-desert exercise for twenty minutes or half an hour, or return for fifteen to twenty minutes on a regular basis, you will start to hear things above and beyond the “silence” of the desert. You may start to hear a soft purring deep in the Earth – that’s probably the Earth – Gaia – breathing.

You may also start to hear voices. Ask, “Do you come with love and light?” and they should respond positively. If they hesitate, consider the response a negative, and say to them, “Return from whence you came and go with love and light.”

Once you are in the Silence of the Desert you may simply “Be” for twenty minutes or half an hour. When you are ready to leave, thank the desert for its hospitality and thank any spirits that may have popped by.

If you like the idea of meditating in the desert, but do not like being alone, take a companion who wishes to do the same thing, and meditate together, but resist the inclination to talk to one another.

If you persist in this exercise, there will come a time when you may well feel an infinite warmth, an infinite presence that is beyond all description. Do not imagine what it will be like, that’s the False Self talking and resorting to old memories. Allow yourself to be surprised.

THE DESERT OF THE INNER SELF
If you do not have a physical desert within easy reach, find a quiet place, a room, a gazebo in the garden, and relax there. I always recommend that meditators have a special room in the home, a place where the vibrations are soft and there is a sense of spirit. Make yourself comfortable, either sitting up or lying down. Close your eyes and focus on your breathing. Simply observe your body breathing in and breathing out. Do this for a couple of minutes, and you will find a very relaxed state of consciousness occurring.

Now, imagine you are in a desert. Create a desert in your mind and perform all the things I mentioned above. Sense you are there. Imagine you can bend down and touch the soft sand. Create a rock in your mind, sit on it and let your hands, your fingers feel the rock. Image a soft, warm desert breeze stirring around you. Sense the morning sunrise or the setting sun.

It may not be quite the same, but once you close your eyes in silence and become aware of the “desert” around you, it will bring about a peace that is beyond all understanding. Practice this meditation for several days and each time the desert will become more real. Keep a record of your experiences. One helpful hint: If you cannot get to a real desert, find some good photographs and study them prior to your meditation.

You may not find the complete silence in any of these meditation exercises, but you will find a stillness. Above all, maintain a good vibration. Work to love yourself unconditionally. It is the most valuable wisdom you can achieve. (If you need help, my book “Cracking the Glass Darkly” explains how you can clear the mind of limitations and learn to love yourself unconditionally.)

Whatever you do, you will come to know that there is in your life, a special place where you can shut out the helter-skelter of the world, and be together with your higher self, the True Self, and ascended beings, and always, always experience the warmth and love of the Universal Mind.

Remember, many of the world’s great teachers – and their students – have discovered peace, knowledge and truth in the desert. Blessings.

(For the reader: The above essay is made up of notes I am preparing for my third book. Provisional title: “The Healing Path of the Radical Spiritualist.” ©

THE RADICAL SPIRITUALIST SEEKS ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE DESERT

By Robert Egby
When I browse my memory of experiences in the deserts of the world, it seems as if I was living in a time warp. In the early 1950s, I celebrated my 21st birthday sitting with friends in a tent, eating ham and drinking Stella beer, a really potent brew that is still produced in Egypt.

The place was El Firdan, midway between Port Said and Suez. A short distance to the east was the Suez Canal, that maritime artery connecting the occident with the orient. To the west, a wretched, dank, polluted waterway dug by Ferdinand de Lesseps, strangely called the Sweetwater canal. It may have been sweet, and provided drinkable water when the workers were digging the canal in the 1860s but it soon became unpotable.

When the British and French Armed Forces invaded Suez in 1956, the Brits were warned “Your life depends on it: Stay out of the Sweetwater Canal.” The French Foreign Legionnaires, well, they swam and bathed in it.

The desert has always appealed to me. I was learning to be a photographer and my friend and colleague in the air force, Peter Dance was enthusiastically studying shells and wished to explore the Egyptian Desert. At first glance the landscape appeared barren, neglected and torn by relentless winds. Small bushes, dotted the landscape as if seeking an angel of mercy or at least a rain shower.

But Peter already knew the habits of shells. On hands and knees he explored the bushes and found snails galore, and as he did so, I photographed his findings. Somewhere, sometime in our explorations he announced he was looking for a “sinistral,” a shell that is formed anti-clockwise. From this I gathered that the majority of shells appear clockwise. And so, for all my life, even today, whenever I see a snail or any other gastropod, my thoughts return to the desert and I check to see if it’s a sinistral.

Deserts intrigue me. There is a peculiar property that they possess. It’s called silence. If you are geared to an urban, helter-skelter life clinging to the never-ending roller coaster, the sudden experience of the desert’s silence can be devastating, frightening. It is good advice to learn to relax and meditate before seeking the silence of the desert.

A whole lot of interesting spiritual people have sought the stillness of the desert and the spiritual benefits it does bestow. Gautama Buddha chose to sit under a Bodhi tree in the scorched, desolate landscape at Pataliputra in north-east India. Mohammed frequently went to a cave in the Arabian Desert a few miles out of Mecca, where he would spend months in prayer and meditation.

Jesus, the Galilean teacher and healer is reported to have spent forty days in the desert before starting his ministry. Saul of Tarsus, after being temporarily blinded by cosmic consciousness on the road to Damascus, changed his name to Paul and spent three years in the desert before starting his evangelical work.

In more recent times T.E Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia spent years in and around the Jordanian Desert. At a place called Wadi Rum where Lawrence had his headquarters, there is a distinctive rock formation with seven columns. That gave him the title of his classic book “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” in 1922.

In the early chaotic days of the Christian religion, spiritual men and women feeling threatened, fled to the quiet of the Sinai and Egyptian deserts, built refuge monasteries and ultimately, for safety reasons, buried prized, religious texts in earthenware jars below the desert sands. In 1945 some Egyptian farmers found such a jar containing thirteen leather-bound papyrus codices that have formed the Gnostic Bible, which gives deeper insights into the teachings of Jesus.

After my Royal Air Force days, I stayed in the Middle East and worked as a journalist and news photographer. I walked the deserts in Iraq (when they had a king), Syria, Jordan, and Libya. The silence of the deserts was always appealing, and this is before I became involved in metaphysics and mysticism.

But deserts are not necessarily peaceful and occasionally the silence is brutally shaken.
In 1961 I was sent to Libya to cover the 20th anniversary reunion of the “Rats of Tobruk”. They were British and Australian survivors of the famous 1941 battle at the Mediterranean port-town of Tobruk. One quiet afternoon I started to wander off into desert.

“Where the hell are you going?” cried Don Scott-Reid the Air Ministry PR who set up the event. “Don’t you know it’s hell out there?” Returning to the vehicle, Donald pointed to hundreds of little “mole hills” dotting the sands. “Land mines! The place is swarming with them. Planted by the Italians, Germans, British and Australians, whoever was fighting here.” Two decades of desert winds had blown the sand away revealing most, but not all of the lethal explosives.

Next day we were driving back to Tobruk from El Adem we glimpsed a solitary arab walking across the desert. Even as we watched, a mine shattered the quiet, and as the smoke cleared we could make out the heaped remains of a man. Years later, when Princess Diana talked of land mines my mind always went back to that day near Tobruk. Many years later when I spent several hours meditating in the desert north of Pheonix on the way to Sedona, I pondered how lucky Americans are to be relatively free of desert wars and land mines.

But deserts can be places of beauty and for those mentally prepared for the silence that most offer, they can prompt enlightening experiences. The spiritual philosopher Paul Bunyan, who incidentally spent the last twenty years of his life in relative obscurity wrote: “The Stillness has so much to give mankind, yet mankind ignores or neglects it.”

Many deserts are places where men and women can experience the stillness of mind. Total relief from the chaotic, materialistic-driven existences of the urban lifestyle. For questers of higher awareness, higher consciousness, there is a quality that takes one back to the silence and security of the womb, a blissful peace, when all that crippling mind chatter and driving thought-patterns become silenced.

The silence of the desert may not come to the quester at first. One has to work at it. So, it is best to be prepared, learn the basics of meditation where the body and the mind are relaxed. If you have an ego that abhors the idea of finding the desert silence, you may need to work on that. How to do that is in my book “Cracking the Glass Darkly.” Easy, effective exercises will prepare you for a spiritual meditation in any desert. If you are already spiritually inclined but still have limitations or blocks, you will find guidance in “The Quest of the Radical Spiritualist.”

Incidentally, while you may find the Silence, the deep stillness in a desert, chances are, if your mind is quiet and receptive, you may also receive enlightenment, you may well discover your True Self. You may also encounter the Universal Mind, that loving voice that so many master teachers have sought in the deserts of the world, the God Force.



NOTE: Peter Dance, the shell-collector of my early years went on to become a world-expert in Conchology, and now lives in the north of England. In photography I went on to receive an Honorary Mention in the British Press Photos of the Year (1956) and won a list of awards in documentaries for radio in Canada.


If you do experience the Silence and Stillness in the desert of your choice, drop me a line. I would much like to hear of your experiences. The books I mentioned above are available in many bookstores and at amazon.com. ©

ANIMISIM: DOES SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS EXIST IN ALL THINGS?

There is an ancient legend that says that when God created Adam and Eve, He recognized the fact He needed to watch over them, so He created cats and dogs and instructed them to be constant companions to human beings, and added: “I will watch them through your eyes.”

Far fetched? If you were an animist, you wouldn’t think so. Modern animists, like their distant ancestors, believe that everything, particularly animals, contains a spirit or a soul. Animism is the belief in innumerable spiritual beings concerned with human affairs and can help or harm man’s interests. In animism a soul or spirit being is attributed to and is indwelling in all animate and inanimate entities.

British anthropologist Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917) in his work, Primitive Culture, indicates that possibly all religions came from this type of belief. In full blown animism nothing is really inanimate, everything is alive with spirit, active or not. Tylor observed, they regard every individual as endowed not only with a life-spirit but also with a phantom, such as appears to others in dreams or visions. Animism, wrote Tylor, is universal. It dates back to the earliest humans and continues to exist today, making it the oldest form of religious belief on earth.

According to EMT, the Educational Media and Technology Consortium based in San Bernadino, California, “Animism is thought to be one of the earliest types of spiritualism practiced by humans.”

In the sixth century BC, Pythagoras and Plato hypothesized that many peoples without written traditions believe that spirits or souls animate the whole universe and this was the vital principle of life -- a theory, incidentally, featured in the Star Wars movies, where Luke Skywalker must come to understand “The Force” and its mystical powers if he is to succeed in his quest.

Pythagoras, Herodotus and Plato studied animism, the afterlife, and general theology in Egypt. The eastern Mediterranean country, which had long been known as the cradle of civilization, science and religion. It is one reason -- if not the main reason -- why modern thought forms owe so much to their writings.

The Egyptians were the first to say that the soul of man is immortal. Consequently life was very important to the Egyptian. Earth life was but a first step of a short period of time in an immense career. The Doctrine of a future life and a future judgment is apparent in their ceremonies, the pictures on the tombs and the papyrus Book of the Dead.

Egyptian worship provided transmigration through all bodily forms -- completely incarnating God -- and making every type of animals’ existence divine. So this became the worship of animals -- a fact that caused astonishment to many outsiders.

The worship of Apis, the sacred bull of Memphis, the representative of Osiris, the God of death and rebirth, the underworld and the earth. was extremely important. The jackal, renowned for raiding graves, was made the jackal-god, Anubis. Anubis was the main god for weighing the heart and deciding who could get into the afterlife. Then there was the falcon-god Horus, the god of light.

The Egyptians believed in many gods, each of whom had special powers and responsibilities. There was never just one god; each aspect of their lives merited its own deity. The worship of individual gods fluctuated over time, usually as new Pharaohs took over and demanded loyalty to their personal favorites.

The critical and profound force within the Egyptian religion was in their belief of continuity of life. There was and is no such thing as death. In the beliefs of the ancient world, the soul is that part of you that you can never lose nor abandon. The Egyptian priests taught that your soul is not just who you are. Your soul does not just belong to you - your soul is you. You will never lose your soul. The Devil cannot take it away from you, no matter what you sign. Your soul can forget all the names and experiences of your many-layered human life, but your soul will always be you, the sense within your flesh that feels like you. It is in the stories of Osiris that the soul's substance is explored.

The Hebrews, the enslaved people of Israel were openly exposed to the Egyptian religion between Joseph and the Exodus, a span of 400 years. To counteract Egyptian teachings, Moses had to be tough and lay down the law -- God’s Law. He did this while the Jews roamed Sinai. In Mosaism there is no trace of the doctrine of future life. Moses gave no account of the judgment of souls after death; the long journey and multiform experiences of the next life; nothing of a future resurrection and return to the body. He taught nothing of the myths, transmigration of souls, animal worship, embalming of bodies or ornamental tombs. He appears to have turned his back on much of the Egyptian theological thought and practice.

The Sinai trek took forty years, or two generations. As the crow flies, the distance between the River Nile and the Promised Land is about 250 miles. Halley’s Bible Handbook estimates there were three million people involved in the exodus. To complete the trek in forty years one would have to travel six miles a year or about 220 yards a week. Which means that either Moses was a very poor navigator, or the four decades was needed as a cleansing period, a theological boot camp for Judaism. Perhaps only Moses and Universal Mind know the answer.

Still, the Egyptian religion had a powerful influence on Judaism and Christianity. The Jews, similar to the Egyptians established their Most Holy Place or Holy of Holies. The Jews were commanded on the Day of Atonement to provide a goat, on which people dumped their sins, and the animal was chased out of the village or encampment--hence the word scapegoat. The Egyptians had a similar practice.

Christians established practices similar to the Egyptians. Wedding rings and endowments: “With all my worldly goods, I thee endow.” The Catholic priests shaved their heads as the Egyptian priests had done before them. Then there are the candles and candlesticks, the incense, the veils, the altars, the lavers--the bowls of water for priests to wash their hands. The oldest known examples of stained glass were discovered in the ancient tombs at Memphis, Egypt.

One more gift of Egypt to Christianity. It is a phrase that originated in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, was adopted into mystic Judaism, the Kabala and repeated by a teacher in Galilee two thousand years ago. The words are found at the end of the Lord’s Prayer. “For thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, for Ever and Ever. Amen.”

The word “Amen” meaning “Certainly! It is so!” comes from both Greek and Hebrew. It also came from Egypt. Amen’s name, also given as Amon, Amun, Amoun means “The Hidden One.” Up to the Middle Kingdom Amen was merely a local god in Thebes; but when the Thebans had established their sovereignty in Egypt, Amen became a prominent deity, and by Dynasty XVIII was termed the King of the Gods. In prayers and supplications, the practice was to end them with “Amen.”

The Egyptians had it. Moses ignored it. The Jews forgot it. Jesus reminded us. The orthodox church didn’t understand it and figured that what it didn’t understand was the work of the Devil. We are discussing Animism. Animism--the belief that spiritual consciousness exists in all things. It’s the closest one can come to eliminating the plague of duality and recognizing that Universal Mind, God, is everywhere. Not as Bette Middler sings: “God is watching from a distance,” but around and within us.

If you feel nervous about the idea, do what millions of orthodox Christians do, put God away until Sunday. But if that sounds mechanical and you’d like to think Universal Mind is close. Just look at your cat...or dog...and regard the eyes. What do you see? And you always wondered why, when you hold your pet, you relax, or when you meditate, your pet wants to be close to you.