Nicholas E. Brink's Blog, page 12

Hopeful Signs of the New Age in the Turmoil of this Election Season

I have frequently quoted from the German philosopher-historian Jean Gebser’s book The Ever-Present Origin. He describes the four mutations of consciousness over time beginning with the archaic consciousness of the earliest times when we lived essentially in a dream state. The next era was the magical era of consciousness where, for example, the hunter-gatherers drew pictures of the hunted animal with a spear in its side to insure success in the hunt. This was followed by the mythic era where things of life were explained through myths. The mythic era was the first era with recorded history. Then we entered the rational era about 2500 years ago. Gebser believes that this era reached its peak about the time of Leonardo da Vinci and this three-dimensional art. He points out that at the time of each mutation the people who had not experienced the change and still clung to the old era were greatly threatened by those at the forefront of change in consciousness. This causes great turmoil and even violence, with those hanging onto the old era of consciousness threatened by the new. Gebser’s book was written in 1949, and he describes the coming new age of conscious as the era of time-free transparency, the era in which we realize that time is relative and we again can see beyond our five senses. We begin to recognize the reality of the magical era and understand the mythic era, ways of thinking that were thrown out as superstitious and false during the rational era. In my experiences with ecstatic trance I am regaining and experiencing the reality of the magic of the second era, e.g. experiencing the extrasensory perception of experiencing ancestral spirits, and mental telepathy. In describing the time of transition, the time of turmoil and fear Gebser writes “Soon we will witness the rise of some potentate or dictator who will pass himself off as a ‘savior’ or healer and allow himself to be worshipped as such. But anyone who does this in the days to come, and is thereby confined to time and is visible in it, has nothing to do with the true manifestation of the one who, in time-free transparency, will make the ‘future’ present. The one who remains confined in time will thus be less than a mere adversary: he will be the ruinous expression of man’s ultimate alienation from himself and the world.”

As each year passes since this book was written I see more and more evidence of its truth, but no more than we are seeing now in this election season with this potentate leading in the Republican primaries. This gives me hope that the new age is at hand.

What are the Spirits

Some readers may think that seeing or communing with spirits is airy-fairy or woo-woo. But each of us sees or communes with spirits daily, that is at night in our dreams. You may say that dreams are not real, but while dreaming they sure feel real and if you consider them seriously as I have done for years, they can provide you with important information about yourself and the world around you. I was on the board of directors of the International Association for the Study of Dreams for several years and attended their conferences regularly. At the annual conferences of the association much time is spend demonstrating the numerous ways and methods of finding and gaining understanding in your dreams. In a nighttime dream I may dream of someone I know, but what happens or the traits of this person in the dream may differ from what it is in the waking world. Yet what happens in the dream is very real and relevant to my actual life, though it may be presented metaphorically. We think of dreams as coming from our unconscious mind and metaphorically they provide answers to some life problems, or express a feeling that has been troubling us, but each element of the dream is of a spirit, that is it is not experienced through our five senses.

Other ways to access this world beyond the world of our five senses, a world like the world of our night time dreams, is the world accessed through trance, whether hypnotic or ecstatic. Though these altered states of consciousness are different, like dreams they access this world of beyond, whether of the unconscious mind or beyond that to a world that I call the universal mind, a world that others have call by such names as the collective unconscious, the akashic field, the morphic field or the divine matrix. I have been dreaming all my life, using hypnotic trance for 40 years and ecstatic trance for about 10 years. With my experiences in these altered states of conscious my world and my life is full of spirits that have things to show me, to teach me, messages that I greatly value. I do not experience these spirits through my five senses, but they are from a world beyond my five senses and they are real. What they have to tell me is often in a different language, the language of metaphor, that when I let these experiences simmer within me, eventually their meaning makes sense to me and is valuable.

Another way to access these spirits is through letting go and letting your imagination tell a story. Any story you may make us has something to say about yourself and can be said to be like a dream or trance experience. Each of my books is of stories from dreams, hypnotic and most recently ecstatic trance. I have opened myself to the world of spirits and have led other to this world of spirits, a world that is greatly beneficial for healing and spiritual growth. Sometime these altered states occur spontaneously throughout the day, especially if you have frequently practice and communed with them on a regular basis.

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What Others Say

What others say about my latest book, "Beowulf's Ecstatic Trance Magic: Accessing the Archaic Powers of the Universal Mind."

With Beowulf's Ecstatic Trance Magic, Nick Brink has taken one more big step in his 'walk between the worlds' of contemporary consciousness psychology and ancient Norse lore. He has emerged as an authoritative and influential voice in this under-appreciated but extremely powerful area of esoteric studies. We call all learn from his soul-awakening explorations."
Stephen Larsen, Ph.D. author of the Neurofeedback Solution, The Shaman's Doorway, The Mythic Imagination and with his wife, Robin Larsen, A fire in the Mind: The Life of Joseph Campbell.

Beowulf's Ecstatic Trance Magic

My fourth book, "Beowulf's Ecstatic Trance Magic" is now available from Amazon, from the publisher Inner Traditions/Bear & Co.

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The Relativity of Time and Non-local Coherence

My previous blogs have addressed the power of ecstatic trance to access the universal mind, a world beyond of five senses, a world of extrasensory perception, of mental telepathy, and of seeing into the past, the future and distant places. I have offered the models of Rupert Sheldrake and Ervin Laszlo to explain how such powers may be possible. I also mentioned that these extrasensory phenomena can be explained through quantum physics. Though Albert Einstein called these quantum physics concepts spooky, they have been repeatedly validated through research. One is the relativity of time, and the other is non-local coherence. Some experiments of quantum physics have shown that when subatomic particles collide that some particles can disappear backwards in time or into the future, thus time can be considered relative or free of the constraint of linear time. Other experiments have shown that when atomic particles collide and split, even when the split particles travel great distance from each other, what affects one particle instantaneously affects the other distant particle in the same way. This last phenomenon is called non-local coherence.
Such phenomena when generalized beyond the level of atomic particles can explain the phenomena that occur in altered states of consciousness. The universal mind, the energy field that Laszlo calls the Akashic Field, Laszlo describes as a holographic matrix that exists everywhere and throughout all of time. This holographic matrix contains all information of everything that has happened since the beginning of time. Thus it is non-locally coherent and free of the constraint of linear time. Each of my recent books show how the information stored in this matrix can be accessed through the altered state of trance.

Beowulf's Ecstatic Trance Magic

My next book, Beowulf's Ecstatic Trance Magic will be available this next Saturday, Jan. 30.

THE WORLD BEYOND OUR FIVE SENSES: VISION, AUDITION, SMELL, TASTE AND TOUCH

With each sense we need to pay attention to it to experience it fully. There is much we do not see when we are not paying attention to what we see. There is much we do not hear unless we pay attention it. When our attention is on something else we may not hear the knock at the door, or while driving we may not see the sign that tells us where to turn. Each sense takes an altered state of consciousness, the state of paying attention to the specific sense to see, hear, smell, taste or touch that which we may miss experiencing. Just as the altered state of consciousness in sleep opens us to the experience of dreaming, the altered state of consciousness of trance opens up other things we miss experiencing, the experiences of extrasensory communication or of mental telepathy, experiencing the beyond our five senses. But how can we read someone else’s mind, and is mental telepathy real?
The current research in modern or quantum physics provides a number of clues which will be to topic of another blog. But first is what I’ve found in read two fascinating books that demonstrate the reality of mental telepathy. Vine Delora last book, “The World We Used to Live In: Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men,” offers a large number of examples of medicine men or shaman reading the minds of others or see what is happening in distant places. Then the book by Dean Radin, “The Entangled Mind: Extrasensory Experiences in Quantum Reality,” examines many research studies of extrasensory perception and mental telepathy using meta-statistics, and shows that without a doubt, people are capable to reading the minds of others and can experience that which is beyond the five senses. Though I will not elaborate on these books at this time, they demonstrate to me that mental telepathy and experiencing that which is beyond our five senses is real.
What I will offer here is ideas of how this extrasensory perception happens and how it can be facilitated. Several writers suggest that there is a field of, let’s call it for the moment, energy that contains the information of all that has happened since the beginning of time. This field has been called by a number of names: the divine matrix, the Akashic field, the morphic field, or the collective unconscious. I call it the Universal Mind. Rupert Sheldrake points out that from classical physics we have learned about gravitational fields that hold the universe together and electromagnetic fields that holds together subatomic particles, but he also points out that physiologists have forgotten this in describing the physiology of living creatures. He points out that living cells are composed of atoms and molecules, atoms and molecules that are held together by their electromagnetic fields. Recognizing this, he proposes that cells have their fields, and all organs of the body have their fields. Each living creature has its field, and these fields contain the information and provides the ways of communication between the cells and organs of the body for them to function effectively as well as between the members of each species of life. He gives many examples. One is of a flock of birds diving and swooping together in unison. How do they communicate in moving together in such a manner. He believes that it is through their “morphic” field, the field of each bird, the field that holds the flock together in such movement. He also gives a number of examples of when an animal learns a new behavior, the other animals of the same species learn that behavior even when they are separated at a great distance and have no contact with each other.
Irvin Laszlo proposes that the sensory receptor for connecting with this field that he calls the Akashic field, is through the cytoskeletal structure of the brain that is composed of 1018 “microtubules.” Physicist Roger Penrose and neurophysiologist Stuart Hameroff suggest that all consciousness emerges from this cytoskeletal structure. But to access the information we receive from these microtubules takes paying attention to them through the altered state of trance, whether ecstatic or hypnotic trance. My experiences with both altered states of consciousness shows me that in these altered states I am able to go beyond by five senses in perception.
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Marry Winter Solstice

I write this first to my Forn Siðr friends who I have come to love and value who I first met at the Summer Solstice blot or celebration 11½ years ago at the Glavendrupstenen on the island of Fyn in Denmark, and second to many other friends who will read this on my blog on Facebook: “Nick Brink’s Books,” and my blog on Goodreads.com. If you go to either blog, on Facebook please click on “Like” in the site header, and on Goodreads, on “Follow Author” to follow the blogs of my writing.

#46 Winter Solstice 2015
The winter has been slow coming. We spent a month in the bay area of California where it was colder than here in Pennsylvania. I woke this morning to light dusting of snow on the ground, but it is suppose to get warmer the next several days, so the solstice will not we white. This last week since we have been back I have spent a good part of each day in our garden tucking it into bed for the winter and preparing some beds for the spring. Being in the garden really feels like the right place to be even in winter. I have also been building compost bins with the plan of making better use of the competing weeds I have been pulling. The eighteen months I have spend in my morning ritual of going into ecstatic trance on the deck of our sauna that overlooks our pond has had a big effect on my life in moving me from the indoor shelter of the wall of our house out into the real world of our Great Mother Earth. I hope the solstice provided by our Great Mother greets you with nurturance and compassion as she does me and you greet her with warmth and thanksgiving.
Repeatedly my writing draws me to Denmark and Sweden. Then, as you probably already know, about eight years ago I began to learn how to access the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits of the Earth through ecstatic trance. Personally for me many of these spirits are from the northern countries. What are these spirits? Probably for you the most common spirits that show themselves to you are those in you nighttime dreams and those in your imaginative thinking, spirits that arise because they have something important to teach you or to share with you. What have become most valuable to me is discovering how I can call upon them in the altered state of ecstatic trance. In my first book (2002) Grendel and His Mother, I called upon them through hypnotic trance. Then through ecstatic trance in Baldr’s Magic, (my third book) I called upon my ancestral spirits of Denmark and Sweden, and in February Beowulf’s Ecstatic Trance Magic (my fourth book) will be coming out where I visits the ancestral spirits of the land of around Trelleborg, Sweden and Gammel Lejre, Denmark, spirits that have come to me while revisiting the ancient story of Beowulf. The second book, The Power of Ecstatic Trance, is of how to use ecstatic trance and examines the range of trance experiences and benefits.
In both Baldr’s Magic and Beowulf’s Ecstatic Trance Magic, the spirits of the Nordic Gods, and especially the loving and nurturing spirits of Baldr, Freyja, Freyr, Idunn and Gefjon come alive to me and give me hope in saving the Earth and all life of the Earth. Oh, I can’t leave out Nanna, Bragi and Forsetti. In looking beyond Odin, Thor and Tyr, there is so much love and compassion among the deities of Asgard and Vanaheim. I believe that the deities of Vanaheim came earlier, came before those of Asgard and were more from an era of hunting and gathering, an era that was not focused on controlling the Earth but more of the Earth, more nurturing and caring for the Earth.
Hil! to the gods and goddesses of Vanaheim.
Nick

Benefits of Ecstatic Trance

What are the benefits of using Ecstatic Trance? There are many people out there who do not understand the value of Ecstatic Trance, Hypnotic Trance or paying attention to the meaning of your nighttime dreams. All three forms of altered states of consciousness are very natural parts of life and promote health and personal growth, and bring you into a state of oneness with the Earth, a state of oneness that is necessary to save the Earth and us from extinction. In my writing I have been showing how ecstatic trance brings us to this sense of oneness with ourselves for personal growth and for healing ourselves and the earth. I used hypnosis for many years as a psychologist to help others. Hypnosis, as with your nighttime dreams, is a direct avenue to the unconscious mind where many unhealthy beliefs reside for which you are unaware. When uncovered these unhealthy beliefs are open to being changed. What Ecstatic Trance has added is its connection to the universal mind which I now find can also be accessed by hypnosis and in our dream. The people of our Ecstatic Trance groups have had many experiences of reading the minds of others, an experience of connecting with the universal mind. I have regular experiences of connecting with my ancient ancestors and with the spirits of the earth, experiences that were and are most common among the hunter-gatherer cultures of the Earth, but experiences that we have called superstitious or irrational during the era of rational thinking and scientific methodology. But science, especially modern physics, is now showing that much of what we have thought of as irrational is not irrational but real and can be accessed through the state of trance. Opening ourselves to this other world of consciousness is a great benefit and I would encourage everyone to open themselves to this world.