Beyond matter

Beyond matter

By Michael Cremo

The following is from notes taken at a lecture given by Michael Cremo. This English version was translated from Hungarian. Michael Cremo, the author of the book 'The Hidden History of Human Race', is discussing the hidden history of physics. He includes topics from his other book 'Human Devolution' in which he contrasts the Vedic alternative with the Darwinian evolution theory.

If human beings and monkeys are not descended from a common ancestor as Darwin said, then what is our origin? Before we can really understand the question of our origin, we have to understand what it is that makes us human beings. By only considering humans to be matter limits greatly any alternative explanations. To give a proper answer to the question "where did we come from" we have to reconsider our basic understanding of reality. Modern science is based on materialism. The philosophy is that it is possible to explain everything by interactions of matter. Only matter exists and everything what we see is some kind of transformation or interaction of matter. However, I think that there are very good reasons to challenge this assumption. Careful study sheds a light that reveals other facts and allows us to conclude that a human being is more than merely matter.

This study leads us to new realms of forbidden science that we can call the hidden history of physics. Physicists tell us that matter and the laws of physics explain everything. However, there a great deal of filtering of knowledge taking place.

During their studies, students of physics will come across the research work of Marie and Pierre Curie. They will read that they received a noble prize for the discovery of radium and radioactivity. These books about physics however, contain no reference to their psychic experiments. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Curies, together with a group of French scientists, performed psychic experiments. Many of their experiments examined the abilities of an Italian medium, Eusapia Palladino. She had psychokinetic abilities; she could move things without touching them. The Curies examined her abilities as did many other famous scientists. Pierre and Marie Curie were very experienced experimental physicists. They carried out many tests on Palladino and concluded that they were seeing real phenomena.

This research supports the thesis that there are also other energies operating in the universe. Beyond matter and the material energies, there are the mind and its energies. We also know that beyond the mind there is consciousness and its energies. Thus, before we can explain the real origin of human beings we must understand that beyond the gross physical elements, the human being is made of other energies.

Newton beside his work in physics spent far more time writing about alchemy and spirituality.

Alfred R. Wallace (the originator of evolution theory based on natural selection) was of the opinion that human beings are more than just matter. Wallace also performed psychic experiments together with a famous physicist, Sir William Crookes, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering thallium. He invented the cathode ray tube, used in television and computer screens. Crookes was also a famous experimental physicist and president of the Royal Society. Wallace and Crookes investigated one medium, Daniel Dunglas Home. This may seem strange, but Crookes and Wallace were highly respected scientists who had great experience in the experimental field. During one of the experiments, Home played an accordion holding it with one hand without touching the keyboard. One possible explanation was that Home had specially prepared the accordion and therefore, Wallace and Crookes bought one another accordion to preclude this. In other experiments, they bound the legs and the arms of Home and he still produced melodies from the new accordion. They also saw the accordion fly in the air while producing different melodies.

Of course, none of this is contained in physics textbooks. We know these investigations from the writings of Wallace and Crookes. The two scientists also witnessed of another event. They saw Home levitate. The testimony of such serious scientists might cause us to take more seriously the ancient accounts.

These are only few examples. In the history of physics there are many similar experiments done by famous physicists.

In 1996, I gave lecture in Hungary's, Eötvös Loránd University's (ELTE) department of atomic physics about the hidden history of physics. At the end one of the physicists present congratulated me and told me he listened to my lecture with great interest because he performs experiments in the field of telepathy. However, he does not wish want to publish the results of his work because his colleagues would not take them seriously.

The "hidden history of physics" is one branch science where filtering of knowledge is very great. The results and proofs from this hidden history show that human beings are more than mere matter. The energies of the mind and consciousness exist independently from matter belonging to the whole.

Anthropologists have published many papers about "primitive" tribes. For example, papers on different shamanistic traditions often contain reports of unusual phenomena and incidents. These papers are skeptical about shamans and mystics as there is no scientific explanation for all the observations. The ancient Egyptians believed that the soul existed independently of the material body could to travel on its own to different places. In the Mediaeval Europe, Christians believed the soul to be independent of the body. However, many people do not accept the teachings in different religions' scriptures and in the literary heritage of ancient cultures. They are solely interested in scientific explanations.

Supporting evidence for conscious out of body experiences exists. One type is the 'near death experience' (NDE). Survivors of, for example, heart attacks, told their doctors how they could look down on their own bodies and observe the activities of the doctors working to keep them alive. An American cardiologist, Dr. Michael Sabom, studied this phenomena. Many of his patients who survived very severe heart attacks reported to out of body experiences. He wanted to test whether these stories only were born of imagination or an observed reality.

He decided to test the reality of all the cases. He asked each patient to describe what he or she saw and experienced, in as much detail as possible. According to conventional medical wisdom, the patients were unconscious and could observe nothing. He found that his patients, in describing their out of body experience, related the successive events in precise details. These descriptions tallied with the records of each of the operations, which differed from case to case. Dr. Sabom was convinced that the out of body experience is real. He realised that the mind existing on more subtle platform, can under a strong influence, such as stress, to become independent from the body.

This conscious out of body experience naturally leads us to consider reincarnation. For this, there also is also scientific evidence that is derived from the study of past memories of previous lives. Dr. Ian Stevenson, a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia studied children who had memories of previous lives. He interviewed them very carefully recording their descriptions. To avoid the possibility of suggestion he did not use hypnosis. By examining young children, he precluded the danger of them presenting a story read in book. In hundreds of cases, the descriptions of the children were supported by further investigation. That is that the person they were describing in their previous life existed.

If the conscious being can exist independently of the material body, this suggests that reality has also other dimensions and levels, and thus there are certainly more types of living entities populating these levels of existence. In many cultures we find the concept of a cosmic hierarchies. This idea of cosmic hierarchy is found in Europe. God exists on the level of pure consciousness; at lower levels, on the level of God's mental energies are the angels, and on the earthly level are the living entities similar to us. This concept of the existence of many worlds' populated, different types of living entities is also found in the Kabala and the Buddhist teachings. On the lowest levels of the cosmic hierarchy, are ghostlike or demoniac entities. On a higher level are the natural entities. Even higher are the saints e.g. the bodhisattvas of the Buddhist tradition, enlightened beings who descend to our world or level of existence. Higher still are the demigods directing the different energies of nature. This hierarchy was well known in the Egyptian tradition among the Greeks and Romans. Usually, there is a supreme being at the top of the hierarchy. At the highest level of the cosmic hierarchy in India's Vedic tradition is God, Krishna.

The detailed descriptions of the living entities in the cosmic hierarchy given in the Vedas, gives rise to the question: What kind of living entities we can meet now? According to the Vedas, about five thousand years ago the connection with entities higher in the hierarchy was broken. We can conclude that if this relationship were re-established between us and the other living entities in the cosmic hierarchy, there would probably be a lower level of existence. What are the proofs for this? This belongs to the phenomena called the 'newcomer'. Ancient Sanskrit texts tell of spaceships that can travel from one planet to another. These are Vimanas. The ancient texts describe many types of Vimana. Some are of metal and can navigate in the same region as our spaceships and airplanes. Others are of mental energy and can travel from our dimension to higher dimensions of the universe. There are also Vimanas of pure consciousness, able to visit all dimensions of the universe from lowest to highest.

Travel to different dimensions in the universe is recorded in many cultures and traditions. A Native American mystic, Black Deer recounted how his spiritual leaders brought him to another level of the cosmic hierarchy. There is further evidence that living entities of higher dimensions can influence people on our level. Accounts of healing demigoddesses and meetings with them are found worldwide.

In February 1858, at Lourdes in France, an effulgent demigoddess-like female appeared to a 14 year-old French girl. Being Christian, this girl identified her with the Virgin Marry. Visitors to Lourdes ritually bathe in the spring water from the main grotto. To date (end 2005) 67 unexplained or miraculous cures are accepted. Healing is not ascribed to the water but to the higher dimensional being. Since 1905, a Medical Bureau has examined every cure. If somebody goes to Lourdes seeking a cure they are thoroughly examined by doctors before and after bathing. The examination includes whether the illness is curable or not. These cures suggest that the living entities on higher levels of the cosmic hierarchy can alter the structure and the working of our physical bodies.

Between the different levels of cosmic hierarchy, there can be transmission of knowledge. Some ancient Assyrian drawings show a demigod giving knowledge to an earthly king. The Vedic scriptures of India also describe such transmission of knowledge between different cosmic levels. These transmissions of knowledge, in the higher levels of the cosmic hierarchy, include mental and intellectual energies. The Vedic literature describe that Krishna, who is on the level of pure consciousness, gave knowledge to the sun god Vivasvan whose existence is on the platform of mental energy. Vivasvan passed the same knowledge to Manu, another demigod, described as the father of mankind. Manu then gave the knowledge to the earthly king Iksvaku who lived in the dimension of gross material energy, our life domain. Therefore, Iksvaku and other human beings are the combination of three energies - the pure consciousness, the mental and the gross material energies.

This concept of transmission of information, from the higher dimensions of the universe to the lower dimensions, is also found in the thinking of early European philosophers. Plato assumed that higher dimensional forms, that is primeval or ancient models are reflected in our observed reality.

In the light of the foregoing, the answer to the question "where did we come from"? can be summarised as follows.

Our natural position is as beings of pure consciousness, we become covered by thickening layers of mental and then material energies, a process of gradual devolution. The human body is created by reproductive processes. During the reproductive process, the energy of pure consciousness is covered by more and more dense energies. Ultimately, the goal of our life is to return to our original position on the level of pure consciousness.