Reality Checking
A Mixed Bag of Weirdness:
Elementals, Synesthesia, the Third Eye, Telepathy, and Soul Travel
by: Brent Raynes
He explained to me that if I made friends with a Hopi, Navaho or Apache of the Southwest, then I might be able to take a tour of the underground communities of the “little people” who lived in small mud huts. I asked about lighting, since he described being in a deep subterranean realm, and he replied: “Don’t need any. God’s your light. …You’re in the kingdom of the spirit.” He told me how an Apache woman in New Mexico had taken him into such an underworld. “Opposite sex is best,” he said. “Positive and negative. A woman is negative and a man is positive, but now and then you’ll find a switch and you’ve got to watch it. Boy, will that knock you out of kilter!”
Elemental-types have been a part of Native American legends and alleged encounters for a long, long time. Washington state’s Coast Salish Indians described how, even going back before the first white settlers arrived in Puget Sound, of their encounters with what they called swawtixwted, or “Little Earths.” John Micheal Greer, in his book Monsters: An Investigator’s Guide to Magical Beings (2001), writes: “Little Earths appear to be the size of human children and have magical powers; they can be helpful to humans-especially to shamans, who seek their assistance on journeys to the other world to retrieve lost souls-but they can be very dangerous if treated disrespectfully.”
Back in 1968, an American anthropologist named Brian Stross, reported on the stories and legends of the Tzeltal Indians of Mexico who spoke of the Ikals, three-foot tall hairy black humanoid beings, who the natives reported encountering rather frequently. He wrote:
“About twenty years ago, or less, there were many sightings of this creature or creatures, and several people apparently tried to fight it with machetes. One man also saw a small sphere following him from about five feet. After many attempts he finally hit it with his machete and it disintegrated, leaving only an ash-like substance.”
Synesthesia and the Paranormal?
Synesthesia (also called multiple sensing or “union of senses”), may be as prevalent as 1 in 23 people. In synesthesia a person’s five senses (sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste), plus emotion, may sometimes overlap, and there are multiple combinations in which this may occur. People who experience this neurological condition are called synesthetes. They may “see” sounds and smells, “hear” colors, and “feel” the feelings of others. One writer/researcher named Simon Rose even describes similarities to people with psychic abilities. He notes:
“Some people have a sudden awakening after some trauma or near-death experience (trauma is a cause). Finally, deep meditation, mind-altering drugs and certain spiritual practices can “awaken” psychic abilities. These spiritual practices do relate to changing beliefs (altering neural pathways).
In short, I am 100% convinced that some (not all) psychic abilities and synesthesia are one and the same thing, and that some (not all) psychic development courses are creating a mild form of acquired synesthesia.” (1) In The Big Book of Near-Death Experiences (2007), author P.M.H. Atwater (a near-death experiencer herself), after personally studying hundreds of such cases, found that synesthesia is an aftereffect of near-death episodes. She described how a clinical study of NDEr’s by Richard J. Bonenfant, Ph.D., had found that two-thirds of them had symptoms of synesthesia. “This alone is a major neurological finding!” Atwater noted.
From a Native American “shaman” who grew up in a small Colorado town I toured a few years back where many strange things allegedly happened from UFOs, balls of light, MIB-type figures to shape-shifting witches and skinwalkers, and even Bigfoot, I learned how she developed her psychic abilities at an early age. She had also, she stated, been a victim of childhood abuse. She shared that around 8 years of age she began receiving “lessons” from a voice (or voices) that called her “Child.” It all began at a “special spot” of hers down near a nearby river. Read her description and pick out for yourself the elements that scream out synesthesia in her narrative. She explained:
“I watched the light as it appeared from out of the trees, a light blue orb of light. I wasn’t scared at all. I guess I was transfixed by what I saw. If anything I felt at complete peace as I watched this light. As the light came closer and closer, I could make out that this light was not just light, it was a woman. A woman made of light. ….. I can remember every single detail of this woman. Her hair was long and wavy with two braids at each side of her face that were pulled back. Her dress was also just made of light blue light that waved as if there were a breeze but there was no wind at all. Her face was full of love and compassion, a kind of love I cannot describe in words. She came and placed her hand right at the side of my face, very light, so that her palm was holding my cheek. This is all I remember of this experience. The next thing I remember was waking up in the morning. I was still lying in the very same place I had laid down the evening before. There was a small herd of elk across the small running river to the west of me, an owl above my head, and I remember it being cold. I could watch the steam literally rise up off the elks backs as they began to rise up from sleep and began to graze on the meadow grass, but something was VERY different! The elk had this color moving through them, sparks of color that moved like falling snow or slow moving water. I watched for awhile, rubbed my eyes and looked again. Still there! Everything looked different. Everywhere I looked things had colors running inside of them. Not just a color but moving alive color! The owl, the grass, the trees, even the water. I must have looked insane to anyone who could have seen me. I spent hours on my hands and knees looking at the soil, the ants, staring at a blade of grass, giggling and then rubbing my eyes again and again, but every time I opened my eyes I could still see this color moving through things.”
“It wasn’t until I went home that I discovered there was something else just as amazing and I have to admit a bit confusing! I was still dazed, excited, confused, nervous about seeing colors but now there was something else. Not only did different people have different colors moving in them but almost all of them, with the exception of some infants, had an image of an animal in their chest or next to them! As you could imagine, growing up in a small Mormon community, I didn’t pipe up about what I was seeing. In fact, I thought I was going crazy and spent many years as a kid being embarrassed of how I saw things. The next few years were hard for me. One because I didn’t know what was happening to me and I didn’t want anyone to find out that I was so “weird.” Things got even weirder as I started to understand how I could communicate with animals. Even now I’m very aware of how this must sound to someone who can’t quite understand this. I still have a hard time putting into words how this actually happens but I will try.”
“Knowing where an animal is, even what species and sex the animal is without even seeing it, happens in many ways and with all the senses. It is a taste, a sound, a texture and a color, and even a number. All of these things happen quickly and almost simultaneously. Each animal is different, so, for example, if there is an elk on the road a mile up ahead around the corner I will get the taste of pine needles in my mouth, a feeling of coarse wet fur and the number 4, the color brown like tree bark. Compared to knowing there is an owl in the tree outside the house while eating dinner in the dining room (it) feels like the number 8, and is dark purple and is like a cool breeze at night. This is the best way I can describe it and how it happens. This is also how I understand animals and what they are ‘saying’. It’s not with words. It’s with textures and tastes, colors, and feelings. If they are scared its bright yellow or orange. I feel panicked and it’s a pitch or a sound in my head. Aggression is red, the number 9 and feels annoyingly hot.”
The famed mentalist, best known as The Amazing Kreskin, was interviewed by journalist Maureen Seaberg in Psychology Today, sharing how he’s a synesthete and how she is too, and how he gave her an impressive demonstration of his talents telling her not only the numbers she was thinking, but the very colors also. He told her earlier in the interview that she saw numbers in color, which was true. (2) In my own interview with Kreskin, I found him not only very well read on the paranormal but he also described how he developed his intuitive talents at an early age. (3)
If you suspect that you may be one of those people with synesthesia, you can even take a test online at: http://synesthete.org.
Inner Light
Back around 1975, I described to Ohio contactee/psychic Madeline Teagle that I would at times perceive, for brief periods, a rotating kind of luminous blue dot in my field of vision, right about where the legendary "third eye" would be located, often when my eyes were closed and I was at rest, about to go to sleep or perhaps trying to meditate or even consciously astral project. She told me that it had something to do with the chakras and that I was possibly close to astral projection when I was seeing it (as I had described to her my unsuccessful projection attempts but how I would see that inner blue light). Since then, I have found many references to this same type of perception in others, and because I wrote about it some in Alternate Perceptions magazine, I have heard from a number of people who shared similar experiences, even from as far away as India. In late 1999, in doing an intensive two hour guided meditation (called a "Light Body Integration" with psychotherapist Bonita Luz) I had, for me anyway, a pretty dramatic "soul travel" (or whatever you want to call it) type experience of seeing a barren looking rock strewn landscape with two rows of huge stones rising up out of the ground, and then I saw myself slowly rising into the air, looking down at a snow covered mountain top it seemed, and then the scene below disappeared as I started once again seeing the familiar blue swirl that I've seen for years and had described to Mrs. Teagle. Was she right, after all? Was I on an "astral plane"? William Henry writes at length about this type of thing in his book Oracle of the Illuminati. “When kindalini energy (the God Force that ascends our inner Tree of Life) becomes active through mantra meditation and rises through the seven chakras many see a subtle blue dot appear and disappear on their mental screen during meditation,” Henry wrote. He also added, “It takes a Living Master, an Oracle, to link the student with the blue light and the inner sounds that lead the student to the higher states of awareness.” He explained that those higher states could be “out of body.”
"My first encounter with the blue light, or rupam, as it is known in Sanskrit, happened in childhood," Dr. Donald Schnell wrote in his book, The Initiation. "Many times I would sit to meditate and I would see a blue dot in the center of my forehead-the location of the third eye ...It was from this blue dot that my beloved Swamy Nagananda would appear to me. I didn't know who he was, and wouldn't find him in India for almost a quarter of a century." Quite a tale! A correspondent, who had had a lot of experience with Kundalini Yoga and other meditation practices, wrote to me: "In Rosicrucian tradition a Light Body cleansing and integration is among the first things an initiate is taught. One's Light Body is used for many things, among them astral projection and other forms of mind travel and experience." He described his own "astral projection" experiences, and how he had even visited people and what he saw was "confirmed by them later."
I have also been told by people working with psychics like Uri Geller and Peter Sugleris of how they would come to see an inner light that was part of the process of telepathic exchange. Alexander Zikas described to me how he had clairvoyant type perceptions after working with Sugeris. "I noticed that this clairvoyant ability originated from a blue twirling light at the location of the Third Eye," he told me. Former US Naval scientist Eldon Byrd told me of how he did a telepathy experiment with Uri Geller and he saw green. He stated: "...when he was sending me a picture or a letter (of the alphabet) it always turned out to be green. When my wife and I were doing it the images in my mind were mostly green when I would receive. Now when I was sending I was sending in full color, but the reception seemed to be an outline of an object or a scene in green."
I recently emailed Uri Geller about this inner light that Byrd had described. Uri wrote back: "Yes, when I receive images they are usually green on an imaginary screen.” Both men felt that they had been "tuned up" by the psychics, but both described the effects as temporary.
Though it may be mere coincidence, one UFO author (Marcus Day, in his book Aliens: Encounters with the Unexplained) noted that one common UFO “abduction clue” was of a very bright light striking the forehead (location of third eye perception), and how that light was most often blue, but sometimes was green!
In the account of an “alien abductee” named Armando Lemus, I read: “I feel a presence at all times in the area of my crown chakra, and I experience my body and self as a particular form of blue energy.” Some years back, I interviewed a couple in Maine who had undergone a series of strange UFO abductee and paranormal experiences. The wife also shared with me her luminous inner “blue dot” experiences. “I have that light in my third eye area….have always wondered if it was normal,” she recalled. “This happened as the UFO happenings unfolded, and I began to see energy fields around people, trees, flowers.” (Synesthesia?) “I think that I can pin point when this all started for me,” she recalled. She grew up on a farm near Lewiston, Maine. “I remember a bright warm summer day. I’m outside in front of a window. My mom and sister are inside on a couch talking to me. We hear a big bang of thunder. I got zapped by lightning. It left a red burn where the third eye is. It burned the top of my sister’s head, blew the clock up and the icebox door off. The strange part (is) the next thing I remember is that I’m way over by the barn and the sky is very dark, and I see my other sister frozen in the swing that hung in the barn.This part seems in slow motion when they cut the swing down to bring my sister in. I know I changed after that.”
What percentage of the people who perceive the inner “third eye” light may have a form of synesthesia? Seeing auras is commonly associated with synesthesia. (7) I once came across a website (5) that was describing “mystical vowel sounds,” explaining how toning “Eye” could produce a deep red color in the human aura, how “Eh” could produce a red tinge, “Meh” yellow-green color in the aura, “Khei” (pronounced kay ee) luminous lilac or lavender color in aura, and “Tho” presumably makes for a violet red aura. Noted sound therapist and author Jonathan Goldman has written about the significance of vowel sounds and harmonics in meditative exercises and practices. He described how it was commonly reported by researchers studying shamanic ceremonies and rituals that vowel sounds were used. Throughout the world, from the Hebrew Kabbala, the Sufi and Native American Indians, we can see the universal and common use of vowel sounds, which Goldman noted from his own personal experiences, “contain the energy of harmonics.” (6)
Goldman even speculated that shamans may have used harmonics to create “interdimensional windows” through which they might have traveled, or through which a spirit might be called forth into our world.
Awhile back I tried a long-distance telepathy experiment with a lady on the West Coast who had described having the "blue light" experiences and we set up a date and time and I tried sending her some target images. One was of a dragon picture which she later wrote: "Gasp! I saw that dragon's face last night; not kidding you at all. It looked like a demon to me, though, and I was kind of afraid to say so. But it was that same face. I can't believe it!"
Hopefully future experiments and studies will reveal more and...if you'll excuse the expression, shed more light on this. Here's a couple of different sites I've recently found that talk about the blue light. (4)
The Chakras
We’ve mentioned here the “third eye”, which is a well-known “chakra” (psychic energy center) of the Tibetan spiritual belief system of the East. Cultures throughout the world have traditions that describe energy centers comparable to the East’s “chakra” centers of the body. In fact, here in the West our own Hopi Indians described five such centers that were a perfect match! The Hopi also see the solar plexus, the heart, the throat, the forehead and the crown of the head all as psychic energy centers (though they’ve given them different names). Both groups agree that the crown is the highest center from which consciousness enters the body at birth and leaves the body at death. These centers are often associated with the various rainbow colors of the spectrum’s prism.
Our Native American friend Wanda “Dove” Tice from Alabama had a powerful spiritual vision of being in a room where she was bathed for a period of time in each such color separately. At one point, a mysterious “light being” wearing a robe moved toward her with a luminous “tube.” “He’s moving it all around me and when he takes it away and he looks at it, it’s filling up with green slime. Seriously! It was weird! It was like it was picking up negativity out from me. All of this green slime was filling up this tube. He took this tube and he put it in a box and he sealed it.”
It was because of Dove that I became seriously interested in the Peruvian whistling vessels. Back in 1987, while with others during a Harmonic Convergence meditation/celebration atop a ceremonial Indian mound here in Tennessee, as others nearby were blowing the Peruvian whistling vessels, Dove had what she felt was a “past life” recall. She saw herself in a vision as being at Peru’s Machu Picchu, and apparently so did the other participants on the mound! She described how in a powerful vision she was having “we were just standing in white tunics…with a huge sun disk, and [something] like a belt or sash,” adding that the disks were golden colored and attached at waist level, in front of the navel area, and that there was a kind of vibration around the solar plexus. “We were all there holding our hands up, looking up toward a starship, and we were like singing or chanting…the same sound over and over…trying to get them to come, but it was like we knew that they weren’t coming back for us. ..We had let our egos get in the way and we had let these people think that we were gods and that we were allowing them to worship us or whatever.”
Canadian neuroscientist Dr. Micheal Persinger, famous for his God Helmet, with his studies of the effects of electromagnetic fields upon the brains of hundreds of volunteers, specifically targeting brain sites determined to be sensitive to such fields, now has been quoted describing what sounds like achieving telepathic effects in his work. He reportedly stated: “What we have found is that if you place two different people at a distance and put a circular magnetic field around both, and you make sure they are connected to the same computer so they get the same stimulation, then if you flash a light in one person’s eye the person in the other room receiving just the magnetic field will show changes in their brain as if they saw the flash of light. We think that’s tremendous because it may be the first macro demonstration of a quantum connection, or so-called quantum entanglement. If true, then there’s another way of potential communication that may have physical applications, for example, in space travel.”
Is it possible that both cosmic and earth-generated electromagnetic fields or conditions could alter human consciousness wherein people are caused to perceive archetypal thought forms of Jung’s collective unconscious, or somehow at least communicate bits of information at unconscious levels, or perhaps generate imaginary projections of our own personal unconscious that has been conditioned by current cultural, spiritual and fictional portrayals of “other worlds”? Do such EM phenomena indeed allow us to psychically link up and even “see” outside the blinding matrix of human belief and conditioning, to “see,” or at least partially glimpse, a true reality for which we can’t yet fully understand and accept in a truly censensual manner? Do other dimensional intelligences intrude and interact with the processes of human consciousness for purposes not yet made clear to us?
Looking back at the Native Americans and the “little people” traditions, I would like to describe how back around the mid-1980s, my friend and colleague Dr. Greg Little, while working in private practice at a mental health clinic in Memphis, Tenn., would occasionally use the clinic’s Grahman Potentializer for meditative sessions. “You lay on it and it focuses a magnetic field around your body,” he explained. “It also gently rotates in a circular fashion to mimic the flow of tidal waves.” Greg himself even described having an out-of-body experience while using it. “I kind of came to the edge of what I would call a hole into outer space. I could see countless stars. It was very impressive.”
Then one day, Greg introduced Lou White Eagle, a Cheyenne Arrow Priest, to the magnetic bed. Greg let the medicine man lay down on it and experience it for awhile, while he went into another room to do some paperwork. “He suddenly appeared at my door and slowly walked in and sat down. He was in a sort of daze. There were several windows in the room and he said there were these ‘little blue people’ looking in at him through the windows. Then they came into the room through the walls and windows by just passing through them. Then the little people started poking around on his body. The experience shook him up.”
Is it possible that we may one day be able to technologically duplicate some of the mysterious paranormal and spiritual manifestations that have been described by huge untold numbers of people the world over since the beginning of recorded history? If so, will we be able to gain greater insight, understanding, and even control over these, at present, very inexplicable and oft-times very disturbing occurrences? Or, was John Keel right, that we’re up against the diabolical, misleading “trickster” intelligences he referred to as the “ultraterrestrials”—known for centuries by occultists and others as “elementals”?
References:
1. Website
2. Website
3. Website
4. Website
5. Website
6. Website
7. Website
8. Goldman, Jonathan, Healing Sounds: The Power of Harmonics (Healing Arts Press, 2002)
