Excerpts from
Sleep As The Great Opportunity or Psychcoma by Helen Rhodes-Wallace Order in Adobe PDF eBook or printed form for $9.95 (+ printing charge) or click here to order the book in printed form from Amazon.com for $21.95 Book Description
THE
author of Psychcoma has
written this book out of the fullness of a new and remarkable
experience. There are new ideas in its pages, new discoveries that will
short-cut
the path of attainment for every earnest student who uses
the information, instead of reading it merely. It is the
desire to insure to every reader the fullest benefit from these
teachings, that
impels me to write this introduction.
These
teachings and special exercises are not theoretical. They were all
first
discovered and then tried out by Helen Rhodes, during a period of
two years
when––as she wrote me in May, 1908––she was at times “consciously
living outside the physical.” Later they were fully proved
by a group of students in New York, with amazing results. In other
words, Mrs.
Rhodes has found what Dr. Maurice Bucke calls the cosmic consciousness.
And in
the finding she has made practical discoveries which I believe to be in
advance
of any other teachings yet put into print. This
belief every reader can prove by
using the book as herein directed. Mrs.
Rhodes used special hours every day, and the result was a deep
experience and
original discoveries. Use this book faithfully, dear reader, and yours,
too,
shall be a soul-satisfying experience and yet other new discoveries. First
of all, do not sit down and read the book through. Decide upon a
special hour
for development, to be used every day for at least two months. Then
keep that
daily engagement with yourself as the most important thing in life. This
is not “impossible” to anybody. Don’t fool yourself with that plea. Not
a man
or woman but could arrange to attend a series of lectures, or a school,
at a
certain hour every day for two months. Every one can arrange to attend
to his
soul development with the same precision, if he will. The results are
sure and
rich. Let
the student take one chapter at a time, reading it every day for two
weeks;
reading it slowly, with a quiet desire to know
the truth. After
the reading let him practice, faithfully, whatever directions are given
in that
part of the book. Let
him not quarrel with what he reads; let him assume,
for the time being, that it is all so. Let him accept with a will and
aim to
see things and feel them with the
author. After
the eight weeks of practice he will
know better whether or not there is anything to reject. Did not Jesus
say, “Do the will (of the Father) and ye shall
know (of the doctrine) what to believe”? And
William James says it is at the moment of doing
that the brain receives a new kink to correspond.
PSYCHCOMA. PSYCHCOMA
is the diagnosis of your own soul, yourself. Before you read further
dwell upon
this word “Psychcoma.” It is the keynote of existence as you know it.
This word
is used according to its original Greek root meaning. “Psyche, the
principle
of life as connected with the body.” Man is a soul, not has a soul. His
manifestation is thru a physical body for this life experience.
“Coma” means
stupor, lethargy. You who think you are so very much alive know that in
your
present life you are in this coma. This
life is a twofold life, not more. It is spiritual and physical with
their
subdivisions: the physical includes the mental; the spiritual includes
the
astral and super-astral; all these interpenetrate. The astral plane and
physical plane are one with two names, astral for the thought life and
physical
for the action life. Spiritual life is the unseen life and functions
with an activity
normal to its plane and unseen by our physical eye just as we are
unseen by it. Man
cannot be cut up into physical, mental, astral, and spiritual man, but
he is
all these at one and the same time and ensheathed as a unit. The
spiritual life
measures attainment acquired thru two avenues, mental deposit and
subconscious
agency––the physical body being merely a vehicle of expression, its
mechanism
drawn from the earth elements of earth, air, and water, belonging to
its
kingdom and subject to its laws. It has taken æons and æons
to produce so
responsive an instrument and it requires years of individual
adjustment to
acquire ordinary proficiency and precision. Every self enters the earth
life
with this jacket of limitation around it, the wires for automatic
activity and
muscle control all unattached and unstrung, unable to articulate a
word; the
first few years of existence are spent in simply maneuvering the
apparatus. The
mental part of man is purely a physical and mechanical medium, a
laboratory of
external impressions of the physical life, and has no separate plane or
life
apart from the physical. It is non-existent on any plane but this and
is the
transmitter between the physical and spiritual states, its mechanism so
dependent upon the physical that it is incapable of carrying over as
hereditary
quality even the primary knowledge of speech, and closes its record
with the
life of its one operator. Its mission is to present sensitive plates
upon which
the physical life experience (the ideo-motor content of action) is
recorded in
a metaphysical language intelligible to both spiritual and physical
states,
which thru the chemistry of the unseen passes over into the
subconscious as
emotion and will. Our
life here is a soul-sleep or Psychcoma with periods of partial and
complete
coma known as waking and sleeping. During both of these periods we are
wrought
upon by the agencies resident upon these planes. During sleep the soul
functions on the subconscious plane and except during fugitive moments
of somnambulism
is in a deep physical coma and reached only thru the subconscious.
During our
waking period we are dreaming out loud!
We ask how did this come about? Herein lies the secret of our earth
life. We
have all been told of the so-called astral life, that at death we pass
to the
astral plane, that we leave our physical body here and assume an astral
body
and that there we remain sifting out karma until the time for rebirth
draws us
to the earth plane again; that the astral existence may, or may not, be
a long
sleep according to the laws governing our reincarnation. Naturally we
ask where
we are during this period of rest? Are we laid aside on some astral
shelf to
await rebirth? Know, then, that we are not in some far away place, but here. This is startling, but this simple
fact makes you the liberator of yourself. Physical life is the
manifested. Astral
life the unmanifested. Both here.
Spiritual life is a distinct life in a higher state of consciousness. The
greatest bogie of modern cults is the death symptom. It is a ghost no
prophet
has been able to disperse, as it depends upon the law of birth. Its
protecting
shadows veil the sharpest awakening the soul can know, when, by means
of the
death manifestation, the physical body is laid aside. To the physical
eye the
phenomenon is a grief, but this death door swings wide into a world of
life,
different life, where the external transmitter of physical
experience (brain
and reason) no longer function. The subconscious, the sum total of
impressions
and desires, now has power. The soul is now face to face with itself,
and
functions with an activity normal to its plane, unintelligible to the
physical
eye as we are unseen by it. Into
this awful silence of the immanent life, and with all the earnestness
that teachers
and helpers exert on this plane to awaken the mind and destroy
illusion, the
workers on the astral plane put forth every effort to awaken the
sleeper and
with just as futile result. Hope and reincarnation are altar fires that
give
strength to the helpers and sustain faith. This is the battle ground of
desire
and reality. This death a temporary awakening. The memory of this
impotent,
unhinged self with the lust for sensation and momentary glimpses of
life
without it weigh against each other. Only within himself can come
deliverance.
The initiation of Pythagoras into the mysteries of ancient Egypt
symbolizes
this new experience of the soul. If it has awakened sufficiently to
say, “I
know you all, ye host of terrors and brood of tempters,” then there is
no need
for such to repeat the life. “That which began in him when he began, is
finished;
he hath wrought the purpose thru of what did make him man, and he hath
felt the
blessed last of deaths when death is dead.” This
is the hell we dread, where every inherent interest or tendency is a
leading
string and backward pull toward the life that was. The hell of the
astral plane
has burned itself into the subconscious instincts of the race since
when the
first man laid aside his physical body. The preservation of the self
has
remained the one deep impulse in every rebirth in fear and challenge to
the
dissolving process. The universal cry is “Do not let me die.” Death is
inseparable
from life and need be feared only by the sensualist as a breaking up of
his dream.
The difference between being saved from sin and hell or from karma and
rebirth
lies in a choice of words, the process is the same, If
the dreamy, sensuous longings and thirst for things drug the soul, it
issues
again upon the earth to live out the unpurged fragment. Those who
hoped to see
us waken from the earth experience watch us sink into coma and call it
death.
Life and death are the same looked at from different points of view.
Each departure
is called death on the plane it leaves, and birth by those who watch
its
entrance on the plane in which it arrives, and emphasizes the fact that
it is
not all of death to die nor all of life to live. The
sense-struck, sodden self vibrates to thought conditions. Slowly the
stupor
grows until coma is reached. Every breath potent with thought magnetism
to draw
it to its kind, it becomes a matrix for manifestation. There is but one
avenue
for the earth life, thru birth; a belief and indulgence which engulfs
every
other instinct and impulse; an octopus that saps its victim while it
fattens.
Only thru the avenue of lust and love of self can an open way be found
for the
Psychcoma to be manifested. Like attracts like, and when the conditions
are
fulfilled to make its shell or physical body, it enters upon the wheel
of life “to
hug and kiss its spokes of agony.” During
the months of extending its physical vehicle and wrapped in the parent
body, it
is electrified with its every vibration and nourished on its life
principle,
which makes its manifestation possible. In the astral world there are
no
physical limits and to enter life as a protoplasm is as natural as to
develop a
seed. The law of birth fulfilled, the human life phase begins again its
intermittent
manifestation of Psychcoma, alternately waking and sleeping in a world
of
somnambulists each intent upon his little dream, bent upon
self-gratification
and ingrown upon itself, unaware that real life is yet to be
lived, a life surcharged
with universal love. The data for self-stimuli and development thru the
centuries
have furnished certain laws for protection and restrictions for
community good,
yet how feeble we are to control this wild and fanciful dreamer our
jails,
brothels, court rooms, peace councils, and daily newspapers can
tell us. Each
day a revelry of dreamers so deep in sleep as to commit theft, forgery,
murder,
and every crime that a thwarted ego may fancy effective in pursuing its
fatuous
desires. Only thru impacts of grief and the interference available on
this
plane of consciousness can the Psychcoma be disturbed. The victim of
Psychcoma
is under the protection, direction, and help of two worlds, the
external with
its weapons of sorrow, disappointment, injustice, sickness, all
products of the
inharmony of the dream life with his desires mirrored in the life
surrounding
him, and the subconscious world, where unseen helpers companion
him with
ardent, hopeful application of every known means for his awakening. The
subconscious
or super-conscious mind is amenable to external suggestion and
when the soul
wakens to understand this, and uses the power of self-suggestion, he
becomes a
master in two worlds and elects his own development. Every latent
thought and
vagrant wish must be brought out into the manifest to test its worth.
There can
be no separation of me and thee. The Psychcoma is no respecter of
persons; what
the vilest is, you have been or may be, the dream life is not to be
labeled
respectable or otherwise, it is legitimate and is proving worthy to the
one who
has awakened. Envy not those whose days are spent in idleness, the
sheath of
self enveloped in the contentment of satisfied desires; theirs is a
darkness
into which the divine light has not yet penetrated. True
growth is slow. By doing and failing and doing again is success
assured. In
the midst of a large experience the soul is quickened and
evolution is
accelerated. No shame is attached to ineffectual results. The seat
of the
strife lies in the attempt, that alone asks for generous consideration.
Draw no
lines between appearances. Remember that every thought you may have
skillfully
hidden from view is illustrated in the life of some other one, they the
victim,
you the onlooker. Give pity and great love. Maybe through them the
light has
been revealed to you. And be comforted to believe that the Father of
Lights
loves you as well as He loves them, no better; “they are but dreaming
as you
have dreamed, they sleep “and you are awake. Spiritual perception has
to do
with the beginning of things, while human reason has to do with the
result. All
life typifies one life. The thief, liar, hypocrite, are parts of
yourself left
behind. Against that same backward pull you struggle up to new values.
Repression,
suppression, or killing out will not determine your awakening. It is
wrong to
negate our power by killing out anything. We may transform and
transmute;
positive power is creative and when aspiration potentizes vibration it
raises
all lower vibrations to itself. We accelerate our progress by
appropriating
higher values and steadily and consciously transforming our desires.
Self-attainment depends upon our mastery of every note in the divine
harmony.
Thru that scale vibrates immorality, vice, sham, deceit, greed, theft,
lying,
drunkenness, exclusion, pride. Not until all is understood and
dissolved is the
soul freed from rebirth. The
sense-man resents the imputation of Psychcoma, to him the dream is the
thing.
Neither can you explain to the insane man that he is unbalanced, so do
not
expect too much from the dreamer. If he awake even for brief spaces of
time he
will recognize the approaching coma as sensation and desire wrap their
psychic
folds about him and dim resolve. “What lets?” “Ignorance lets, whereby
ye take
these shows for true and thirst to have, and, having, cling to lusts
which work
your woes.” Yet the soul may wrench itself free and reach the
sorrow-less state
lost sight of and neglected many myriads of cycles. In
the story of Parsifal, Kundry alternately finds herself doing service
in the
Grail Castle as its good angel, and in the Castle of Klingsor the
Magician, as
his “Rose of Hell.” Always before coming under the influence of
Klingsor she
is aware of a growing sense of stupor, and as its lethargy steals upon
her she
sinks deeper and deeper into sleep. At long intervals she wears out the
influence
and in a feeble way regains the path leading to the Grail and vaguely
remembers
she has been there before. This
torpor symbolizes fugitive upheavals of unlived-out fragments of
self-absorption which sweep over the soul to engulf it or exert it to
supernormal
action. Not until desire is burned out or transformed can the spirit be
freed. Obsession
is influence to the point of complete subjection. This subjection is
not to
another unseen entity, but it is the deep coma of self-desire or any
sense
domination of joy, fear, grief. The “silver cord” uniting the spirit
with the
physical body is never “loosened” to the point of surrender except at
death,
and this detachment means death. Only thru physical form can any
creature
function on this plane and with the same laws governing as govern
action on the
astral or subconscious plane. Fear of so-called “elementals” reduces
one to the
level of crass superstition and negate effort. Self is the only enemy
of self,
and self the only victor. The struggle is within. The
Psychical Research Society has exhausted every device to open the door
of the
astral realm, but as yet no message has reached any one that has opened
any
mine of knowledge, revealed supernormal secrets, or described the
activity on
that plane interpreted in any terms but of this life. There
are profound scientific students who believe all these psychic
phenomena to be
subconscious phenomena, that it is the evidence of supernormal
powers existing
in every human being rising to and manifesting on the plane of the
conscious;
which merely means that the objective senses are not functioning and
the subconscious
senses are. It has nothing to do with a high spiritual life. Many
depraved persons
are able to enter this so-called clairvoyant or trance condition. Many
see
without perceiving and many hear without knowing. To see clairvoyantly
is not
limited to the one who has awakened. It is a phase of the coma. If,
during the
subconscious state, the soul was fully awake and cognized its
condition and
surroundings, would it not answer the questions regarding the next
life, what
death meant, and would it not direct in moments of trial and peril,
telling us
how to act? What medium is able to direct future action without the
shadow of a
doubt? Psychic
visions are caverns where lie buried wrecks of incipient thinkers gone
mad over
thought systems whose bludgeon opens all the doors of the underworld
and
challenges the doorkeepers of innumerable heavens. Mysticism of
the incantation
kind must yield to the spirit of this century, which flings high and
wide the
demand for the clearest, simplest laws. There is no need of glossaries,
special
keys, spheres of consciousness and superstructures of plane upon plane
and a
thousand intricacies that enmesh the student in a labyrinth of mental
whirligigs. Our inheritance from the past is absolute for us only so
far as it
yields us proof for every advance step under the X-Ray of scientific
research,
revelation, and discrimination. Elemental principles and laws are
the
possession of the adept who reduces them to their last and simple
analysis. Clairvoyance
and psychic power are not evidence of a spiritual life but rather the
predominance of a super-conscious activity which sees and registers
conditions
of the Psychcoma when the physical brain remains inert or inoperative.
The
objective mind is then in subjection. The aura holds as in solution the
content
of individual experience, the arithmetic of which is the brain
calculator. If
rebirth meant an easy and sure release and promotion, the sensualist
might
indulge his desires. But to be involved in sense satisfactions is an
inebriety
that deadens aspiration and increases spiritual anesthesia. If
rebirth were unnecessary and a mistake in the world economy, then
suicide were
a blessing and a privilege. But death does not liberate the soul except
it
liberate itself. Experience is life and we do not develop alone. We
need the
all as the all needs us. To cease this experience at any time and at
our
pleasure means to shirk and condemn the self to a coma controlled by
the idea
that the welfare of the personal self may be secured by grasping the
goal and
escaping the machinery of development. There is only one place for the
liberation of the sense life, here.
This is the place of bondage. Real fife begins when this bondage
ends. The
dream to waken from is “I am this little body.” Who, looking up into
the
heavens at the constellations and zones of associated stars, could
think for
one moment that this rolling planet was the cause and purpose of
illimitable
space, and that life began and ended here for no ultimate good? Every
so-called
law of the universe subsisted in that universe before it existed
for us. We
are not making laws, they were made from the beginning, and as we
recognize
these laws we may learn to live in harmony with them. The opportunity
of life
here is but one section of our infinite nature. You who are
awakened today as
you read this may seize upon the sex instinct as the only vicious
element,
perhaps because it is so in evidence, or because life seems dependent
upon it,
that you believe it the source of all evil. But cosmic life is
hydra-headed;
one by one the evils are uncovered as by paths to the soul’s citadel.
Attack
the evil that is within your power; lesser evils are the foothills that
lead to
the mountain tops. You who hold yourselves sponsors for other lives,
accept
your privilege as a divine agent for the evolution of a soul. No one
can escape
the earth life, it is a legitimate part of evolution and the only way
for the
Psychcoma to be undermined. Would
you ask if the awakened life becomes a dead level of existence, if
spontaneity
is impossible, if the throb of pure joy is checked? No! a hundred
times, no! It is an antidote for pain and joy is
heightened. No one enmeshed in the desire life can know what happiness
is. To
the unawakened life is a constant strife. Joys grow out of personal
gain,
depending wholly upon the caprice of individuals. Happiness
born of sensation
is temporary and dependent. Only when infatuation, lust, hatred,
is understood
can one know happiness. There is a happiness, an abiding attitude,
which belongs
to and is inherent in the consciousness; it moves outside and beyond
the senses
and becomes realization, realization of the oneness of all creatures,
of the
oneness of friends and enemies, of the oneness of all worlds, of the
oneness of
the eternal purpose. This
awakening is accomplished thru the understanding and use of the law of
Vibration, Aspiration, Transmutation, Control of the Breath,
Concentration,
Meditation, Affirmation. Analyze. Awake!
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