Introduction to Scientific Magic
by Wayland Skallagrimsson
There is an interesting kind of practice found in many countries in the eastern hemisphere of the world that are not religious (as the word is generally used in Western societies) but are spiritual nonetheless. They tend to be centered around cultivating those aspects of the spirit that will best give the practitioner an advantage in the physical world. Some of these practices involve attaining an altered state of consciousness where the mind is turned from discriminating thought, and is fully unified, and completed, and acts as one whole thing. (Note: though considered an altered state of consciousness from a Western point of view, the goals of such practices tend to be to make it the normal state of consciousness.) This is supposed to give the practitioners instantaneous wisdom, and knowledge of right action in any given circumstance. It is supposed to aid any physical action the practitioner takes, and is supposed to give deep spiritual insight. Examples of such practices include Buddhism and Taoism. In devoted practitioners, unusual abilities are learned, such as the feats of certain martial artists who can break boards and bricks with their bare hands, or who can hit a target 20 yards away with an arrow, blindfolded, from memory. The way in which such unusual abilties are conferred, according to many practitioners, is that mind, body, and spirit all learn to move as one. This allows the practitioner to focus all of his or her resources upon the task at hand, instead of the minute fraction of them that is all most people can bring to bear.
Western science has observed such Eastern practices in laboratory settings, and found that many of the claims made as to the practices' effectiveness are indeed realistic. Harvard University has observed monks able to so control their own metabolsims that in near-freezing temperatures, naked, draped with wet towels, they were able to keep themselves warm enough to dry the towels. Other laboratories have similarly confirmed high pain tolerance. The increased healing capabilities of people with strong spiritual lives has been documented over and over again.
Many people wonder why such practices are almost entirely unknown in the West. But in actuality they are not as rare as is commonly thought. There is a form of spiritual practice followed by people from almost every Western nation at some point or other in its history. This sort of spiritual practice has different names in different languages but in modern english is usually translated as "magic".
Unfortunately there was never much communication between different traditions of magical practice in the West, and so its development was slow, and its practice was also started at a later date, in general, than comparable Eastern practices. (Though it should be noted that the parallel between magic and such practices Buddhism is not perfect. For instance Buddhism's real focus is on moral and spiritual development, while power is a secondary consideration, and in magic power is of primary importance while spiritual and moral development is generally less stressed.) And thus it was never as well developed as its Eastern brethren. So before it could be refined to the point where it would be recognizable as a science to modern Western eyes, it ran afoul of a pair of powerful enemy practices that effectively halted its development, setting it back, in fact, to a more primitive level of understanding. One of these enemies was the Christian churches of the time, which by and large regarded any sort of spiritual practice not under the control of the church to be an enemy. The other was a confusion amongst scientists, practitioners of the newly developed concept of science (not that science was a new concept, just that it was newly developed, i.e. had undergone a major revolution). They confused certain philosophical assumptions they held with actual scientific method, a confusion that holds with many mediocre scientists to this day. This confusion led to a dismissal of all magical practice as fraud or delusion by the fledgeling sciences, because the scientists were not aware of the highly symbolic and allegorical method of expression magicians employed, based on their rather different underlying philosophy, and had little desire to examine anything that couldn't be nailed down into definite, objectively defined catagories. This was not helped by the magicians of the time, by and large ill-educated from lack of available teachers. They were unable to explain these subtleties to people whose philosophy they couldn't themselves understand.
As an example, take the case of a particular ritual some magicians perform to induce/enhace the meditative state. A sensation and accompanying vision are induced of a glowing ball of energy appearing to the magician and suffusing his or her body, changing it, warming it, relaxing it. Now there are very good scientific explanations as to why such results come about from such a ritual. The placebo effect, or something much like it, is one of them. The resultant relaxation and warming can be seen entirely as products of the instructions the conscious mind sent the subconscious mind when engaging in certain visualizations. Warmth and relaxation are produced by the body because warmth and relaxation are expected by the mind, and the mind and body are physically connected.
But does this mean that these scientific aspects are the cause of the experience of the energy as a thing of real and independent existence? (i.e. do they explain why the energy is felt as bringing warmth and relaxation, so that is both "seen" and "felt" as real?) That is certainly a valid interpretation of the data. It follows a logical chain of cause and effect relationships, all of which are in keeping with the best of modern scienctific knowledge about the nature of the brain and the mind. But to leap from the statement "This is a useful hypothesis that certainly can be taken as a valid model for what is actually occuring," to the statement "This is more than a hypothesis and is the only possible model to describe what is causing these experiences," is a common logical fallacy called, in the terms of the science of logic, "post hoc ergo propter hoc". This means "after this therefore because of this." Occam's Razor is a philosophical maxim that states that the most parsimonious explanation is the most likely true. In other words, "when you hear hooves think horses, not zebras" (unless you live in Africa). It is an unjustifiable, unnecessary, and by Occam's Razor less likely step to claim these scientific elements are the sole picture of what is going on. The explanation that "visualization of the energy puts the initiate into contact with a spiritual, nonphysical energy that affects the initiate through the subconscious mind, which is the most sensitive to subtle influences, bringing about relaxation," is just as valid. It explains the observed results as arising from the willed causes, just in a different order.
Because the two explanations both make the same predictions ("when energy is visualized while under no stress and with awareness of the whole body, relaxation ensues") neither one can be said to be inherently any more right than the other, philosophically. Some might try to argue that the spiritual energy explanation is by Occam's Razor an unnecessary extra entity, and so that this explanation should therefore be dismissed. But this reveals nothing more than the inherent prejudices in the world views of those who so argue. If the energy is by definition nonphysical, then no statement whatsoever can validly be made about how much physical energy it requires to exist to explain it. That means it cannot be classified as "extra". The only extra step that is being made is requiring that something that is nonphysical still exists. And that is exactly the same extra justification being made by the scientific explanation. In that explanation there is the assumption that there is some sort of physical process occuring in the brain that triggers the relaxation while being caused by something so nebulous as information. The connection, undefined, between the information and the body's response is assumed to exist, though its existence is unconfirmed. It can be explained that the visualization gets conceptually confused somehow with nerve paths to the physical body, imprinting through some nebulous method its basic information into the behavior of the nerves that control the physical processes, resulting in the order to relax muscles as if they were being warmed being somehow generated by something subconscious in the brain. But while a logical and even likely explanation, it has never been demonstarted to exist scientifically. This is a nonphysical concept, information, that is shown to really exist via the effect it has on the body, relaxation. This explanation is no more parsimonious than the spiritual one.
The reason that many people mistake the scientific explanation as more parsimonious is simply due to their unfamiliarity with the terminology. "Information" is a more familiar term to most people than "spirit energy", so they naturally tend to ignore its presence when considering its effects, and even tend to confuse the concept of "information" with the concept of the "recording medium" (such as neurons firing) used to register its existence.
There is nothing wrong with preferring to work with one explanation or the other. After all, we all have our inherent prejudices, our tastes, our various modes of expression. But the fact that one valid explanation out of many valid explanations - all of which say the same thing practically - is being chosen should not be forgotten. To do otherwise is not just philosophically unjustifiable, it is bad science, for it is introducing an unproven, unprovable philosophical preference and treating it as proven fact. This introduces error into the theories generated which may be small in any one instance, but whose cumulative effect can end up being enormous. This sort of tendency to mistake philosophical preference for fact has been responsible for the ill repute these powerful spiritual techniques have aquired in the West.
And those on both sides of opinion in these matters have been guilty. One the one hand, all too often traditional Western science has dismissed the occult, for these techniques at the time the scientific revolution came into being were not in very good condition, and their theories and practices were seriously degraded, due to oppression by the dominant religion of the time, which sought to centralize all spiritual matters into its control. The fledgeling science might have discovered this by looking carefully past the colorful implications of the terminology used by the magicians and finding patterns, but unfortunately science was young and was making the mistakes the young make. Scientists during the revolution of thought that gave us modern science confused the scientific revolution with a separate philosophical revolution that was going on at the time, which was also a revolution against the dominant thought of that same religion. This was the philosophical revolution of atheistic positivism. It was a school of philosophy that held that there was no Almighty God, no spirit of any sort. All that could be seen was the result of physical processes, such as those of machinery. It preached a completely deterministic clockwork universe. Now this fit in neatly with the new science, which had just discovered the wonderfully powerful tool of deduction, and the cause-and-effect relationship. So the new scientists became atheistic positivists, and got rapidly so swept away with all the wonderful new things they were discovering they quite forgot where they started from, and came to mistake their philosophy for proven scientific fact. Now it so happens that science since then has placed strict limits on cause and effect, and says that such concepts only hold true in a limited sense. The clockwork universe was wrong, plain and simple. It had been based on assumptions about the nature of space and time that, as it turns out, just weren't true. This means that the reductionist "everything is ultimately purely reducible to cause and effect mechanistic physical processes" school of scientific philosophy, the philosophy of atheistic positivism, is just as much a bizzare unprovable assumption about the inner working of the universe as the one that says that there's an old man in a robe living in a volcano, or in the sky, who knows everything, and rewards and punishes as he will, and sets things running to his liking.
On the other hand magicians and other forms of spiritual practitoner have been, by and large, just as guilty of this same sort of muddled thinking, and so have contributed equally to the long misunderstanding held between the two schools of thought. They have tended to get so carried away with the notion that "ultimately, all is caused by spirit, all can be explained by spiritual forces and/or entities" that they never even look to see what physical nature or basis could possibly underly the experiences of what are by definition nonphysical phenomena. This is a sort of intellectual laziness, for while of course the spirits are real (so it can be validly argued philosophically in explanation of phenomena that are, unarguably, occuring), that only tells one so much. Science has done so well because it works. It is a powerful tool of exploration and explanation, and any practice of anything can benefit from such analysis. Knowledge is, after all, power. This problem on the side of the occultists has been further exacerbated by a petulant sort of childishness about the sorts of things ill-educated scientists say about the occult and occultists. Such occultists know that their experiences are real. After all, they experience them. They know their spiritual explanations are valid. After all, they fulfill that single most necessary element of an explanation; they allow accurate predictions to be made. One knows that raising a certain spiritual energy produces greater mental functioning, and raising a different one sharpens the senses, or heals an illness. These things will be reliable predictions. And furthermore most occultists are no idiots, they realize they can argue, on a philosophical level, the validity of their explanations just as well as anyone else. But when ignorant scientists who are not versed in the occult at all, dismiss it and those who practice it offhand it is obvious they are confusing their personal preferred philosophies with real science, and they can be rather rude about it. Seeing only the seeming nonsense a cursory examination of the field shows them, they feel justified enough about their intial assumption that it was nonsense to begin with that they tend to dismiss it all as hallucinations, mental illnesses, retardation, psychosis, schizophrenia, escapism and such. But instead of realizing that these are just statements made in ignorance by a specialist in another field unqualified to judge anything about the field of occultism, and so something to be shrugged off or corrected, occultists have typically dug in their heels on their own positions, screwed their eyes shut, covered their ears, and started shouting "I'm not listening!" This has caused a backlash against science in the greater occult community, largely to the detriment of the occultists. Instead of being able to grow and develop, occult practice has languished in the doldrums in the West for centuries, and it is in no small way due to this. Some occultists have even gone so far as to dismiss science as somehow "false" or "wrong", thus compounding their error and rendering them unable to even live in the modern world very effectively.
Further compounding this difficulty is the fact that the very nature of magical practice encourages the magician to experience reality in a way not readily amenable to an objective point of view. For scientific reasons that will become apparent through the body of this work, the more the unconscious mind is allowed to work completely free from distraction and interference of the conscious awareness, the more effective the magic ritual will be. This means that magic works best when the magician isn't thinking about it. So even when the magician is himself the cause of the ritual's successful influencing of some event, it occurs most when he is unaware he is doing this, thus it seems, to the magician, like a spontaneous occurence, independent of his hand in things.
Recently, though, the field of medical science, specifically the discipline of neuroscience, has performed a study of great benefit to practitioners of the various systems of magic. It was a study conducted by neuroscientists on Zen Buddhist monks, Catholic mystics, Voudounists, and other spiritual practitioners, undertaken to find the root cause of spiritual experience in the human brain.
(Let me make an aside here and explain something about my point of view that needs to be understood in order to see what I'm getting at. The study was to determine the causes of religious experience in the brain. This is not the same thing as defining what the causes of the religious experience are. Merely to find a biological root for spiritual experience in the brain in no way invalidates the spiritual experience, nor does it prove that the spiritual experience was "really" just a physical, biological phenomenon. Let me give you an example, one used by the team of neurobiologists themselves: suppose you eat an apple pie. When you do, neurons fire in your taste, tactile, and olfactory areas of the brain, dopamines are released that give you a sense of pleasure. Do these things disprove the existence of apple pie? Of course not, they just describe your brain's mechanism for processing the experience of eating one. Same thing I believe with the spiritual experience. I do not believe that science and religion or spirituality are in conflict. They each describe the same things from different points of view.)
Following is a summary of the relevant findings they published in their book, Why God Won't Go Away.
There is a portion of the brain called the posterior superior parietal lobe, or the orientation association area (OAA, to save much typing). The OAA orients the individual in space and in doing so distinguishes the individual from everything else. (In other words, it also makes the distinction between "me" and "not-me".) The OAA shows heightened activity during different forms of meditation, and during the deepest meditational states it sharply reduces in activity.
The human body contains two divisions of the autonomic nervous system (the bridge of nerves between brain and body). One is the sympathetic nervous system, which arouses the body, gives an adrenaline boost, increases heart rate, blood pressure, breath rate, and muscle tone. It is often activated by danger or mating. The other division is the parasympathetic nervous system, which quiets the body, conserves energy, keeps the body's basic functions in balance, regulates sleep, induces relaxation, distributes nutrients throughout the body, and plays a role in the body's self-healing functions. These two divisions of the autonomic nervous system are usually antagonists, meaning that either one is "on" or the other, but not both, as they generally inhibit each other's activities.
In some extraoridinary states of altered consciousness, when one system or the other is pushed to maximal effort, both will function at the same time. This can be triggered by intense physical or mental activity, such as prolonged concentration.
Elevated action of the sympathetic nervous system is a source of stress, in both the physical and emotional senses. The mind desires to be released from this stress. The longer it endures, the greater the stress becomes. This causes the brain to throw all of its resources into finding a resolution to the situation causing the stress. Both the left-brain deductionism functions and the right-brain holistic approach become used. When they match, get in synch, the pleasure centers in the hypothalamus are stimulated. This triggers the parasympathetic nervous system. For one moment the arousal system and the quiescent system are both active. Ecstasy and awe. This is the eureka moment. Maintaining this is called by the researchers the "unitary state."
This then is how a god, or a spirit, or a myth is experienced by the brain. It is the unification of left and right brain, of logic and emotion, and because it is the ultimate synthesis of the human brain it feels like ultimate truth.
To quote directly from Why God Won't Go Away:
"The ability of human ritual to produce transcendant unitary states is the result… of the effect of rhythmic ritualized behavior upon the hypothalamus and the ANS [autonomic nervous system]…."
If the rhythmic behavior is fast, the arousal system is driven ever higher. The hippocampus then puts on the brakes and neural input to various areas, like the OAA, is reduced. Unitary states are produced by a softening sense of self and the absorption of it into a larger reality caused by this deafferentation of the OAA.
There are two types of unitary state that result from this process. One is responsible for the sensation of the Mysterious Union and other forms of possession, analogous to what in some Eastern practices is called positive samadhi or single-pointed awareness. This arises with sustained focus upon some thought or object of attention. This keeps the right part of the OAA active. This part of the OAA is responsible for forming a sense of the space around the individual. The left part, the part responsible for the sense of self, is deactivated in the manner described above. The result of this is a sense of the self merging into the object of contemplation. If the ritual that produced the state is religious in nature, then focusing upon a god or spirit will result in merging with or replacement by (if the deactivation of the left OAA is complete) the god or spirit. The other is associated with deafferentation of the whole OAA, and results in pure emptiness, in the practitioner vanishing and the world vanishing at the same time.
And of course to be effective, the ritual attempting to cause the unitary state must merge behaviors with both ideas and emotions. This is why just any idea or behavior will not serve, but only certain ideas, behaviors, words, symbols will produce the desired effects.
To put it simply, the unitary state is the super-focusing of the majority (if not the whole) of the practitioner's mind in a certain symbolically defined direction, defined by three primary characteristics:
1) Deafferentation (partial or total) of the OAA.
2) Unification of the majority if not all of the mind, expressable as the unity of id, ego, and superego, of Shadow and Persona, of right and left brains, of large and small mind, etc.
3) Simultaneous synergistic activity of both the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.
The practice of magic is the practice of attaining unitary states of various types, each conferring some unusual advantage to the practitioner as a result of the heightened focus and clarity of the mind. This is done through rituals heavy with symbolism and archetypal imagery. It is a science, and produces certain results consistently from certain steps taken in certain orders. The phenomena are repeatable.
The actual practice of magic revolves around the attainment of the right visions (of spirits, other worlds, other places, etc.) and the right sensations (power, being "out of the body", etc.). These are formed by the mind in the unitary state. Simply put, when enough of the mind is focused upon the same image, anything relating to that image receives that image with the force of a majority of the mind behind it. This, combined with the synergy sensation of the simultaneous activation of arousal and quiescent systems as described above (the Eureka! sensation), makes certain images and/or sensations seem so real they seem realer than ordinary sensory impressions, can become strong enough to even drown them out, blotting out impressions of the outside world (even with eyes wide open). When associated with the right mental processes these visions occur only during successful performances of specific deep subconscious behaviors, resulting in the ability to become consciously aware of deeply buried subconscious mental processes.
A further explanation of the attainment of the unitary state might be appropriate here by manner of example. Consider the following conversation as a conversation between different parts of the brain, responding to the ritual used in aiding meditation mentioned above. It may give a better idea of the sort of feedback and confusion that causes the simple small portions of the subconscious mind to begin working together to produce a desired result, via the unitary state.
A: " I'm getting this image of a bright light."
B: "I'm getting told to feel warm."
C: "I remember that warmth comes when D and E tell certain parts of the body to burn more fuel."
D: "Huh? Was that an instruction? Someone say my name?"
E: "Maybe we're supposed to be turning up the heat in here."
B: "Hey, I'm starting to feel warm now."
A: "Warmth often comes when I see bright light."
C: "Light and warmth? Those do go together. Maybe the light's causing the warmth."
B: "Did I just hear someone say the light is warm? That makes sense, I am getting warmer."
E: "I keep hearing the word 'warmer', I guess we should turn it up more."
C: "Maybe I should ask F and G whether they feel warm too."
And so forth. The subconscious is a much simpler part of the mind than the conscious mind, and (through a process of association from one concept to another not unlike a child's game of Telephone -- where a message is passed along in whispers until it becomes hopelessly garbled) can easily confuse itself into beliefs that spread through the whole mind to the point wherein they become "real".
In the interests of full disclosure (a scientific requisite) I should explain where I am coming from, what has shaped my points of view. I am fairly well educated, graduating high school with high honors and majoring in undergraduate school in physics. I have taken (and aced) a couple of graduate-level physics courses. I believe that physics is entirely correct, that it does explain the way the world works and explains it well. This is obvious from all the technology we have around us if from nothing else. It fulfills that most necessary requirement for a successful scientific theory: it makes highly accurate predictions. So I believe that any scientific explanation of magic must be entirely consistent with what physics tells us about the world. (Additionally, it must be consistent with psychology, biology, chemistry, etc.)
I also am educated in a formal sense in the practices of magic. By which I mean I had a teacher, and was part of something of a lineage. I do not mean by this some ancient thing stretching back hundreds if not thousands of years, heir to the wisdom of the centuries as some egomaniacal charlatan "magicians" like to claim. I mean I didn't learn from a book, as most do in modern times in most Western countries, but learned from a teacher, who himself had a teacher (his aunt), who herself was taught by someone neither he nor I knew. How that person came about her lore we don't know, it's not unreasonable to suppose she made it all up based on personal experiences. A lineage encompassing four generations, myself included. Rather paltry, and my teacher was no wise man. What he had to teach me was a rather fragmented lore, with only some things explained, other things to be taken on faith. He distinguished little between symbolic meanings and literal meanings. But he showed me he did know something, as he was able to duplicate some of the feats normally associated with advanced Eastern spiritual practices such as described above. He also had a unique perspective on the practice of magic, one he said was part of the foundation of our style, our tradition of magic, one that fit well with my own inclinations. He taught me to always look for scientific explanations for all magical phenomena - for it was really a science, he said. He considered himself to be carrying on the work of Isaac Newton, modelling himself after the archetypal scientist of the West, who was also a devout magician (an alchemist, specifically). His (Newton's) magical journals read like scientific experiment logbooks. (My teacher did not consider our lore to be directly from Newton, just that we took him for inspiration and tried to continue his work in the field of magic, developing it as a science.) He taught me how scientific explanations do not negate spiritual explanations, that they instead are complementary views whose only difference is the philosophy in which they are grounded.
In this work I make many assertions, describing well known practices of magic in scientific terms. I make these descriptions based on my personal experimentation in the field, and my comparisons of that experimentation with other experimenters. I am aware that this does not constitute proof that my theories are correct. I find them personally adequate (holding always onto the proviso that future revelations of new knowledge may change my understanding), but no one else is under the obligation to do so. I have striven to to be as thorough and accurate as possible in my theories, and present them not as proven facts, but as a means of showing that the practice of magic is a scientific practice, one which can support the creation of models, hypotheses, and testable predictions, whether the reader agree or disagree with my particular hypotheses.
Personally I believe that spirits and gods are real, existing independently of any human belief in them. I feel that the unitary state is the means by which the mind picks up on the subtle urgings, promptings, signals of these beings. I feel this is backed up by certain physics theories including (but not limited to) the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which states that there is not one universe but an infinite number, each in a different dimension of space, each different from the last. This interpretation implies that every time an event happens that can develop in a number of ways it happens in all possible ways, each different outcome existing in a different universe. This implies that all things that can be imagined are "out there" in the many different worlds. Every god and spirit, every force is alive and in existence in some universe or other. Some forms of this interpretation state that these different universes sometimes can affect each other in subtle ways.
Another possible scientific theory lending validity to the hypothesis that spirits, gods, and such exist independently of human thought is that of the zero point energy field (ZPEF), a field of energy that pervades all space, in which every possible subatomic particle that exists continually flickers in and out of existence. Furthermore, in this field of energy all possible combinations of interactions between particles that can exist do have a definite nonzero probability of existing any time any measurement or observation is made. (The reason this infinite energy is never observed in any but the most unusual and artificial circumstances is that it is ubiquitous, and there is as much of it exerting force in any one direction as there is exerting force in the opposite direction, cancelling each other out. It takes an unusual setup to notice differences in these opposing fields.) And because any calculation that any computer can perform (any logical calculation) can be performed in duplicate by interactions between subataomic particles (so science has shown in the field of quantum computing), this field of energy is actually able (though extremely unlikely in any given instance) to perform calculations. Because any possible interaction of subatomic particles is to be found in the ZPEF there are an infinite number of duplicates, images, of every sort of calculation. The ZPEF contains universal computers. Thus any being or entity or force can be found, in an analogue form of calulations performed by subatomic particles of fleeting existence, continually flickering in an out of it, in the ZPEF. Some physics theories of the ZPEF say that coherence of signals from very short time intervals and low energy levels can under the right conditions become great enough to affect macroscopic objects, such as the neurons of the brain.
I believe, for purely scientific reasons, that the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is the "right" one, in that it seems most suggested by experimental data, and produces the fewest uncertainties and paradoxes in theory. Many professional scientists, PhD's, hold the same opinion. But not all. In fact, not even most. Many scientists disagree violently with the theory, and some of the arguments they make are good (though in my opinion ultimately flawed). I believe the existence of the ZPEF to have been experimentally proven by Sparnaay and later by Lamoreaux. Not all scientists agree (though many do) that it exists, though I have yet to hear one credible argument raised against it. But the point I wish to make is that despite my obvious preferences philosophically for certain interpretations of scientific theory, I do not and cannot make the unfounded leap from "this is a good and informative though unproven theory" to "it's true". These theories and all others that certain magicians use to justify a belief in the independent existence of spirits and spiritual forces are completely unproven. They may be wrong. This should not be forgotten.
Instead I find it much better to concentrate on the parts of magic we understand well. Understanding in these other areas may come some day. It may back up my beliefs. It may disprove them. But that is by and large irrelevant, for such beliefs are neither central nor necessary to the practice of magic. It can be practiced by materialists, who view it as a purely psychological/physiological process. This is because the small guiding signal, whether from otherworldly spirits or the complex emergent behavior of the deep subconscious, is amplified by well understood psychological and biological processes, and it is with this amplification that the actual practices of magic are concerned. I experience what I experience, and that is all I need to call something "real". I practice certain rituals that tap me into something greater than my conscious self, wherever that is coming from.
The idea that the mind can slip into highly unified states via subconscious association, the underpinning mechanism for how the unitary state is entered into, pose potential explanations for otherwise inexplicable phenomena. Take laughter for example. The basis for much humor in many cultures, as researchers have noted, is some incongruity, something out of place, something that doesn't make sense. If the human mind really is that associative, then hearing some conceptual incongruity might set up different, opposing waves of associations rippling through the subconscious, interfering with each other, building up stress and tension. To relieve itself of this stress the mind cannot find a rational way to handle, it expresses the force of the stress in the form of an emotion, a pleasurable one to encourage the behavior's performance. So when faced with incongruities the human mind responds by a pleasurable emotion we have come to define as "humor", expressed in physical activity (laughter), expending the stressful energies.
A good way to understand better what a unitary state is, is to look at other examples of it, that are common even to normal people. (That is, those who practice no form of magic.) It must be kept in mind that there are many different kinds of unitary state, each different kind resulting from different portions of the brain being unified. Rarely is the *whole* brain in true unity. Indeed simply a majority of the brain being locked in synch seems enough to effect deafferentation of the OAA.
One of the most common ways ordinary people enter the unitary state is through sex. The act of sex meets all the basic requirements for effective ritual; it involves repetitive motion, the action of major muscle groups, and has a heavy emotional valence (meaning emotions run high during sex and everything is seen through the tint of those emotions). Good sex triggers adrenaline and from there it is just a matter of time and luck before the unitary state is entered into. This does not happen every time, or even most of the time. It takes everything being "just right" to do it. The unitary state that sex causes results in an orgasm that seems almost holy. The self is obliterated, absorbed into the other. The face of some god or other is seen. Everything is ecstasy and pleasure for a moment that lasts an eternity.
The other most common manner in which ordinary people enter the unitary state is at services at some kind of Christian church. Here the basic elements of ritual necessary for the unitary state are also met. There is repetive behavior (preacher/priest speaking and congregation responding). This behavior blends thought (the words being said or sung) with action (standing and sitting repeatedly). There is also an emotional valence here, the emotions invoked by the words of the sermon which, if its deliverer is doing his job right, will evoke feelings of reverence and religious awe. But furthermore there is the benefit of the large congregation. Medical studies show that being part of a large group all doing the same thing has such an effect on the minds and emotions of the participants as to make the unitary state easier to enter into. (Hence the feeling, given voice at better church services, that the congregation "became as one". This sensation is a hallmark of the unitary state.)
Another way people experience this state is through playing sports. This sometimes is the result of "psyching up" before the game. Psyching up involves some positive statement, often a boast, repeatedly given utterance, usually accompanied by some sort of rapid motion like pacing or running in place. In team sports maximum benefit usually results from all players doing it together. This kind of unitary state revs the body up. Adrenaline is increased, and the effect this has on the mind is to make it seem as if time is running slower in the outside world. This gives a distinct competitive advantage, allowing for greater decision making time relative to external events. It also corresponds with increased reaction speed and heightened strength, as well as an insensitivity to pain. The psyched up (also called "in the zone") state gives one the ability to see both the big picture and the little picture at once (as when athletes describe being able to see every individual blade of grass). The other way that sportsmen aquire this state, outside of psyching up, is in the act of the competition itself. This too has the bare-bones elements of ritual. There is activity in major muscle groups, associated with strong emotions (competitive ones). There is an intent focus (on the goal of the sport) that makes for repetitive lines of thought. Repetitive action is usually engaged in.
Another way some people come into contact with a unitary state is in the moment their lives are in danger, such as when a car from the opposite lane suddenly swerves out in front of them. The massive dose of adrenaline released in response to this sort of thing, the terror it brings on, are more than strong enough emotions to cause the unitary state to be entered into even with all the other requirements of ritual lacking. Time seems to stand still, people say, in these moments. Some people report becoming unusually fast, strong, and coordinated, though such unaccustomed abilities vanish the moment the crisis is past. These are all attributes of the unitary state.
Some lucky few can enter the unitary state for a moment through the emotion of love. There is no way to predict when such a thing will strike; it depends upon too many factors. But suddenly one is gazing at the loved one and that person seems ineffably beautiful. All the wonderful memories associated with that person are suddenly and simultaneously stirred to life. The loved one seems both familiar and incredibly new, as if being seen for the first time. The feeling of love for this person is so strong as to produce ecstasy. Sometimes everything in the field of vision, especially that person, will seem to shine. These things, the sudden racing of the mind in accessing all those memories at once, the shining field of vision, the surge of emotions, are things that are caused by the unitary state.
The practice of magic has multiple, though related, goals. The first of these is rather general and is called by the Cabalists "The Great Work", which is the attempt to bring the outer world into sych with the goals and ideals of the inner world, and to mold the shape of the self to fit naturally into the outer world. The second goal is a method of attaining the first, it is to attain a state of dual awareness, wherein the world of the spirit is experienced at the same time as the physical world. This is supposed to result in an instantaneous awareness of correct action, and a constant influx of wisdom and inspiration. The third goal is related to the second, as it is partially the cause of it. This is the attainment of the knowledge and conversation of the fetch or some analogous entity as the holy guardian angel, or agathos daimon ("good spirit"). Many Western religions have the concept of such a spirit. It is the intermediary between the individual person and that person's god(s). It is often that person's guardian, and sometimes teacher, and sometimes death. Such entities are generally held to have the individual's best, highest good at heart (NOT necessarily the immediate good). To be able to speak to this being whenever needed or desired is to have access to instantaneous inspiration and wisdom.
Throughout this work three distinct points of view will be presented for each matter under consideration. These will be the scientific point of view, the occult point of view, and the philosophical point of view. The aim of this is not just to explain these matters to a variety of different people but to show how each of these disparate points of view, different though their languages be, are actually describing the same phenomena and making the same predictions. I have also presented not one, but two styles of magic, a runic and a cabalistic style. My teacher taught me cabalism, which I later translated into runic terms. While I thought it wise to present the learning of two different styles of magic side-by-side so that the scientific ideas underpinning them both can more readily be seen, I am not as well grounded in cabalistic lore. My method of practice is runic. Serious cabalists would do well to keep this in mind.