Esotericism & Science

The question of fungal problems within Biodynamic management remains an unresolved issue in most enterprises. The grape industry still relies of Sulphur sprays, the apple industry on Lime Sulphur, while Biodynamic stone fruit are non existent in many parts of the world.

Some philosophers seem to want to do away with the idea of substance, that is so pervasive in ancient metaphysics, like Platonism. It is true that modern physics has done away with the notion of fixed, static substances, as can be seen in quantum mechanics.
This dilemma of how to preserve some notion of substance can be easily solved however.

Energy and matter are interchangeable

The ancient four Elements:  Fire, Air, Water, Earth as processes of energy/forcefields

The making of discoveries is what science is all about", David Miller has argued, "the stuff of the scientific career and of scientific reputation" (Miller 2004, 11). The British physicist Edward Appleton would have agreed. "I am sorry that Appleton is making a song and dance about our letter to Nature, but I suppose he is just expressing his well-known "ownership" of all radio and ionospheric work", so wrote E.G. Bowen in 1946 about the efforts of Appleton to secure for himself undeserved credit for researches into the nature of radio waves from the Sun (Sullivan 2009, 91). As Bowen suggested, Appleton's actions over the solar noise were part of a broader pattern of behaviour in which Appleton worked hard to secure credit for research in which he was little involved. If we establish a scale of 1-10 to gauge "Concern for Credit", Appleton, who thought nothing of manipulating the publication schedules of journals to favour his own findings, would surely score a "10". In contrast, the modest to a fault Danish physicist Ludvig Lorenz (1829-1891) would probably be a "1". As Helge Kragh explains in his biography of Lorenz, Lorenz was a very unassuming loner, had no close relationships with other physicists, and cared little for professional recognition. Lorenz also tackled problems that attracted him, without attention to "fashion" among other physicists. Even if Lorenz had been career-minded and had played the "science game" in the manner of Appleton several decades later in the more professionalized world of physics in the 1930s and 1940s, it would not have done him much good, at least if he wished to remain in Denmark. There was only one physics professorship in the country in the 1850s and 1860s. There were very few positions of any sort in academic physics, and no vacancies arose in this period. The result was that Lorenz never secured an academic position. Instead, starting in 1866, Lorenz carried

This essay aims to shed some light on the still common sense of a vocation among scientists. Taking its cue from Paul Forman's analysis of twentieth-century disciplinary science and Emile Durkheim's social view of religions, it suggests that modern scientific communities resemble religious communities in their penchant for transcendence. The essay aims to illustrate this perspective by looking at some developments within the physics discipline since its emergence in the late nineteenth century. One indication for this penchant is the tendency to distance oneself from the material conditions which allowed the discipline to flourish. These utilitarian conditions, industrial as well as material, were seen to pose a threat to the disinterested pursuit of truth. Another is the persistent tendency among theoretical physicists to search for otherworldly, immaterial and unifying foundations. I believe with Schopenhauer that one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from personal life into the world of objective perception and thought […] (Einstein, 2002, pp. 55-56). The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lift human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy (Weinberg, 1993, p. 155).

Over several decades spanning the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, a remarkable number of prominent physicists took up the investigation of psychical and occult phenomena. This was especially true in Britain, where William Crookes, J.W. Strutt (the third Lord Rayleigh), Oliver Lodge and J.J. Thomson were only among the most famous of the many scientists who pursued both 'physics' and 'psychics', often in association with the Society for Psychical Research, founded in 1882. There is already a large though rather scattered literature on various aspects of the interaction between science and the occult in this period, but Richard Noakes's book is the first to give a comprehensive account of this intriguing and revealing topic. Deeply researched and persuasively argued, Physics and Psychics sheds valuable light on some of the most important questions concerning science and its borderlands in the years between 1870 and 1930. Noakes makes it clear that he is not arguing either for or against the reality of such things as telepathy, telekinesis or communication with the dead, and he is careful to avoid such loaded terms as 'pseudoscience'. His aim, he says, is instead to examine how and why, in the decades around 1900, so many British physicists became convinced that psychical phenomena were worth exploring and chose to devote their time and energy to the subject, sometimes in the face of derision from their more orthodox colleagues. One of the most interesting questions Noakes takes up is why so many British physicistsand, significantly, several leading telegraph engineersbelieved they were especially well qualified to investigate psychical and occult phenomena. Not everyone agreed. In particular, many psychologists held that the phenomena in question were essentially mental, not physical, and so should properly fall to them rather than to physicists. A number of stage magicians, on the other hand, said it was all a matter of trickery anyway and that physicists, unaccustomed as they were to dealing with deliberate deception, were altogether too trusting to see through it. Many scientists regarded the whole subject as simply not worth their time, and while some spiritualists were open to the scientific study of occult phenomena, many others objected that the physicists' demand for controlled experimental conditions undercut the supportive atmosphere required for the spirits to manifest themselves. Given all of this, why were so many British physicists and telegraph engineers convinced not just that occult phenomena ought to be investigated, but also that they were just the ones to tackle the job? Noakes identifies a combination of factors. One

The aether, proposed to be a subtle primordial substance, was once thought to permeate all space and provide a substrate through which electromagnetic waves, such as light, traveled. It is a powerful explanatory concept that has roots in ancient indigenous knowledge and helped unify our understanding of the physical world for centuries. The Michelson-Morley experiment is often credited as being the death blow to aether, but this is not exactly so. These experimental results were not nil, but showed approximately 25% of the expected 30m/s speed of an "aether wind" from Earth orbiting the Sun. The aether was abandoned largely because of Einstein's Special Relativity Theory, which contradicts an absolute frame of reference. Nonetheless, Einstein came to accept a new version of the aether to explain parts of his famous theory of General Relativity. aether" is the possibility of a unified field theory in which particles, fields, and even sentience originates.

Recent scholarship, especially the works of Gauri Viswanathan, Alex Owen, and Joy Dixon, has established the wide-ranging influence and importance of the Theosophical Society to early twentieth-century European and American culture. Only preliminary work has been done, however, to explore the intersection of Theosophical thought and music at that same time. Recent scholarship in religious and communication studies offers a starting point for the exploration of the place of music in the cosmology and practices of the Theosophical Society and how the Theosophical experiments in music of British musicians Maud MacCarthy and John Foulds, coupled with the former's claim to occult power through the medium of music, was fundamentally at odds with an institution becoming ever more dogmatic in the light of a fractured and turbulent history. John Foulds' April-England provides an exemplar of enchanted modernity in music.

Доклады на конференции АИЭМ июнь 2023

Доклад 1: Вечный Гермес: хронология герметицизма, основные этапы, термины и события.
Eternal Hermes: chronology of Hermeticism, main stages, terms and events.

Доклад 2: Становление изучения эзотеризма и мистицизма в современной России.
The formation of the study of esotericism and mysticism in modern Russia.

This article explores esoteric identities and cultures in the British Parliamentary Labour Party c1929-c1951. The historiography of the Labour Party has tended to overemphasise the onedimensional nature of ideological affiliation and identity amongst Labour Members of Parliament in this period along the lines of a rather simplistic left/right dichotomy. Moreover, some historians have suggested that after 1918 particular socialist traditions and currents had become marginalised or dissolved once the party had developed a clearly defined constitution and the experience of political power. The argument presented here is that a range of esoteric identities remained a feature of labour culture through to the general election of 1951 and beyond. Three currents highlight the complexity and fluidity of specific strands of labour/socialist identity; in particular, Spiritualism, Theosophy and belief in the supernormal and the fantastic. Spiritualism and esotericism attracted a range of Labour MPs and shaped their reaction to contemporary political problems and the purpose and direction of working-class politics. An examination of such individuals and beliefs raises some new questions and challenges existing assumptions relating to labour identities in mid-twentieth century Britain. Socialist spiritualists, ghost hunters, and theosophists viewed political identity, mobilisation and practice as an activity that drew as much on the personal, the spiritual and 'other-worldly' as it did on the economic, social and material basis of society.

That which we know by means of the five senses is the "not self." The most common fact in life for all of us is that of the material world,-that world which we can see and contact by means of the five senses, and which is called by the metaphysical thinkers the "not-self," or that which is objective to each one of us. As we all know, the work of the chemist is to reduce all known substances to their very simplest elements, and it was thought not long ago that this had been satisfactorily accomplished. The conclusions of the chemist placed the number of the known elements between seventy and eighty. About twenty years ago, however (in 1898), a new element was discovered which was called Radium, and this discovery entirely revolutionised the world's thought about matter and substance. If you will go to the textbooks of the last century, or search the old dictionaries, seeking for the definition of the atom, for instance, you will usually find Newton quoted. He defined the atom as "a hard, indivisible, ultimate particle," a something which was incapable of further subdivision. This was considered to be the ultimate atom in the universe, and was called by the scientist of the Victorian era "the foundation stone of the universe"; [Page 34] they considered they had gone as far back as it was possible to go, and that they had discovered what lay back of all manifestation and of objectivity itself. But when radium, and the other radioactive substances, had been discovered, an entirely new aspect of the situation had to be faced. It became apparent that what was considered the ultimate particle was not so at all. As you now have the definition of the atom (I am quoting from the Standard Dictionary) it is: "An atom is a centre of force, a phase of electrical phenomena, a centre of energy, active through its own internal make-up, and giving off energy or heat or radiation." CA 106 The connection between hearing, touch and sight and the threefold aspects of Deity. What are the two factors whereby we evolve in and out of the atomic stage? In the Orient for many ages the method of evolution has been regarded as a twofold one. A man has been taught that he evolves and becomes aware first by means of the five senses, and later through the development of the faculty of discrimination, coupled with dispassion. Here in the West we have primarily emphasised the five senses, and have not taught that discrimination which is so essential. If you watch the development of a little child you will become aware, for instance, that a baby develops the five senses in a certain [Page 107] ordered sequence, usually. The first sense it develops is hearing; it will move its head when there is a noise. Then the next sense to be noted is that of touch, and it begins to feel about with its little hands. The third sense which seems to awaken is that of sight. I do not mean by this that a baby cannot see, or that it is born blind, like a kitten, but it is often several weeks before a baby consciously sees and looks with recognition. The faculty has always been there, but there has been no realisation. So it is with the graded expansions of consciousness and realisations that lie ahead of man today. In these three paramount, or major senses, hearing, touch, and sight, you have a very interesting analogy to and connection with the threefold manifestation of Deity, the self, the not-self, and the relation between. The self, occultly, hears and responds to vibration, thus realising Itself. It becomes aware of the not-self, and of its tangibility, through touch, but it is only when sight or conscious recognition comes in that the relation between the two is established. Two more senses are utilised by the self in making its contacts, those of taste and smell, but they are not so essential to the development of intelligent awareness as are the other three. Through these five senses we make every contact that it is possible to make upon the physical plane; through them we learn, we grow, we become aware, and we develop; through them all [Page 108] the great instincts are evolved; they are the great protective senses, not only enabling us to contact our environment, but also protecting us from that environment. CA 108 Expansion from the knowledge gained the senses to the knowledge gained through discrimination. Having, then, learnt to be intelligent units by means of these five senses, and having, through their medium, expanded our consciousness, we reach a certain crisis, and another factor comes in, that of intelligent discrimination. Here I am referring to the discrimination which a self-conscious unit demonstrates. I refer to that conscious choice which you and I evidence, and which we will be forced to utilise as the power of evolution drives us on to the point where we will learn to distinguish between the self and the not-self, between the real and the unreal, between the life within the form, and the form which it uses, between the knower and that which is known. Here we have the whole object of evolution, the attainment of the consciousness of the real self through the medium of the not-self. CA 110 The nature of true meditation. And how is this change brought about? The atomic stage was developed by means of the five senses, and through the utilisation of the faculty of discrimination. The stage at which a man awakens to group realisation, and becomes a conscious participant in the activities of the group, is brought about in two ways: through meditation, and through a series of initiations. Now when I use the word "meditation" I do not mean what is perhaps usually understood by that word, a negative, receptive state of mind, or a state of trance. There is much misconception these days as to what meditation really is, and there is a great deal of so-called meditation which has been truly described by a person not so long ago, as "I shut my eyes, and open my mouth, and wait for something to happen." The true meditation [Page 111] is something that requires the most Numerology has hitherto been studied primarily, and rightly, from the substance aspect, but not so much from the standpoint of conscious energy. The Triad, for instance, is usually looked upon by our students as the triangle formed by the manasic-buddhic and atmic permanent atoms; the cube stands for the lower material man, and the five-pointed star has frequently a very material interpretation. All these angles of vision are

The articles included in this special issue of Integral Review represent a wide range of integral scholarship at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), founded in 1968 in San Francisco by Dr. Haridas and Bina Chaudhuri. Haridas Chaudhuri arrived in the United States in 1951 upon an invitation by professor Frederick Spiegelberg of Stanford University who was charged with directing a newly founded independent graduate school (American Academy of Asian Studies) devoted to introducing Asian studies to American higher education. Spiegelberg had traveled to India in the late 1940s to research the contemporary practices of the ancientspiritual traditions of India. His visit culminated in an encounter with the great spiritual figure of modern India, Sri Aurobindo, whose writings represented a grand synthesis of evolutionary spirituality with ancient Indian spiritual traditions. Haridas Chaudhuri, one of the first to study and write about Sri Aurobindo, brought a creative and d...

This introductory article gives a brief account of the founding vision and ontological and epistemological principles of the integral framework expounded by Haridas Chaudhuri and some of his original collaborators at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). A brief biographical account of Sri Aurobindo and Mother Mirra Alfassa, originators of integral yoga and education, is provided and some of the principle tenets of an integral worldview that informs the philosophy of integral education are discussed.

5977 Received: 15 Apr 2020 | Revised: 25 Apr 2020 | Accepted: 07 May 2020 Abstract--Great religions to pragmatic capacities sporadically abound in the stories of supernatural phenomena which subsumes telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition. However, unfortunately treated as the topics of spiritualism, witchcraft and edification, not the materials of Scientific Enquiry. Whatsoever, have been deciphered about these queer speculations, the most prevalent sole concept is : namely, that there can be senseexperiences from the realm which is not accessible to human brain and sense organs. Possessor of these senses which are not currently accessible to average humans can be a omniscient being tapping to his full potential. Presently, we have no language or any communication system to describe them intelligibly. When inquiring about these affairs we cannot avoid absurdity as presently we lack any linguistic convention on it. Our linguistic convention is derived from the physical world in wh...

This is a 40-page guide for homeopaths interested in using ancient wisdom to support their practice. The main focus is on understanding the periodic table (with insights on rows/series and columns/stages potentially extending to the plant and animal kingdoms too).
Two main sources are outlined: storytelling and the ‘I-Ching’ or ‘Yi Jing’. Jan Scholten’s Element Theory took inspiration from Joseph Campbell’s studies of mythology, and those ideas are discussed further. In addition, new matches are made between Elements 1 to 64 (Hydrogen to Gadolinium) and Hexagrams 1 to 64 from the famous Chinese work. Portraits of development and learning journeys in traditional tales and this ‘Book of Change(s)’ can be used to enhance standard remedy information.
These resonate with underlying processes of Evolution operating throughout the cosmos and mapped over the centuries in many parallel schemes. The two longer books on ‘Life Unfolding’ explore these issues in more detail.

In August 1862, the leading article of one British periodical was headed 'Animal "Magnetism"'. 1 The quotation marks around the word magnetism indicated the anonymous author's understanding of at least one of the many controversies that had surrounded this subject for over half a century. This was the question of whether, as animal magnetism's proponents claimed, a weightless, invisible bodily fluid, force or emanation by which the will of an individual was alleged to directly influence the mind and body of another person was analogous to the magnetism associated with minerals. By the early 1860s, many of those who had accepted the effects of animal magnetism but rejected the idea that they derived from a kind of magnetic fluid described the effect as mesmerism, in honour of the Swabian physician Franz Anton Mesmer, who, in the 1770s, had announced the discovery of this 'magnetic' form of influence and turned it into the basis of a medical therapy that proved both controversial and popular in Continental Europe, Britain and North America. 'Animal "Magnetism"' was much more positive about animal magnetism than its cautious title suggested. Anticipating disdain from some readers, it asserted that the "quasi science" rested on indisputable facts and urged the need to establish connections between facts of an "extraordinary character and occult nature" and those "accepted by science". 2 There were moral and intellectual motivations for this. Establishing facts about animal magnetism was no less important to the "cause of truth" than the recognition of other facts that "scientific orthodoxy" had a lamentable tendency to dismiss simply because such facts appeared to conflict with "accepted doctrine". 3 Moreover, recent developments in the physical sciences suggested the strong possibility that an obscure force, fluid or agency somehow connected with life could be related to the known physical forces. The eminent German chemist Justus von Liebig

We would like to begin by thanking our wonderful contributors for their exceptional scholarship, intellectual generosity, and unfailing good humor. They have all made this process a true pleasure throughout. We are also grateful to the editorial staff at the University of Michigan Press and the anonymous external readers for their helpful and detailed comments. Their insight and assistance has been instrumental in helping us revise the collection. Sincere thanks are due to Molly Walsh and Brittany Larson, who helped us to prepare the manuscript for publication. We would also be remiss if we did not thank Aaron McCollough for his enthusiastic support of the project in its early stages. We would finally like to thank our families and friends for their encouragement throughout this process. Lara Karpenko thanks her departmental chair, Deirdre Keenan, for her tireless support of her colleagues and for her boundless enthusiasm. Her mentorship and friendship is deeply appreciated. Lara would also like to thank her mother, Christine Karpenko, for instilling an early love of Victorian literature, her father, Leonard Karpenko, for showing her the wonders of science through a telescope, and her husband, William Phelps, for his unfailing love and support. Shalyn Claggett thanks her parents, Sam and Sherrie Claggett; her husband, Matt Lavine; and her best friend, Lucy Canessa. She sincerely appreciates their continual encouragement and moral support in this and all things. Contents •••

The essays in Strange Science examine marginal, fringe, and unconventional forms of scientific inquiry, as well as their cultural representations, in the Victorian period. Although now relegated to the category of the pseudoscientific, fields like mesmerism and psychical research captured the imagination of the Victorian public. Conversely, many branches of science now viewed as uncontroversial, such as physics and botany, were often associated with unorthodox methods of inquiry. Whether ultimately incorporated into mainstream scientific thought or categorized by 21st century historians as pseudo- or even anti-scientific, these sciences generated conversation, enthusiasm, and controversy within Victorian society. To date, scholarship addressing Victorian pseudoscience tends to focus either on a particular popular science within its social context or on how mainstream scientific practice distinguished itself from more contested forms. Strange Science takes a different approach by pla...

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) is mainly known for his inventions, including alternating electrical current (AC), the induction motor, remote control, the Tesla coil, and many patents related to radio and the whole AC system, to name but a few. He was also known for his claims related to unlimited universal energy. In this article, we will investigate, based on the science of the late nineteenth century, what made Tesla think that universal energy could be possible. This study will systematically scrutinise the works of Tesla to find an answer to this question amid all the hubris, claims, and folklore that has surrounded it. Tesla's attempt to discover universal energy failed at Wardenclyffe, and after his funding from J. P. Morgan ended, no new funding became available for his large projects. Tesla later viewed these failures as a failure to find a scientific explanation of ether that also contributed to the failure of his experiments on Maxwellian ether. We know what Tesla's views were from his writing, but what we still lack is a holistic understanding of the reasoning behind what Tesla knew and believed. We lack, in particular, an understanding of how his thinking changed, and of the reasons behind his persistent attempts to find universal energy.

George Francis Fitzgerald is known to most students of physics for his proposal of the Fitzgerald (-Lorentz) Contraction, but this is a minor episode in a remarkable life. Many of his ideas found expression through others. His powerful influence on the physics of his time has been reconstructed from his correspondence, as leader of the Maxwellians.

This book sets out in two parts a single esoteric worldview discerned across many fields of human enquiry, old and new, with focus on four main topics: myths and stories, the periodic table, the Yi Jing, and complementary medicine (homeopathy). It is aimed at readers with interests in comparative mythology, esoteric thinking, and alternative perspectives. The central speculative hypothesis is that the unfolding of matter, life and consciousness, operating at multiple levels throughout the cosmos, is reflected in both ancient and modern models relating to natural rhythms, celestial cycles and human self-development. Skywatching is proposed as a key source for concepts and applications shared between myth and science along these lines. In particular, evolutionary processes are mapped in recurrent patterns featuring parallel pairing and symmetrical balance for archetypes of the chemical elements, distributed through the rows and columns of the periodic table. Detailed analogies for these elemental archetypes are drawn between the 64 Yi Jing hexagrams, the components of narrative frameworks (including Joseph Campbell’s monomyth and Christopher Booker’s plot types), and the homeopathic analyses of Jan Scholten, Rajan Sankaran and colleagues. The conclusion is that bipolar energies infuse the universe and influence human perception of our own lives and the world around us.

This book sets out in two parts a single esoteric worldview discerned across many fields of human enquiry, old and new, with focus on four main topics: myths and stories, the periodic table, the Yi Jing, and complementary medicine (homeopathy). It is aimed at readers with interests in comparative mythology, esoteric thinking, and alternative perspectives. The central speculative hypothesis is that the unfolding of matter, life and consciousness, operating at multiple levels throughout the cosmos, is reflected in both ancient and modern models relating to natural rhythms, celestial cycles and human self-development. Skywatching is proposed as a key source for concepts and applications shared between myth and science along these lines. In particular, evolutionary processes are mapped in recurrent patterns featuring parallel pairing and symmetrical balance for archetypes of the chemical elements, distributed through the rows and columns of the periodic table. Detailed analogies for these elemental archetypes are drawn between the 64 Yi Jing hexagrams, the components of narrative frameworks (including Joseph Campbell’s monomyth and Christopher Booker’s plot types), and the homeopathic analyses of Jan Scholten, Rajan Sankaran and colleagues. The conclusion is that bipolar energies infuse the universe and influence human perception of our own lives and the world around us.

Courtenay Raia's The New Prometheans centres on anxieties surrounding the Victorian division of knowledge into different fields, particularly the emergence of the notion of science and religion as "separate spheres." The analysis focuses on William Crookes (1832-1919), Frederick Myers (1843-1901), Oliver Lodge (1851-194 0), and Andrew Lang (1844-1912), all of whom participated in the Society for Psychical Research, founded in 1882 to scientifically investigate psychical phenomena. Each of them constructed novel theories that incorporated elements of what would now be considered the natural sciences, religion, philosophy, and psychology. Raia describes them as intellectual bricoleurs, and she lauds their courage in confronting "the new psychological demands of modernity (3)." The book begins by discussing the rise of scientific naturalism and the arrival of Spiritualism, whose appeal Raia explains empathically. Chapter Two is concerned with the English chemist William Crookes's investigation of séances and spirit photography and his affair with the medium Florence Cook. It also discusses the repercussions of his involvement in psychical research for his career. Chapters Three and Four turn to Frederick Myers, the English poet-scholar and founder of the SPR. Raia discusses his religious upbringing, renunciation of faith, diverse philosophical pursuits, relationship with Josephine Butler, conversion to Christianity, and subsequent disillusionment. Myers eventually embraced Crookes' scientific Spiritualism and developed a theory of the "subliminal self." Chapter Five treats the English physicist Oliver Lodge, his investigations of the phenomena produced by the Italian medium Eusapia Palladino (1854-1918), and what Raia terms Lodge's "ether theology." Chapter Six concerns the Scottish scholar, author, and literary critic Andrew Lang. In addition to his interest in psychical research, the chapter discusses his championing of the "romantic" over the realist in literature, and his theory of religion. The final and seventh chapter explores recent research projects that are in the spirit of the SPR, such as the investigation of near-death experiences. Raia insists throughout that the reader take psychical researchers seriously rather than speculate about their possible credulity or deceit. My first reaction to this was that I am perfectly aware of the importance of heterodoxy in the history and culture of the nineteenth century. Upon reflection, however, I concluded that although historians have made these points before, they are worth making again, especially since Raia makes them in such a compelling way. What seems self-evident to me is not so to my students, who are usually firmly convinced that "secular" simply means the opposite of "religious," and who are keen to distinguish between science and pseudo-science in the historical context. These can be surprisingly tricky obstacles to overcome, and I would not hesitate to recommend Raia's engaging study as part of the antidote. My favourite chapters were the ones about Myers, which begin, dramatically, with his attempted suicide. A problematic character, Raia nevertheless manages to be sympathetic. Take, for example, the following observation:

For many years there have been phenomena such as apparitions of the living, photographs of the living at a distance, near-death experiences, emanations of light from the dying, fog, or incorporeal “doubles,” which have suggested the existence of a spirit, or “subtle body,” able to separate itself from the physical body, sometimes bringing consciousness with it. This idea also underpins the projection model for Out-of-Body Experience (OBE) cases, which has an interesting history (Alvarado, 2009, 2011, 2019). Here I briefly review that concept through the analysis of a work written by the Italian student of psychic phenomena Ernesto Bozzano, published for the first time in 1934 (Bozzano, 2020) and recently re-edited in the original language by Golem Libri, a young publishing house specializing in “psychic” topics. In discussing this book my approach is mainly historical. I hope both to help modern readers to get more acquainted with Bozzano’s work, and to highlight those passages that...

Due to untimely death of Carlos S. Alvarado, this review has been revised by Massimo Biondi, who tried to express, to the best of his knowledge, the thought of the author. It is for this reason that it was decided to maintain the author's voice in first person, as it was originally.

This paper surveys the different uses to which history has been put, and the different historiographical perspectives adopted, in psychical research and related enterprises since the mid-nineteenth century. It contrasts recent historiographies of the science with those ...

of content is confined to a brief Appendix A, supplemented by a further Appendix C giving the publication and subscription history of the periodical and locations of surviving issues. (Appendix B brings together some of the contemporary press responses to the periodical on its first publication.) At the same time, they will find much to interest them in Logan's work, as will readers who seek to become better informed on the broader area of women's cultural and political work and writing in colonial India.

The study sheds critical light on one of the issues in the contemporary scholarly study of esotericism in general as it directly affects Central and Eastern Europe's place within the domain. The term "Western" in quotation marks its problematic nature that leaves Central and Eastern European esotericism, among many other geolocations, out of its premises.

Luigi Pirandello's application of spiritual modes of thought ranging from Eastern mysticism to the modern Western movements of Theosophy, Spiritualism and Parapsychology. Using Antonio Illiano's seminal work, Metapsichica e letteratura in Pirandello (Metapsychics and Literature in Pirandello) as a point of departure, my research incorporates the various philosophical, scientific and spiritual frameworks Pirandello utilized to describe the psychological and spiritual crisis pervading man's experience in the modern world. One of the most interesting facets of my research is the unequivocal parallel between Pirandello's spiritual approach and the ancients teachings of Hinduism and Buddhism. Very few Pirandello scholars address the spiritual essence that encompasses Pirandello's entire collection. This is surprising considering the author's ingenuous admission of the fundamental role of the spirit in the genesis of his artistic creation as well as the explicit presence of spiritual elements that pervade his aesthetic theories and fictional stories. This dissertation contributes to the limited scholarship of this nature and aims to iii stimulate further discussion regarding the connection between Pirandello's work and Buddhism. The historical research and close analysis of the selected texts in this dissertation provide ample evidence that beyond being an index of Pirandello's fluency with current, cultural, scientific, and spiritual trends, these systems of thought provide the very scaffolding on which Pirandello's works are constructed. This discourse allows the reader a deeper understanding of the spiritual evolution of the Pirandellian protagonist and offers insight to the author's artistic process as guided by the spirited imagination, substantiating my claim that Pirandello's oeuvre must be read through a spiritual lens. It is with sincere gratitude that I thank my advisor, Elizabeth Leake, whose guidance, brilliance, encouragement, and support made this project possible. I would like to sincerely thank Andrea Baldi, Paola Gambarotta, Damaris Otero Torres, and Donato Santeramo for their participation on my committee. Thank you to the entire faculty, staff, and my colleagues of the Department of Italian at Rutgers University. I especially thank Alessandro Vettori, David Marsh, Andrea Baldi and Laura S. White for their invaluable instruction. A special thank you as well to Carol Feinberg and Robin Rogers for facilitating absolutely everything. I would like to acknowledge Michele Lettieri for giving me my start as an Italianist at Middlebury College. Thank you also to Pietro Frassica, Daragh O'Connell and John Barnes of the Pirandello Studies Society, the Pirandello Society of America, and the Istituto di Studi Pirandelliani. A special thank you to Joyce McFadden for all the support over the years.

‘The human head had already entered a retrogressive evolution...The processes that run parallel to sense perception and thinking are breaking down processes, processes of destruction... We are here pointing to the abyss of nothingness in human evolution which man must cross when he becomes a free being. It is the working of Michael and the Christ-impulse which makes it possible for him to leap across the abyss’.

The aether, proposed to be a subtle primordial substance, was once thought to permeate all space and provide a substrate through which electromagnetic waves, such as light, traveled. It is a powerful explanatory concept that has roots in ancient indigenous knowledge and helped unify our understanding of the physical world for centuries. The Michelson-Morley experiment is often credited as being the death blow to aether, but this is not exactly so.  These experimental results were not nil, but showed approximately 25% of the expected 30m/s speed of an "aether wind" from Earth orbiting the Sun.  The aether was abandoned largely because of Einstein's Special Relativity Theory, which contradicts an absolute frame of reference. Nonetheless, Einstein came to accept a new version of the aether to explain parts of his famous theory of General Relativity.     Although the static aether of the 19th century was abandoned, with the advent of quantum mechanics, new dynamic models o...

The emergence of Religious Studies, or “the science of religion”, as it used to be called in Great Britain, in the late 19th century is accompanied by a competition with other discourses interpreting religion. The present article (abridgment of a longer study) analyses the social and cultural place of Victorian and Edwardian Religious Studies as a project only partially existing in a University context, but mainly in learned societies, as the Folklore Society, and promulgated by scholars with a predominantly non-theological background. As such Religious Studies were both influenced by and competing with occult and esoteric groups interpreting religion and searching for a basic unity of religions as first of all the Theosophical Society, but also by and with other groups. 1 The Emergence of a New Science of Religion in Great Britain: Introductory Remarks How do new sciences come into being? “We are all, we who work at these topics, engaged in science, the science of man, or rather we...

Artikel ini bertolak dari suatu keyakinan bahwa kendati kebudayaan sebagai suatu keseluruhan yang kompleks berkecenderungan mengontrol, ia juga memberikan peluang dan jalan bagi pembentukan karakter dan bagi proses spiritualisasi penciptaan dalam evolusi. Pertumbuhan dan perkembangan suatu bangsa bergantung pada orientasi dasar dan kebiasaan yang telah tertanam lama dalam kebudayaan. Namun di sisi lain, terutama mengacu pada pemikiran Sri Aurobindo, itu juga bergantung pada pencarian dan pencerahan spiritual dalam dunia batin individu . Maka artikel ini mengajukan pentingnya keseimbangan antara dunia luar dan dunia dalam, dunia interaksi sosial dan dunia individu. Yang menjadi fokus dalam artikel ini lantas : apakah kebudayaan memang memungkinkan transformasi individual dan sekaligus transformasi masyarakat?

Evolution Esotericized: Conceptual Blending and the Emergence of Secular, Therapeutic Salvation by Erin Prophet The esoteric appropriation of evolution in the sense of self-improvement or personal transformation can be better understood by combining a historical approach with conceptual metaphor theory. The dissertation first evaluates the esoteric appropriation historically as a type of religious response to Darwin. It works backwards from the twentieth-century counterculture (as identified by Theodore Roszak in 1975), to show that esoteric “evolution” had its roots in the late nineteenth-century intersection of spiritualism, Theosophy, and psychical research, with particular emphasis on Hermetic traditions. The historical analysis centers on a fine-grained evaluation of the evolutionary thought of Helena Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, and a comparison of her system with that of Frederic W.H. Myers, an important contributor to both psychical research and early psyc...

One of the things I try to describe in the new edition of the New Experience of the Supersensible, in the central fifth chapter, entitled 'the knowledge drama of the Second Coming', is to show how the results of the spiritual research, presented in this book, come about through the meditative praxis based on the meditations given in the books Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, Occult Science, the general main exercise, and some of the individually given meditations from the first esoteric school at the beginning of the 20th century. After some 30 years, this seems to me an important part of the knowledge drama, that can be shared with the readers, to demonstrate, how these meditative exercises are utilized, and how they led to the results of the research presented in the book.

Sri Aurobindo's Topography of Consciousness Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga aimed not only at what he called the realization of the Divine, but also at an integral transformation of human nature under Divine influence. For this exceptionally wide aim, he developed an exceptionally deep and comprehensive frame for understanding human nature. His concepts, as discussed in this paper, must be understood on their own terms, which are often different from meanings attributed in the conventional language of Western psychology. This paper provides a detailed account of Sri Aurobindo's conceptualization of the various centers of identity and of the vertical and concentric dimensions he used to describe the structure of the personality. It explains the importance Sri Aurobindo gave to the location where one places one's consciousness, and indicates why he argued that consciousness is not only awareness, but also force. Finally, this paper describes how Sri Aurobindo visualized the still ongoing evolution of consciousness and humanity's role in it.

Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck (1776–1858) was the president of the Academy Leopoldina in Breslau from 1818 onwards. His professorship was prematurely terminated for political reasons in 1852. Nees von Esenbeck’s interest in magnetism and vitalism can be traced back to his time lecturing in botany at the University of Erlangen. Within just four years (1817–1821) he published sixteen texts in the Archiv für den thierischen Magnetismus. In his later publications Nees points towards links between North American “spiritualism” and “vitalism”, referring to both as phenomena that are excluded from the scientific system. The present paper examines continuities and discontinuities concerning magnetism, spiritualism, and the academy during Nees’ presidentship of the Leopoldina (1818–1858). The role of “religion” and its study are also considered. For Nees, religion, spiritualism, Mesmerism, medicine, and science do not belong to different spheres but to one reality. The best ex...

The reason for the complete lack of interest of most people in the current new revelation of Michael and Christ (not to mention the active opposition...), can only be understood if we realize that true spiritual science leads to this revelation in a fully conscious way. Our dead earthly intellect, that we cherish so much, and our visionary fantasies and speculations, that we cherish even more, cannot lead us to this revelation. Only the brightest and exactest, liveliest consciousness, developed by means of the spiriutalization of thinking, feeling and will, opens the portal to this revelation.

T is with a sense of the seriousness of the issues involved that I set myself to the task of writing a book on psychic
attack and the best methods of defence against it. The undertaking is beset with pitfalls. It is hardly possible to give
practical information on the methods of psychic defence without at the same time giving practical information on the
methods of psychic attack. It is not without reason that initiates have always guarded their secret science behind closed
doors. To disclose sufficient to be adequate without disclosing sufficient to be dangerous is my problem. But as so
much has already been made known concerning the esoteric teachings, and as the circle of students of the occult is
becoming rapidly wider every day, it may well be that the time has now come for plain speaking. The task is not of my
seeking, but as it has come into my hands, I will do my best to discharge it honourably, making available the
knowledge which has come to me in the course of many years' experience of the strange by-ways of the mind which the
mystic shares with the lunatic. This knowledge has not been attained without cost, nor, I suspect, will the divulging of it
be altogether free from cost, either.
I have endeavoured to avoid, as far as possible, the use of second-hand material. We all know the person who has a
friend whose friend saw the ghost with her own eyes. That is not of very much use to anybody. What we need is to
have the eye-witness under cross-examination. For this reason I have not drawn upon the vast literature of the subject
for illustrations of my thesis, but have preferred to rely upon cases that have come within the range of my own
experience and which I have been able to examine.
I think I may fairly claim to have practical, and not merely theoretical, qualifications for the task. My attention was first
turned to psychology, and subsequently to occultism as the real key to psychology, by the personal experience of a
psychic attack which left me with shattered health for a considerable period. I know for myself the peculiar horror of
such an experience, its insidiousness, its potency, and its disastrous effects on mind and body.
It is not easy to get people to come forward and bear witness to psychic attacks. Firstly, because they know there is very
little likelihood of their being believed, and that they will be more likely to earn themselves a reputation for mental
unbalance than for anything else. Secondly, because any tampering with the foundations of the personality is an
experience of such peculiar and unique horror that the mind shrinks from the contemplation of it and one cannot talk
about

The 2nd edition of The New Experience of the Supersensible becomes much bigger than I thought, so I decided to write a shorter prelude, to introduce it in a more accessible way. This I plan to do in my next book, "The Three Meetings, Christ, Michael, Anthroposophia". The passages below is from Chapter 4: The Meeting with the Etheric Christ, part I: The Given Christ Experience. It tries to describe an important aspect of this meeting, in which a new state of consciousness is formed: Spiritual self-consciousness.

The Mother & Sri Aurobindo are prominent persons of the 20th century but are not very well known. The vast amount of work that they have left behind should be a fertile field for scholars and researchers. They took up strands of knowledge from various sources and synthesised them into an Integral whole. Besides, they enunciated the path of Integral Yoga from which ensues Integral Education. Sri Aurobindo's Ontology has also been described as Integral Advaita apart from the overall spirit of Integralism that suffuses his socio-political thought. The basis of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy is evolution. He is confident that man is capable of taking a leap into the next level of consciousness. Rather, he describes it as an evolutionary inevitability. His assertions on the next human species and divinisation of the body are drawn from the Vedic notion of immortality. These claims may sound improbable but there's a lot of merit in believing in them.

So intimate this praxis becomes, that we experience the interrelations between the forces of growth and decay, life and death, so intensely, that they become fully embodied in our whole being. And we experience what Rudolf Steiner said, that ‘for the investigator in the realm of spiritual life, they [life and death] are getting ever closer ... Man sees how death weaves itself into life, how the dying and the sprouting process merge with one another...man learns in this way of spiritual research to know death already in life, and life in death.'