The Strange Case of Emanuel Swedenborg

Emanuel Swedenborg was a renowned metallurgist and mystic in the mid eighteenth-century. Among his many scientific accomplishments, Swedenborg displayed an astonishingly modern understanding of brain functioning.

Two hundred years before the neurosciences became a scientific discipline, Swedenborg correctly described sensation, movement, and cognition as functions of the cerebral cortex, the function of the corpus callosum, the motor cortex, the neural pathways of each sense organ to the cortex, the functions of the frontal lobe and the corpus striatum, circulation of the cerebral fluid, and interactions of the pituitary gland between the brain and blood.

On the afternoon of June 19, 1759, he arrived in Goteborg, Sweden. At a dinner party that evening, he suddenly announced to his friends that he was having a vision of Stockholm burning, about 300 miles away. Later that evening he told them that the fire stopped three doors from his home.

The next day, the mayor of Goteborg, who heard about Swedenbog’s surprising pronouncement, discussed it with him. The following day, a message from Stockholm arrived and confirmed that Swedenborg’s vison was correct.

David Bohm on Intelligence

The following quotes are excerpts taken from “Wholeness and the Implicate Order“, written by physicist David Bohm. Emphasis mine.

“It is at least implicitly understood, everyone accepts the notion that intelligence is not conditioned (and indeed one cannot consistently do otherwise). Consider the example of an attempt to assert that all mans actions are conditional and mechanical… Either it is said that man is basically a product of his hereditary constitution, or else that he is determined entirely by environmental factors.

One could ask of the man who believed in hereditary determination whether his own statement asserting his belief was nothing but the product of his heredity… One may ask of the man who believes in environmental determinism whether the assertion of such a belief is nothing but the spouting off of words which he was conditioned by his environment…

Indeed it is necessarily implied, in any statement, that the speaker is capable of talking from intelligent perception, which is in turn capable of a truth that is not merely the result of a mechanism based on meaning or skilled acquired in the past…

The actual operation of intelligence is thus beyond the possibility of being determined or conditioned by factors that can be included in any knowable law. So, we see that the ground of intelligence must be in the undetermined and unknown flux, that is also the ground of all definable forms of matter. Intelligence is thus not deductible or explainable on any branch of knowledge (e.g. physics or biology). Its origin is deeper and more inward than any knowable order of definable forms of matter through which we would hope to comprehend intelligence.

What, then, is the relationship of intelligence to thought? Briefly, one can say that when thought functions on its own, it is mechanical and not intelligent, because it imposes its own generally irrelevant and unsuitable order drawn from memory. Thought is, however, capable of responding, not only from memory but also to the unconditioned perception of intelligence that can see, in each case, whether or not a particular line of thought is relevant and fitting.

One may perhaps usefully consider here the image of a radio receiver. When the output of the receiver ‘feeds back’ into the input, the receiver operates on its own, to produce mainly irrelevant and meaningless noise, but when it is sensitive to the signal on the radio wave, its own order of inner movement of electric currents (transformed into sound waves) is parallel to the order in the signal and thus the receiver serves to bring a meaningful order originating beyond the level of its own structure into movements on the level of its own structure. One might then suggest that in intelligent perception, the brain and nervous system respond directly to an order in the universe…“

Tumors That Melt Like Snowballs on a Hot Stove

The following is an excerpt from the book “The Holographic Universe” by Michael Talbot:

Understanding the role such factors play in a placebo’s effectiveness is important, for it shows how our ability to control the body holographic is molded by our beliefs. Our minds have the power to get rid of warts, to clear our bronchial tubes, and to mimic the painkilling ability of morphine, but because we are unaware that we possess the power, we must be fooled into using it. This might almost be comic if were not for the tragedies that often result from our ignorance of our own power.

No incident better illustrates this than a now famous case reported by psychologies Bruno Klopfer. Klopfer was treating a man named Wright who had advanced cancer of the lymph nodes. All standard treatments had been exhausted, and Wright appeared to have little time left. His neck, armpits, chest, abdomen, and groin were filled with tumors the size of oranges, and his spleen and liver were so enlarged that two quarts of milky fluid had to be drained out of his chest every day.

But Wright did not want to die. He had heard about an exciting new drug called Krebiozen, and he begged his doctor to let him try it. At first his doctor refused because the drug was only being tried on people with a life expectancy of at least three months. But Wright was so unrelenting in his entreaties, his doctor finally gave in. he Gave Wright an injection of Krebiozen on Friday, but in his heart of hearts he did not expect Wright to last the weekend. Then the doctor went home.

To his surprise, on the following Monday he found Wright out of bend and walking around. Klopfer reported that his tumors had “melted like snowballs on a hot stove” and were half their original size. This was far more rapid decrease in size than even half the strongest X-ray treatments could have accomplished. Ten days after Wright’s first Krebiozen treatment, he left the hospital and was, as far as his doctors could tell, cancer free. When he had entered the hospital he had needed an oxygen mask to breathe, but when he left he was well enough to fly his own plane at 12,000 feet with no discomfort.

Wright remained well for about two months, but then articles began to appear asserting that Krebiozen actually had no effect on cancer of the lymph nodes. Wright, who was rigidly logical and scientific in his thinking, became very depressed, suffered a relapse, and was readmitted to the hospital. This time his physician decided to try an experiment. He told Wright that Krebiozen was every bit as effective as it had seemed, but that some of the initial supplies of the drug had deteriorated during shipping. He explained, however, that he had a new highly concentrated version of the drug and could treat Wright with this. Of course the physician did not have a new version of the drug and intended to inject Wright with plain water. To create the proper atmosphere he even went through an elaborate procedure before injecting Wright with the placebo.

Again the results were dramatic. Tumor masses melted, chest fluid vanished, and Wright was quickly back on his feet and feeling great. He remained symptom-free for another two months, but then the American Medical Association announced that a nationwide study of Krebiozen had found the drug worthless in treatment of cancer. His cancer blossomed anew and he died two days later.

Wrights story is tragic, but it contains a powerful message: When we are fortunate enough to bypass our disbelief and tap the healing forces within us, we can cause tumors to melt away overnight.

In the case of Krebiozen only one person was involved, but there are similar cases involving many more people. take a chemotherapeutic agent called cis-platinum. When cis-platinum first became available it, too, was touted as a wonder drug, and 75 percent of people who received it benefited from the treatment. But after the initial wave of excitement and the use of cis-platinum became more routine, its rate of effectiveness dropped to about 25 to 30 percent. Apparently most of the benefit obtained from cis-platinum was due to the placebo effect.

 

Critics and Cholera

The following is an excerpt from the book “The Biology of Belief,” by Bruce H. Lipton, PhD.

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Buried in exceptional cases are the roots of a more powerful understanding of the nature of life – “more powerful” because the principles behind these exceptions trump established “truths.” The fact is that harnessing the power of your mind can be more effective than the drugs you have been programmed to believe you need. The research I discussed in the last chapter found that energy is a more efficient means of affecting matter than chemicals.

Unfortunately, scientists most often deny rather than embrace exceptions. My favorite of example of scientific denial of the reality of mind-body interactions relates to an article that appeared in Science about nineteenth-century German physician, Robert Koch, who along with Pasteur founded the Germ Theory. The Germ Theory holds that bacteria and viruses are the primary cause of disease. A modified version of that theory is widely accepted now, but in Koch’s day it was more controversial. One of Koch’s critics was so convinced that Germ theory was wrong that he brazenly wolfed down a glass of water laced with vibrio cholera, the bacterium Koch believed caused cholera. To everyone’s astonishment, the man was completely unaffected by the virulent pathogen. The Science article published in 2000 describing the incident stated: “For unexplained reasons he remained symptom free, but nevertheless incorrect.”

The man survived and Science, reflecting the unanimity of opinion of Germ Theory, had the audacity to say his criticism was incorrect? If it is claimed that this bacterium is the cause of cholera, and the man demonstrates that he is unaffected by germs… how can he be “incorrect”?  Instead of trying to figure out how the man avoided the dreaded disease, scientists blithely dismiss this and other embarrassing “messy” exceptions that spoil their theories. Remember the “dogma” that genes control biology? Here is another example in which scientists, bent on establishing the validity of their truth, ignore pesky exceptions. The problem is that there cannot be exceptions to a theory; exceptions simply mean that the theory is not fully correct.

The World of Rocket Science and Witchcraft

 

There is more to the practice of Paganism and the development of science and technology than a lot of historians would not go into detail about. The occult means “that which is hidden,” so it doesn’t get talked about much unless you bring up cults or the paranormal.

This changes when you get to important historical figures like Jack Parsons. Parsons was an inventor and engineer who pioneered in rocket engineering and propulsion. He attended several universities, including Stanford, but never attained any degrees. He invented the first rocket jet, and pioneered in both liquid and solid fuel rockets. He was a founder of organizations like JPL and Aerojet Engineering Corporation. At one point in his life, Parsons was also involved with Marxism, and was being investigated by the FBI under the suspicion of espionage. After his death, he was later recognized as one of the most important figure in the US space program, and they have since named a crater on the moon after him.

Parsons was apart of the new Thelemic cult called the ‘OTO’, that Aleister Crowley invented. He converted after reading a few of Crowleys books and had eventually met Crowley and knew him on a personal level. Parson’s involvement in magic took up a huge chunk of his life, one of his biographers noting that

[Parsons] treated magic and rocketry as different sides of the same coin: both had been disparaged, both derided as impossible, but because of this both presented themselves as challenges to be conquered. Rocketry postulated that we should no longer see ourselves as creatures chained to the earth but as beings capable of exploring the universe.

Similarly, magic suggested there were unseen metaphysical worlds that existed and could be explored with the right knowledge. Both rocketry and magic were rebellions against the very limits of human existence; in striving for one challenge he could not help but strive for the other.” – Pendle, George (2005). Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons

America’s first rocket-assisted aircraft, developed by Parsons.

In the mid 1940’s, Parsons befriend L Ron Hubbard (before he founded Scientology), and the two performed magical rituals together that they called the “Babalon Working“. Later, after their ‘working’ was done, L. Ron Hubbard would defraud Parsons out of his life savings.

Parsons wrote several books, with such cuddly titles like  “the Book of Babalon” and “The Book of the Antichrist.” The aim of his famous ‘Babalon Working’ was to, in no unclear language, summon the whore of Babalon to the earth mentioned in the Book of Revelations, to aid in bringing the end of all things to come. He believed he succeeded and said;

Its manifestations may be noted in the destruction of old institutions and ideas, the discovery and liberation of new energies, and the trend towards power governments, war, homosexuality, infantilism, and schizophrenia.

This force is completely blind, depending upon the men and women in whom it manifests and who guide it. Obviously, its guidance now tends towards catastrophe.

Parson was seriously involved in dark magical ceremonial rites. The obituary of his local newspaper described him as “handsome 37-year-old rocket scientist,” and was “a man who led a double existence [as] a down-to-earth explosives expert who dabbled in intellectual necromancy.” What he wrote down about what he did may be too dark for the average person to read, because its its gruesome, shocking, and very weird.

At one point at the end of his life, he saw himself as the Anti-Christ. His wife, an artist, created a portrait of him as the angel of death. Later in life, because of accusations of espionage, he no longer got to work in the rocketeering field. He died in an accidental explosion in dealing with certain chemicals at his house, working on a project for a film set. Few have speculated that this may have also been either an attempted suicide or assassination.

Parsons standing over a used Rocket-Assisted Take Off cannister

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As a personal anecdote to go with this story; Back in the day when I had a desktop completely dedicated to a Voluntary/Grid computing program called BOINC, developed by Berkeley -which used mass computation for crunching scientific data- I once spoke to a man over the internet who said that he worked at CERN. He relayed to me that he used to be a reader of Crowley and a Thelemic practitioner (for those who may not know, is a modern practice of paganism). While he was very staunch about his previous involvement with the occult, he relayed to me that he quit everything that had to do with it and focused primarily at CERN, because, and I quote: “physics is the new magic”.

I have not been able to confirm that any of that is true- If he really was a physicist working at CERN and if he did in fact practice occultism. The other options are that he was insane or just a troll- possibly all of the above. I have absolutely no bias either way- But I am sure that would make a great plot in a book somewhere.