The following is an unpublished article by a Canadian-based author, who has followed Douglas' career for three decades. Anyone interested in scientific research of Deep Trance Meditation (DTM) will find this article illuminating. Note that the opinions expressed are those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect those of Douglas Cottrell.

Date:   5/28/2007 1:19:07 PM ( 17 y ago)

During one "test" of Douglas, done in a hotel room in Toronto, Ontario in the early 1990s, a medical doctor read the names and addresses of five of his patients - as was done with Edgar Cayce - and Douglas, to the doctor's satisfaction, discussed the symptomology of each. Students of Cayce lore will immediately observe that this test duplicated a key test of Cayce at a turning point in his own career. At the tail end of that session, the MD, a specialist in diabetes research, mentioned to Douglas, still in DTM, that they were testing two protocols for pancreas transplants - one with extraneous fatty tissue still attached, and one without. Which would do better? "The one with the fatty tissue," Douglas replied. Several weeks later, the good doctor was kind enough to contact the writer to confirm that Douglas was correct.

All of which begs the question, how much time could have been saved, if scientists and researchers sought Douglas out before their tests, to solve these problems...in advance?

And then there is the plain, won't-go-away fact that what Douglas does is not very sexy or "Hollywood." In fact, for many experiencing the DTM for the first time, it is downright spooky and uncomfortable. For someone dealing with the DTM for the very first time - assuming you choose to be present in the room and not be read "remotely" - the impact can be jarring.

So, the question begs for an audience, is there any "capital-S" Science to this?

i. Mindreach

The simplest - but clearly incomplete - explanation for what Douglas does is to classify it merely as an exponent of the MINDREACH phenomenon, named after the book of the selfsame name by Doctors Targ and Puthoff. This seminal work, published in 1977 by Delacorte Press, established via respected, double-blind testing protocols, that is is possible to "send" the mind of one person to a given geographical location, and have that person report on what he or she "sees" there. In its own way, it is probably the strongest single argument for ESP advanced within the last century. Ironically, it received little press coverage when first published, and even less interest from the public at large.

[Note: the experiments in the original MINDREACH series used map co-ordinates almost exclusively to provide a "scent" for their psychics. Later iterations of these protocols, however, were much looser - using names, dates, historical events, etc. Douglas - as did Cayce - relies almost exclusively on the individual's name, but with a street address to "boost" the signal, or amplify the name, if you like. Why a name? Because in the annals of esoteric literature dating back to the beginning of history, one's name is the most intimate connection an intuitive can latch onto. This is why, for example, the so-called elite "psychic societies," so prominent in 19th Century Europe, required new members to immediately assume a pseudonym, or initials, and never use their given names. This was to protect them from enemies known and unknown. The children's fairy tale, "Rumpelstiltskin" tells the same story in a different, but equally compelling way - that discovering someone's true name is the ultimate way to control that person.]

In fact, it would be almost a decade later before the implications of what Drs. Tang and Puthoff had achieved reached the mass (media) mind. In 1989, the top-rated US drama TV series "Columbo" devoted an entire episode to a murderer who "fooled" the US government into hiring him by falsely replicating the MINDREACH phenomenon.

So, as to the question whether life imitates art, or vice versa, the answer may possibly be found in the mid-1990s, when no less than Time magazine did a surprise cover story "exposing" the US government's top-secret 10-year-old resarch program into deploying the MINDREACH protocol for miltary purposes. [The headline read "The Vision Thing - Ten Years And $20 Million Later, The Pentagon Discovers That Psychics Are Unreliable Spies."] Students of conspiracy theory were delighted to note that, simultaneous to the Time "expose," was the news that the US government had determined there was, seemingly, no real value in the protocol, and was promptly disbanding its programs.

Coincidence? Disinformation? True or not, it was clear, nonetheless, that the US was in fact disbanding something, as, over the following years, a plethora of hereto unknown writers began to come forward, each claiming they had been within the "inner circle" of the US Government's Remote Viewing Project (one of its many names) and, via their books, proceeded to share their top-secret experiences with millions of readers (such as the popular Psychic Warrior, and its sequel, both written by ex-remote viewer and self-proclaimed spy, David Morehouse).

Of course, to simply label Douglas' talent an extension of MINDREACH ultimately begs the question. It tells us how he gets to where he is going, but not how he finds the information with which to answer questions about what he has found. For that, we can perhaps benefit from several hints that Edgar Cayce himself left in his own trance sessions. Many times, replying to the suggestion that he was "channeling" (something that Douglas has been accused of as well), Cayce would reply with the information that, in fact, it was his own "superconscious" that questioners were in contact with.

The ARE itself, the research organization founded by the Cayce family after Edgar's death in 1945, says of their founder: "His own higher self - or his superconscious mind - was the source of the information. So it was not a nonphysical being speaking through Edgar Cayce, but his own superconscious mind that generally obtained the information from the individual getting the reading, or from what he called the Ak[h]ashic Records. These records can be briefly described as a history of every soul since the dawn of creation." Unfortunately, other than the above-quoted synopsis, the ARE has not expounded further on what precisely this ability might be, or why the hypnotic trance is the "key" to unlocking it. To solve that riddle, we must dig a bit deeper.

ii. The Superconscious

The "superconscious" as a concept is as old as Man, and appears to have been a valid precept of some of the oldest religions on the planet - including that of Tibet, India and Egypt - where it is identified with the following names: High Self, Overself, High Conscious, and Superconscious, among others. Abstractly, it represents a specific portion of the construct of a living being. Not just any portion, mind you, but the most important portion - the "soul" portion, if you like - the part that is immortal, the part that transcends time and space, the part that is in touch with the corresponding "ourselves" of all other beings, living or dead, that have ever existed, or will ever exist.

All fine and dandy, of course, but our era is, first and foremost, an "I'm from Missouri, show me!" era. So, the question has to be asked, what "practical" or "tangible" evidence do we have that this energy exists, or, more importantly, that it can provide the basis to explain the Cayce/Cottrell phenomenon? First, let's look at the collected works of Max Freedom Long, originally published in the mid-20th Century, and recently reprinted, who spent his entire life in Hawaii studying Huna.

What is Huna? Huna is believed to be one of the oldest - if not THE oldest - practicing religions on the planet. Its roots are unknown, just as are the origins of the Hawaiian people themselves. Hawaiian legends not only speak of a time when their islands were a single land mass - a postulate that staggers the imagination, and is beyond the scope of this article - but also, according to Long, when the natives shared common beliefs and rituals with the ancient Egyptians. With the advent of aggressive Christianity in the late 19th and early 20th Century, Huna was banned by local government and went underground. That, however, did not prevent Long, during his lifetime, from contacting the living Huna masters - "kahunas" - and attempting to preserve their beliefs in his books.

Convinced that Huna was not only the oldest surviving religion, but also the most practical, Long revealed how, centuries before Freud took his first breath, Huna broke down the human condition into three distinct parts: the Conscious, the Subsonscious, and the Superconscious. The Conscious is that we use from the moment we wake up each morning to the moment we go to sleep at night. It is functional and logical but lacking in two characteristics otherwise essential to our survival - memory and emotion. For those, we need access to the Subconscious, which is the root of both these attributes. Unfortunately, lacking in logic, the Subconscious is far too easily influenced, and much too quick to lose perspective. Were it not controlled by the Conscious, Long suggests, we as a race mightn't last until Tuesday.

[When one can't recall a thing or a name, and it "pops" into awareness minutes or hours later, even when we have "consciously" lost interest in the original question, that, according to Long, is an example of the Conscious accessing data from the Subconscious. This is a semi-mechanical process, he suggests, which takes some time to complete. Long wrote long before the invention of the computer, but had he been aware of the technology, it is likely he would have readily espoused the metaphor of "database access" to describe this process.]

The Superconscious was another kettle of fish. In language eerily reminiscent of Cayce readings (done early in the 20th Century, but almost certainly unavailable to Long, whose research represents a completely independent "thread") Huna masters talked about a "common point" of awareness at which not only did all minds, living and dead, past and future, "merge," but at which all information from all sources was available as pure stream of consciousness.

If, therefore, there was any portion of an individual's life-energy that survived death (a topic, which, it seems, has somehow reached the mainstream in recent years!) then that portion would have to be mated in some way to the Superconscious, the pure-soul portion [which, of course, opens the doorway to a further discussion of reincarnation, or "the continual and sequential use of the soul of human identities to achieve specific goals." Like Cayce before him, Douglas in DTM can, on demand, "read" the incarnation record of any individual who asks for it, and even provide eerily specific How-Did-He-Know-That? "points of resonance" between the current life and the past one. This is a topic, of course, beyond the scope of this current work!].

Back to our search for a "connection" between the Deep Trance process and access to the Higher Self. Turns out there is one! And a big one indeed! All of Long's lengthy works on Huna emphasize his conclusion that the "most sacred secret" of Huna was also, by no mere coincidence, the most well-kept secret of the mystical and psychic societies of earlier eras - namely, that to access the Superconscious, you first had to go through the Subconscious; as, for example, by an altered state induced by drugs, ceremony, prayer, ritual, or - of course - hypnosis. [You could never reach the Superconscious from the Conscious waking state. On this, Long was adamant. You couldn't get there from here!]

Interestingly - if this hypothesis is correct - then, in theory, this phenomenon is much greater than the Cayce/Cottrell iteration of it, and there should be some evidence of DTM-like manifestations outside the areas of pseudoscience and intuitive medical readings. And there is!

iii The Master Mind

For many years. among practicing psychologists and psychiatrists, there were anecdotal stories circulating about attempts to "integrate" patients with Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) going "peculiarly" awry. The gossip was that, every now and again, during personality reintegration, a dominant or master personality would emerge under hypnosis, which seemed to not only be fully aware of all the other personality fragments - itself unusual - but also seemed to be aware of the doctor, the doctor's own family, the doctor's personal friends, and, generally, a veritable encyclopedia of information it should not have had access to in the first place, under any conditions.

Sound familiar? Praciticing physician Dr Ralph B Allison, MD, even gave a name to this phenomeon - "the Inner Self Helper," or, alternatively, the "Multiple Mind" or the "Master Mind" - and wrote a book about it [Allison, Dr Ralph B, Minds in Many Pieces, CIE Publishing, 1998]. Surely, even to the casual reader, what Dr Allison found sounds suspiciously like a precursor to the DTM phenomena of Cayce and Douglas Cottrell!

And finally - the most difficult thesis of them all - and the one almost completely lacking in objective proof - there is the notion of "cellular intelligence" (i.e. an awareness and push toward capital-L LIFE within each of our cells). Douglas the person, not the trance reader, has said of his own work on more than one occasion, "It's as though the body really wants to get rid of [the disease] and all it needs is a little push." In the opinion of this writer, cellular intelligence, notwithstanding that we have no proof here - totally anyway - may well turn out to be the "missing link" in all this. Science gives little credit to the so-called "autonomic" nervous system, other than to suggest that it can keep your heart beating and your lungs breathing without conscious effort. But could there be more?

The metaphysical literature is rife with anecdotal stories of people who were "warned" of potential health problems in dreams, and thereby given the opportunity to prepare for the coming crisis. Warned by whom? Where did the messages originate?

In 1991, Irish-born electrical engineer Michael Sheridan had a series of peculiar experiences which caused him to devote the rest of his life to exploring purely spiritual themes. He founded the Aisling Dream Institute in Dublin, and continues, to this day; his mission to show people how understanding their dreams can change their lives. On the subject of warnings in dreams, Sheridan is very clear, "When we ignore aspects of our functioning, our dreams will redress the balance by giving `symbolic' expression to these aspects, while at the same time attempting to give healing for the `conditions' which cause us to ignore these aspects in the first place."

Pursuing this premise to its logical conclusion, we can envision an invisible intelligence within each of us that monitors various conditions and attempts to repair them. Sometimes, it simply can't - and asks us for our help - usually in a dream, a sudden insight, or perhaps a "hunch." But, compared to what Douglas does in the DTM, that is a flawed communication. When Douglas "reads" someone in the DTM, it is more than possible he is plugging directly into that invisible and benevolent intelligence, and working with it to solve the problem.

And there is even more evidence, albeit equally circumstantial. Today, one of the hottest new "holistic" practices is known as Kinesiology. Kinesiology was originally developed by Dr George Goodheart, a chiropractor, in the early 1960s. He discovered the relationship between Chinese meridians (also used by practitioners of Chinese medicine, including acupunturists) and muscle groups, glands, and organs in the body. By testing the resistance of a muscle, when a small amount of pressure is applied to it, weaknesses and imbalances in its corresponding meridian could be discerned. To say that this technique is "popular" would be an understatement. There are currently practitioners in every corner of the globe serving millions of patients. Even MDs are involved. The science of Kinesiology is currently taught as a full-credit course in dozens of North American universities. However, the term "Kinesiology" is not standardized from practitioner to practitioner. While some practice the more mundane forms, many are experimenting with a more esoteric practice, whereby potentially inhibiting foods, gems, metals, or other items are placed in the hand of the patient to determine if muscle groups weaken on contact. If they do, patients are advised to avoid the item, or foodstuff, in the future. Nowhere, however, in the literature on the topic, is there much of an explanation for this aspect of the doctrine. If pressed, practitioners suggest that the "subconscious" of the patient has made contact with the item and has reacted to it. Sound familiar?

This is, of course, a significantly cruder version of what Douglas does, and is most obviously comparable to Douglas' ability to give chapter and verse on the good/bad effects of a vitamin or medicine when held in the hand of a person being "read." [The late Brenda Carlin, wife of the famous comedian, once flew to Canada for a private session with Douglas. In the course of her reading, she held in her hand a new and experimental drug she had recently been prescribed, and asked Douglas to, first, "locate" it, and then to list the positive and negative effects it was having on her body. After listing the positive effects, Douglas said one of the negatives was that it was constricting small arteries, reducing blood flow to the limbs, and making Brenda feel cold. At this point in the session, Brenda jumped out of her chair and said that, on the plane from LA, she had asked for a blanket for the first time ever, and had been feeling cold since she had started to take the medication!]

And the explanation in both instances has to be - must be - the same. A distinct and present intelligence at the cell level of the host, capable of being "contacted." There is simply no other answer that will pass muster. Where does all this lead? And can we form a working hypothesis on the functioning of the DTM from all this?

iv. Merging of Minds

We can. For one who is prepared to work hard at achieving deeper and deeper levels of dissociation, to truly abandon the ego in the search for a larger consciousness, hypnotic induction may indeed be the "gateway" to not only higher powers of mind (such as remote viewing, ESP, empathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc.) but also to that "merge-point" at which all consciousness and knowledge is shared - but at which, ironically, time and space themselves would have very little meaning. This "merging of minds" in the absence of time/space constraints is, exactly as Cayce said, the key.

Of course, as with all great riddles, sometimes finding the answer only ends up raising new questions. If "merging minds" provide the answer, then whose minds, which minds, minds from where? Both Cottrell and Cayce are fully in agreement on this point also - the answer is "all minds," independent of the cycle of birth and death as we know it.

Which brings us back, full circle, to the issue of the Superconscious or Overself - the only metaphysical "launch pad" from which these sorts of contacts are believed to be possible, according, at least, to the most ancient texts on the planet. Interestingly, in the classic Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (Second Century BC) the Superconscious is specifically referred to, literally, as the "rain cloud of all knowable things."

But let us not fool ourselves - these topics can never be proved conclusively, any more than one can prove, in a laboratory setting, the existence of the soul, or life after death [with full apologies to the Hollywood writing community, who, nonetheless, seem to be able to accomplish these impossible tasks every few weeks, within the pages of a movie or TV script!]. What we can do, however, is create a working postulate and then see if the evidence supports it.

And, in fact, that is precisely what appears to be happening. In a special reading done by Douglas for this article, I took the opportunity to "challenge" Douglas, yet again, by, in the course of the reading, asking him to locate a herbal tea, held in the questioner's own hand at the time of the session, given me by a Chinese acupuncturist who spoke almost no English.

"What effect on my body is this substance having," I asked.

"Give us the name," said Douglas in DTM, after acknowledging that he had "located" the herbs held in my hand, while the question was being asked.

"I don't have a name. It is a Chinese compound, and I was not given the name."

There was a three- or four-second pause; always an indication that "something is happening" in the context of the DTM. "We have consulted with a mind knowledgeable in Chinese herbs," said Douglas. "This compound has the quality of thinning the blood, increasing blood flow, and allowing those substances that weigh heavily in the system - the drosses, the excesses - to be more readily carried to the organs of elimination."

The next day, I asked the acupuncturist what the tea was for. "Improves circulation," was his succinct two-word answer.

Similarly, working with the DTM, we must resist the urge to allow the strangeness of the phenomenon to put us off what is really important. We must, at the same time, expand our cosmology not only to include the Superconscious, and those so-called Akashic Records - a cosmic chalk board, if you like, that records everything we do and think - but we must, at the same time, learn to give up our fear of death, for in Douglas' world, ideas and the souls that created them never die.

At one level - a level arguably outside the scope of this work - Cayce and Cottrell are clearly demonstrating, via their unique abilities, the immortality of the soul, beyond our parochial notions of time and space, to a degree that leaves even those intuitives who "talk to the dead" standing in the cosmic dust, so to speak.

v Scope of Deep Trance Meditation

Finally, although Douglas' contribution to humankind from his talent is clearly within the medical field, it must be underscored that the questions capable of being fielded in the context of the DTM are not necessarily limited, as to scope or topic. Quite the contrary. In the case of Cayce, for example, 85% of his readings were medical or health-oriented. With Douglas, the number is much higher, perhaps in the 98% range. But that 2% can get pretty darn interesting.

In 1982, for example, Douglas signed on as "consultant" to a film project then in the works entitled "Lorne Greene's Atlantis," a docu-drama on the lost continent, hosted by the famous TV Western star. To understand how this came about, you need to recall the context of the day. Author Jeff Goodman had just completed his fascinating work on the use of Remote Viewing to assist in finding lost artifacts on archeology digs [Goodman, J. Psychic Archeology: Time Machine to the Past. Berkeley Publishing Group, 1980], and the book had been surprisingly well received by the media of the era. Even better, unlike other so-called "intuitive" phenomena, this form of experimentation produced easily verifiable results. If a psychic or viewer said, "dig here to find a 12-inch golden widget," and digging in that precise spot revealed such a widget, then the value of the technique was clearly hard to question.

This series of circumstances also enabled us to push Douglas, and the DTM, to limits never tested before. For example, during the film project, published best-selling author David Zink [Stones of Atlantis, and others] was preparing a book about an individual who, under hypnosis, regressed to a past life and claimed to speak "Atlantean." Zink was intrigued with Douglas' ability and asked for assistance. The tapes were first passed to a professor of linguistics at the University of Toronto, who concluded, in writing, that the language was "not glossallallia" (i.e., not "fake") and had roots in both proto-Semitic and Native American dialects. Still, no one could make sense of the tapes.

When these tapes were played to Douglas in DTM, however, he claimed to be able to translate them from Atlantean to English! [Students of eclectic pseudoscience will want to note that Douglas, in DTM, specifically said that the dialect or accent on the tape was considered to be "low-caste Atlantean, not well educated." A check with Zink later revealed that his hypnotic subject claimed to have been a low-ranking soldier/guard, stationed at one of the farthest points of the empire!]

In another experiment, Douglas, in DTM, was directed to locate an individual who, at the precise time of the reading, was holding in his hand a printed facsimile of the strange, indecipherable glyphs then (and currently) on file with the official government Archives in Rio de Janeiro [Manuscript No. 512, Biblioteca Nacional]. The glyphs were recorded by a 1734 Portuguese expedition into the Matto Grosso of Brazil. The survivors of the trek claimed to have discovered a "lost city" with peculiar markings on the buildings. These glyphs were also the inspiration for the "lost" expedition led by Colonel Percy Fawcett almost two centuries later, in 1925, when he set to rediscover that same city [aside: the Harrison Ford character in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was based on the life of Col. Percy Fawcett].

In the DTM, Douglas claimed to be able to translate these glyphs. He said they were essentially "building names" but written in "different languages" because the lost city in South America from which they came was a "melting pot" for "ancient cultures from both the Atlantic and Pacific areas." Although Douglas was given no warning before the session, this dove-tailed with comments of scholars who had previously studied these glyphs and came away confused, because, even though they supposedly all came from the same "lost city," the language was not consistent from one to the other - giving rise to speculation that the Portuguese adventurers, who had barely made it out of the jungle alive, were "delirious," or had made the whole thing up.

In another instance of "pushing" the DTM, a very educated and intelligent woman came to Douglas for a dream interpretation. As was the case with Cayce, Douglas cannot only interpret dreams via the DTM, but does so with specific reference to the singular and specific "archetypal library" of the individual being read. That is quite a feat all by itself. In this particular case, however, the client had forgotten the ending of the dram and was frustrated. This writer was present during the session and, on a hunch, suggested that Douglas locate the "record" of the dream, based on the arcane notion that even thoughts can, in theory, leave a residue on the universal parchment, or those mysterious "Akashic Records" that Cayce himself had referred to. Douglas then proceeded to fill the missing ending of the "forgotten" dream, which the woman agreed was fully accurate. After filling in the blanks, Douglas proceeded to interpret the dream which, in this particular instance, was quite anticlimactic.

And then there is the "sound and feel" of the DTM. It can be unsettling, even to a seasoned experimenter. Douglas' natural tone, grammar, and syntax all sharpen up significantly. Even more extraordinary is the speed at which information leaves his lips (lips which, given his low respiration and heart rate, should not be able to talk at all). While today, aspiring toastmasters and speakers consider themselves lucky if they can get through a dinner salutation without an "um" or "err," Douglas, in the DTM, dumps information on the listener in an almost non-stop, contiguous fashion, pausing only to breathe.

And for those who choose to attend the DTM in person and discourse with him (they don't have to, of course), there is the disturbing phenomenon of having to interact with someone who not only knows more about most things than you do; but, to an uncomfortable degree, knows more about YOU than you do. [Often, when doing the DTM with the client in the room, Douglas will demur from the written questions the client is nervously reading from, and instead move ahead, offering to answer "the question held in the mind of the questioner."]

And finally there is the fact that Douglas, as did Cayce, handles the DTM entirely in the first person plural. The explanation for this? Here is an "urban legend" popular within the para-psychological community - and one which is probably based in fact. A man spends years learning to acquire a deeper and deeper trance state to experience "freedom from attachment." One day, with his wife and friends in the room, he achieves his goal. His wife then asks him, in the trance, if he has a message for her. He opens his mouth to speak and then seems to get "stuck" with his mouth wide open. This lasts for several minutes, until his worried spouse panics and brings him out of the trance. When awake, she asks him what happened. The fellow remembers the whole event (itself fairly uncommon, as most trance practitioners do not remember anything of the experience) and explains, "I tried to say the words I LOVE YOU, but there was no word for I."

When you clear the mind of ego, there is no word for I!

So what can we learn from Douglas and the DTM? Perhaps the solution to the riddle is not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but rather do what we can with the information the readings provide. Over the years, quietly, without fanfare, Douglas has done about 25,000 viewings on health and disease. What emerges from these is an approach to human well-being which is refreshingly clear and unfettered with dogma.

Take arthritis for example. Here is a condition that tortures millions, yet which, like most major illnesses, is listed in the literature as "idiopathic" (meaning "cause unknown"). On the condition itself, Douglas is typically succinct:
"...the body tends to store toxins or sediments in every nook and cranny. They can be placed on the shelf, so to speak, out of the way of the important organs and the endocrine system. The affected individual is unable to secrete or otherwise eliminate these; therefore the body does the next best thing. In order to protect the heart, liver, kidney, lungs, etc., the body inserts these into spaces between the joints. The waste then tends to adhere and harden onto the bone, and ultimately encase the joint. This is rheumatoid arthritis."

For a young woman who suffered from a constant ringing in the ear, another medical mystery, Douglas offered an explanation that had nothing to do with the ear:
"The answer lies in an examination of the lymph system. There is a degree of movement of (lymph) fluid in the inner ear. Understand that vibration or sound travels better through fluid than through air. Therefore, a blockage anywhere within the system, whether in the chest or the throat or the inner ear, makes the lymph fluid "grind" its way through the nodes. Assuming additional congestion within the ear, or at the base of the brain, this is again amplified, and causes the ringing."

Nor, as we have already seen, do Douglas' viewings need to be client-centric. Here, for example, his view of how the body works "at the cellular level" can provide us with invaluable insights of benefit to a very wide audience:
"Crack and cocaine toxify the system and decrease the functioning of the immune system. Residues are left in the cells and in the bone. Ultimately the body will react negatively to more and more things in the day-to-day environment. Joint pain, reproductive difficulties, respiratory problems and weak hearts, cardiovascular troubles will develop early in life. Mental health, sanity, will suffer. Expect also hair loss, reduced vision, loss of smell and taste as well. Definitely premature aging. Life-span will be shortened considerably."

When asked if aluminum causes Alzheimer's disease, Douglas, in DTM, opined on more than one occasion:
"There are many causes. If you would regard all the causes as a pie, and you would cut that pie into three equal slices, then aluminum would represent two of the three slices. The body is conditioned to deliver elements, minerals, directly to the brain to assist in the electrical processes which take place there. Unlike other, beneficial substances, aluminum, once it reaches the brain, is not dissolved by normal processes. A residue remains, which is toxic to the cells, causing, if you like, a short-circuiting of the electrical processes. This residue eventually pollutes not only the brain matter, but even the bone of the skull itself. If you were to test for aluminum in the bone of people with this condition, you would find aluminum present."

Concerning Alzheimer's specifically, scientists have noted peculiar scarring in the brain matter of advanced patients, but have no explanation. Douglas does: "The `holes' in the brain that are seen in the pathology of [Alzheimer's patients] are the result of the decomposing brain tissue, caused by the deposits of aluminum. At the cell level, aluminum causes these tissues to actually be `burned' away over a period of time - but this is figure of speech only, as the brain cannot feel pain."

Today there is an ongoing controversy about the effect of power transmission grids on the local community. On this topic, Douglas had this to say:
"There are disturbances that go about and along these wires. The electrical current that is transmitted does not, in fact, go `through' these wires, but rather spirals around them. Any curve or bend in hydroelectric wires will cause some distortion or leakage into the air. That is why the towers are laid out in a straight line; to minimize these effects. Notice that when you drive under hydro lines with your radio on, you will find a spot of severe interference. This is the spill-over. These waves, similar in many respects to sound waves, will affect the cells of people who expose themselves to them. Specifically, some of the normally more active cells are slowed down, while other, more inactive cells are speeded up. The effect of this imbalance, generally, is a lowering of the immune system, permitting a greater likelihood of disease and susceptibility to viral conditions. Cancers are a direct result of these distortions."

And finally, as was precisely the case with Edgar Cayce, a "cosmic" sense of humor may invariably pop up, even within the complex cosmology of a DTM reading. For example, when doing a session on a long-term client who had "broken all the rules" by allowing mental depression to aggravate his physical problems (at the time of the reading, the poor fellow needed a cane simply to get from the bedroom to the bathroom), the session commented almost absently, "the body doesn't need a recovery, it needs a rescue!"

vi. Legacy of Deep Trance

So, can anyone do what Douglas Cottrell does?

Seems a simple question, but it is not. The correct answer is "Yes... and no!" The more detailed answer....

Yes. And in fact, the readings do insist on this, over and over. The ability to contact the High Mind, as taught in many esoteric religions (Huna being the clearest) is available to everyone; and, in fact, we are all in touch with this portion of our mind on a regular basis, although - compared to the clarity of Douglas' connection - the "robustness" of the link, to use modern computer lingo, is perhaps not what it should be.

No. No, for the same reason that Bill Gates is Bill Gates and the rest of us are not. Each time you adjust the Preferences in any computer program you own, or adjust a Control Panel in Windows, you are essentially repeating the very same skill that made Bill Gates the number one richest man in the world. Except that, in all probability, you will not attain the same lofty heights he did. Why? Drive, ambition, circumstance, timing - these are all factors. In the case of Douglas, he was "tipped" at an early age, by a credentialed trance-medium, to the fact that he had a latent talent in this field. Motivated by a powerful desire to save his child, he then threw himself into a training period that lasted literally years. He persevered. He struggled. He learned to put up with the physical, societal, and emotional stresses involved with "being asleep" for most of his working day, and being called names by critics and fools. He not only tolerated these events but, much as a pearl is produced by "stressing" its host, he used them as an opportunity to improve, and, ultimately, become virtually the best at what he does.

None of the above should be taken to say that it is not worthwhile, or interesting, or educational, for each of us to pursue these skills at our own pace, under our own terms. For clearly ours is a society sadly lacking in intuitive, empathetic, or common-sense skills. Were it otherwise, we would perhaps not be aggressively poisoning ourselves and our planet, while at the same time trying to obliterate selected portions of our neighbors.

Consider this for a moment: scientists and clinicians use the term "twilight sleep" to describe that portion of the sleep cycle where the "ball is handed," so to speak, from the conscious to the unconscious mind, and then true sleep immediately follows. For the average person, in the average night, this process is both seamless and transparent. However, every now and then - and this has happened to almost each of us at one time or another - we become "aware" of the process itself, and the effect is so jarring and startling that it wakes us up. Generally, if one had to describe the effect to a third party, one would note that the mind was suddenly filled with images or objects or people or events that were "illogical," or (this is the phrase most often used) "I just don't know how that stuff got into my head."

Now consider this: that unsettling transitional phase or twilight sleep referred to above, when the reassuring control mechanism of "logic" is removed from our mental processes, and the subconscious takes over, is the very realm - the domain - in which Douglas spends (and has spent) most of his adult life!

Those who have studied trance mediums (and the research is scant, and spotty) have suggested that, if the flow of questions to the medium should cease or stop, the process is actually "painful" to the medium because, lacking the conscious thought process associated with the ego, the medium is floating on an "ocean of information," without a clue as to where to swim to next. The very introduction of the next question itself gives purpose and meaning to the process and allows the medium to "breathe" if you will. [Note: Douglas in DTM almost always ends an answer with a request for yet another question. He says "Direction?" There is method to this.]

Just as there are those who attempt to emulate Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, you can, with work, possibly achieve some of Douglas' skill on your own. Over the last decades, "schools" that attempt to teach this have come and gone. These organizations effectively teach you how to separate your conscious from your subconscious and, for the most part, their "graduation exercises" generally involve some sort of psychic reading on a total stranger. Interviews with graduates of these programs suggest that the intensive training they offer is useful, and most students, to their own shock and amazement, do pass the graduation exam. However, follow-ups also suggest that, without constant, day-to-day use, these newly learned skills soon atrophy and disappear.

- R.A.

 

Popularity:   message viewed 3058 times
URL:   http://www.curezone.org/blogs/fm.asp?i=974301

<< Return to the standard message view