Theta Healing, Magic, and the Big Picture

I just finished a 3 day Theta Healing course taught by Simon Rose. It was truly amazing, one reason because this technique is so potent, another because I am at the time in my life where I am ready for this transformation!

I should explain how I came to do this course.

In Living Now! magazine (a Melbourne-based free New Age newspaper/magazine that comes out once a month; paid for by ads) some months back there was an article on Gangaji, which connected me with Gangaji's vibration. As a result i was inspired to go to her talks, as a result of that I received Ramana Maharshi's transmission of Light (via Gangaji), which connected me with Ramana, which changed my life on a spiritual level (a sort of inner initiation, really).

Well naturally my ego got enthusiastic for spiritual development - or rather the glamour side as Alice Bailey would say, because it's all ego and the effective being that gets stirred up - and I started looking through Living Now! seeing what other amazing things might be advertised.

This doesn't mean that ego is bad btw (it's important to ditch those pop guru guilt trips), because it is ego that leads us beyond ego!

Anyway I was looking through the promotional pages on healing modalities; there were all sorts mentioned there, but I wanted something radical, and none really grabbed me until i noticed the write-up on Theta Magic (taught by Simon Rose). I don't know why, but there was something that powerfully drew me to this. So even though the full course is a lot of money for someone of scant financial means (notice the money issue?) I signed up for the February one.

So I thought, with a bit of trepidation, ok I'll phone and sign up. I sensed a lot of power through Simon's voice on the phone which i took as a positive sign

Then in the following days all sorts of unexpected minor crises and what not regarding real life came up (and it's funny because if these had come up first i would not of signed up)

In the meantime I did the Awakening the Dreamer symposium (eco-spiritual) which helped me to reconnect with the Alternative movement (it's all happening...), but on a higher turn of the spiral (greater emotional and spiritual maturity) then when i was involved & going to confests and so on 20+ years back.

In the following Friday and weekend I did the Theta Healing course taught by Simon. There were about 30 people there all up, but i seemed to be the only one with serious esoteric knowledge. The consciousness was very New Age, of the level of "What the bleep" and "The Secret"; the sort of thing that many people even in the Integral movement would be cynical of and/or consider naive.

Indeed I am constantly struck by the very different consciousness in each group of which I am involved or seem to gravitate too.

Science is empirical and pragmatic but open to possibilities on the physical level. Very few people who are not scientists can think scientifically.

Transhumanism is a subculture that is physicalist and visionary and head-centered with a religiously millennialist approach, but they do get the science right. There is a lot of overlap with since fiction, visionary elements in IT, certain elements in geek culture, etc.

The Wilberian Integral movement is a small Consciousness-studies / "new age" / post-postmodernist subculture that again (like the previous two) is very head centered and theory-orientated, but also has a more spiritual perspective (via Buddhism mostly) as well as empiricism, but tends to rely unhealthily on a single individual (you know who ;-) whose science is not always the best. But at least they are usually not limited by physicalism, and their vision of a grand synthesis is inspiring. Yet this same movement may also be very cynical of the New Age (despite a number of common themes and some overlap), just as is Science and Transhumanism. There is some overlap and sharing of common cause and perspective, but also rivalry with, the Eco-Spiritual movement (which is denigrated as "green meme").

The Eco-spiritual movement, Great Turning, etc, is social, ecological, shamanic spiritual (rather than Buddhistic), very much heart centered, or head and heart, rather than just head as in the previous categories. They constitute a sort of evolution of the mainstream.

Animal Liberation is heart-centered and concerned with what I call the "great taboo"; which is the human animal's inhumanity to non-human animals. Heart centered again, this is true compassion because it isn't guided by anthropocentric religious biases. Outsiders find it strident, and as a result the movement alienates, unlike the Eco-Spiritual movement which gathers people to its cause (e.g. Al Gore). But if you can sense the pain of non-human animals (who are identical to us on an emotional level) you can understand why animal activists are strident. To me, people involved in groups like PETA are the real heros in this world.

The New Age movement is Heart Centred, basically like the best of religion, really a sort of eclectic and tolerant Alice Bailey ascended masters interpretation of Christianity, at its best very optimistic, and open to all sorts of possibilities of consciousness. As Wouter Hanegraaf says, the New Age is a sort of public esotericism. They constitute a sort of mainstream movement, people who are disillusioned with both physicalism and conservative religion.

Finally, the very small Integral Yoga (Sri Aurobindo & The Mother) movement is head and heart both, based on a very powerful spiritual path, but tends not to mix with other groups. But those who want the highest teaching of all (okay I'm biased!) this is the place to go.

Going from the Integral Movement to Eco-Spirituality to Theta Healing presneted me with a sort of whirl of the vast range of possibilities and realities that people attune to. And it is my goal to incorporate them all. Not in a head way (anyone of reasonable intelligence who reads up on this stuff can do that), but in a head and heart way. This is something no-one has ever done before. So each program that I do or group I associate with reveals something new, something more to be brought together in a new paradigm that is the New Consciousness.

So to return to the Theta Healing program. It went for three days, all day Friday, Saturday, Sunday, 9 am to 6.30 pm, so you are looking at three full days. I rode there on my pushbike, which was enjoyable exercise. Everyone was very nice. Apart from myself only one girl there seemed to be full on into environmental passion, and it seemed (although maybe i'm wrong because i didn't talk to everyone) no-one other than me into either sentient rights or traditional esotericism. That's what i mean about all these groups are different, insular, each with their own group consciousness, with very little overlap. If you are a sociologist you would find it fascinating. As I did. But really i was there to learn and grow and develop new spiritual skills.

The teaching and the whole course is based on Vianna Stibal, who is the lady who founded the whole thing on the basis of "channelled" communication. So you have to work with her thoughtform. It's like anything; if you want to learn Kabbalah you work with the Kabbalah thought from. And so on. Simon is a student of Vianna (who has in turn has become a master in his own right, with his own students) and the course is based on her book Theta Healing, with just the essentials (you get the book free with the course but having done the course you don't really need it, although it is good for reference i suppose).

It is sort of funny, because the first day i was there i thought, oh ok, this is just more New Age stuff, interesting sure but i can't afford it and wasted my money. The best thing is a girl who at the end (when we practiced angel reading) gave me a reading that was really astonishingly relevant (this girl i feel has great potential, but when i told her that she seemed a bit taken aback; i guess many people need time to mature grow into their talents and abilities)

It took till the second day before I really "got it", and by the third day before I could usefully map Vianna's cosmology onto my own in order to work with it (because it's very hard using a system if you can't relate it to your own system). Even so i was able to do the exercises, and amazed to get results. Having done that, and being able to get results, I considered and still consider this course to be priceless. I would and do unhesitatingly recommend it to anyone who would like to develop these abilities. The techniques I learned and practical knowledge I gained through the course cannot be simply bought in learned in a book)

It's also worth commenting on the energy dynamics of the group. As a result of the practices and the energy, everyone's aura was expanded. I felt high and my consciousness was expanded, and this became progressively so throughout the course, especially days two and three. I read in an issue of Living Now! a story by a regular columnist who describes being a workshop junkie. And this is true, there is an amazing energy in these groups, even non-New Age ones like say the Eco-spirituality one. But it is more so if you have a New Age group that is doing energy work over a period of time. Then the chakras are opened (although you can open your chakras doing extreme sports, anything exhilarating, as well) and the "vibration" of the aura is raised, especially if it is a good group with a powerful technique and a good teacher.

By the end of the course I had learned the technique and how to get into the state of consciousness, and now it's just a matter of practicing it on a regular basis. Because it's the same as everything, if you don't practice you lose the power (this is what happened with me with Reiki. It's not that i lost the power because once you are initiated you always have it, but it is dormant because i don't practice it and don't receive it.

Theta Healing is however very different to Reiki. It was only, as I said, by day 3 that I really "got it". That's when I realised that Theta Healing is actually a form of Magic (so Simon is completely correct in referring to his program as Theta Magic). That is, Theta Healing works on the level of the Pure Mental Plane. By influencing and changing beliefs, one therefore can change the reality that that belief creates and maintains. Without the belief providing the structure and support, the reality disappears, or rather is replaced by a new reality that is the result of more wholesome and positive beliefs. That is how I explain it, which is compatible with Simon's explanation on his website, even if, as you can see, he uses a different conceptual framework. Note that this is an old idea; one finds it in the Hermetic occult tradition, in Christian Science, New Thought, much of the New Age movement, and so on. What is unique about Theta Healing, in relation to these other systems, is the ease and power and scope of the whole thing. It really changed mny whole persectoive, and showed me things I never thought would be possible. Although one might mnake analogies with John Lilly in Programming and Meta-programming the Human Bio-computer, but it is the question of actually applying this in practice.

Note also that Theta Healing is not the same as Creative Visualisation. In Creative Vidsualisation you have to painstaking build up a thoughtform, keep pumping it with positive thoughts and affirmations, and so on. And if you don't get to the negative beliefs and doubts in the subconscious the whole thing is a waste of time (If you don't have strong subconscious blocks in those areas though, you get excellent results!). Theta Healing however works by identifying with the dynamic aspect of the Divine - in this system called "The Creator" or "Creator of All That Is", and simply witnessing the change the Creator makes. Since the Creator does all the work, it is so much easier; all you have to do is bring the topic to consciousness. It is like quantum physics, where the simple act of observation affects the outcome of the experiment (as in the famous wave-particle double slit experiment, a favourite of New Age cosmology). Regardless of whether the New Age interpretation of split beam experiments is right or not (and I don't know enough about the subject to tell), the Theta healing technique does work, and can be used to not just re-program the subconscious, but also to affect physical reality. Animal healing is also possible, and this cannot be explained in terms of placebo affect. So we are dealing with a real phenomenon.

All of which really was confronting to me (in a positive way) because I had always thought of things having to be difficult. This was just a negative and limiting belief on my part. Sure creative visualisation, which works on the level of astral thoughtforms, is, or can be, difficult. But Theta Healing works on a totally different level, a higher metaphysical plane so to speak, and hence in a very different way.

I also used to think that the "Power zone" was the Astral/Affective plane. But now i can see that the Mental plane - the plane of beliefs - is an even more potent region, because it reorganises and directs the astral/emotional and hence the physical (following the law of emanation that each higher plane is the cause of the next one down).

I won't go into the details of relating and integrating Vianna's cosmology with that of Theosophy, Theon, Sri Aurobindo, Muktananda, etc. This is better addressed in my books. There is the same basic sequence of physical, subtle/astral, causal/mental, etc, with the Divine supporting all. As for the New Age monotheistic theology ("Creator of All That Is") that is the heart of the technique and identified with the highest plane, basically it is the same as reconciling Ramana and Aurobindo. Once you go beyond the surface mental thoughtform of right and wrong and hierarchies of systems, you realise it is all aspects and facets of the same Divine, variously manifested, and you can access the Divine as you conceive of it, as well as fitting this particular aspect of the Divine into the whole picture. Again, this is something better left for my book(s). But I am working with the hypothesis that Theta Healing works from an aspect of the Supramental; the Supramental being first brought down to Earth and into the physical consciousness by Mirra (The Mother) in 1956. As explained in Mother's Agenda Vol.1, p.69:

FIRST SUPRAMENTAL MANIFESTATION
(During the common meditation on Wednesday The 29th February 1956)

This evening the Divine Presence, concrete and material, was there present amongst you. I had the form of a living gold, bigger than the universe, and I was facing a huge and massive golden door, which separated the world from the Divine.
As I looked at the door, I knew and willed, in a single movement of consciousness, that ‘the time has come', and lifting with both hands a mighty golden hammer I struck one blow on the door and the door was shattered to pieces.
Then the supramental Light and Force and Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow.

I work on the "Aurocentric" hypothesis that event was the turning point of the transformation of the Earth. Everything that has happened since, the Counterculture (1960s), New Age movement (1970s onwards), the Great Turning (as defined by Joanna Macy & - building upon her thesis - David Korten, 1960s to present and ongoing), Harmonic Convergence (New Age metaphor - very big in the late 1980s, now forgotten), Photon Belt (ditto), Twelve Strand DNA (New Age materialistic metaphoric reference to awakening of subtle body in late 1990s-early 2000s, now not often mentioned), etc etc are further events on the gross and subtle levels relating to that. Theta Healing I would envisage as one more. This might seem surprising in view of the fact that Vianna's underlying cosmology seems to be New Age Judaeo-Christian with some Amerindian reference, but that's just the external thoughtform. It's on the level beyond thoughts and thoughtforms and structures that changes take place. So one should be careful not to be misled by thoughtforms and dogmas and collective beliefs associated with them.

Consider:

o The way that one's belief shape reality, and the importance of changing beliefs is central to both Theta Healing and Mother's Agenda (the latter more in the context of the Yoga of collective transformation).
o Both mention transforming the Cells of the body
o Reprogramming the Subconscious
o Physical immortality (this theme also comes up in Leonard Orr's Rebirthing movement, Babaji etc, i remember this from the late 1980s but it doesn't seem to be a part of Rebirthing as a whole)
o Collective Transformation - for Sri Aurobindo and Mirra this is central to the Supramental transformation. In the New Age there is refernce to Lightworkers, etc, this was mentioned by Simon and by others there, not sure if its in the book, but the idea is that the transformation cannot be individual, it is the same with the "Great Turning" towards a deep ecological and environmentally sustainable ethic and civilization.
o A process that is totally new and unfolding and developing all the time
o The fundamental Divine reality as including everything in the sense of integral (Gebser, Mirra) or "All That Is"
o Everything is achieved by the Divine (i.e. it isn't like creative visualisation where you have to do the hard work of visualising etc)

Of course some of these theses like reliance on the Divine are common to Mystics down the ages. But what I am saying is that this is more a "family resemblance" (see Wittgenstein's answer to the problem of Universals), just like correlating Sri Aurobindo and Wilber. Similarily, although I mention Theta Healing here (because I did the Course), one can mention other teachings and modalities and so on as well. e.g. Rebirthing which introduced the possibility of physical immortality (through Yoganada's concept of an immortal yogi Babaji). It is however also very important not to confuse physical immortality alone with Supramentalisation, that is the mistake that Osho Rajneesh made. We are dealing with teachings here that are very subtle and profound, and cannot be reduced to simplistic cliches. Rather one needs to look at the bigger picture, to get the full "family resemblance".

Thus transformation can occur on many levels, and all are necessary. It is necessary to heal the person in order to heal the planet, and vice versa. It is necessary to ensure sentient rights for animals as well as human rights for people. You can't try to improve the human world if you don't improve the condition of non-human animals. Because everything is interrelated and interconnected. The slaughtering of innocent animals in abattoirs further creates man's inhumanity to man, both on the level of cultivating insensitivity and cruelty at the level of the outer personality, and on the occult level of adding suffering to the subtle planes. Similarly the environment has to be saved if humanity can be, but also, in the present stage of the Earth's evolution, vice versa. And all levels have to be considered. So transformation and practice can be on the level of physical activism, changing society as a whole, etc, on the subtle physical level with Feng Shui, the etheric use of energetic healing (Reiki, Pranic healing), the affective/astral level working with the physical, as in Neo-Paganism and Hermeticism, the personality level of cultivating calm, compassion, etc as in Buddhism, the mental use of magic (changing beliefs and hence changing reality) as in Theta Healing/Theta Magic, and the higher spiritual-mental and Divine supramental level of Integral Yoga, to mention just a few.

The Big Picture cannot be just an intellectual and theoretical synthesis, as in the books of Ken Wilber, valuable as they may be in showing that such a synthesis is possible (as long as one is careful to avoid making the synthesis too inflexible or intellectual in structure). It has to be a practical synthesis, of all these principles working together, as they do as aspects and manifestations of the one underlying Divine Cause (which I interpret as mentioned above by The Mother's description of the descent of the Supramental).

In this way, transformation and healing of the world is a work of both individual and collective yoga, requiring constant practice. The more one practices, the more one achieves and the stronger one becomes.