You are here: index > News>Leading Edge>Noman Don Ph.D.

CONDITION THREE

It is about 8 P.M. Sunday evening and we have been working for three hours. The sun is setting through the summer clouds, and on the forty-eighth floor of River Plaza we have a panoramic view of Chicago easing into a July evening. The room we are in would normally be the living room of a two-bedroom, high-rise apartment. Instead, it is filled with laboratory equipment used for scientific experimentation involving brain waves.

At one end of a worktable, the only cleared table surface in the room, Olof and I are seated on laboratory chairs. Olof sits at the head of the table and I sit to his left, at a right angle to him. A black velvet cloth covers this end of the table and a twenty-four inch, white boarder is marked on the velvet. The interior of this square is our working space or “performance platform,” in the language of experimental psychology. A video camera is mounted from the ceiling, its focus centered on the square, so as to tape everything that occurs there. Two decks of playing cards are inside the square. They are our tools.

or...
Play high bandwidth QuickTime video clip 2Mb. (May take several minutes to download)   Get QuickTime plugin

My apprenticeship begins

Olof has just asked me to shuffle one of the decks. These were new decks that I had just purchased and brought with me inside my attaché case. During the seventh shuffle he asks, in his soft Swedish accent: “What card would you like to find?”

I pondered a few seconds, then said “ten of clubs.” Olof then said, “Where in the deck is the ten of clubs?” I attempted to let the answer “float into my mind,” as Olof has patiently put it to me countless times. Several numbers drifted in and out of my consciousness; finally, thirty-one stuck. I told him and he asked me to check the thirty-first card.

I started at the top of the deck, turning over one card at a time, expecting to see my card at each turn. When I had turned over half the deck without encountering the ten of clubs my tension level mounted. As I turned over the thirty-first card and laid it on the table, I was astounded to see the ten of clubs. Olof said to me: “You seem surprised!” I was, even though many similar things had happened over the past four months, when we started this phase of our work.

The man seated to my right is Olof Jonsson.

My background—how I got to where I am

It is now October 1988. I have been attempting without success, for the past six months, to tell the story of what led up to that July 1986 evening, and what has happened since.

In many ways, this story is one of failures. There were failures of many projects—to leave me feeling dissatisfied, even though the projects were successful by ordinary standards. And then there were projects that simply didn't make it.

Thus, the path to that July evening was to a large extent a process of elimination of what was not suitable.

There was nothing in my background that prepared me for anything but a materialistic worldview, either in my upbringing or my education. The first part of my university education was in the physical sciences, in physical chemistry and physics; I received a Master of Science degree in these subjects from the University of Chicago in 1960. For the next ten years I worked at various jobs, mainly involving computers. I received my Ph.D. in psychology from the Union Institute in 1974.

Parapsychology

I looked into parapsychology and found that the arch critics of parapsychology claimed—and still claim—that there never has been a conclusive, well-designed experiment performed, supporting the existence of psi.  The methods of science are supposed to be capable of impartially deciding such issues, but just as in everyday life, ideas that challenge deeply held convention are usually rejected swiftly.

Most confirmed skeptics have never seriously reviewed the experimental literature in parapsychology. If they did, they would find that there are currently several scientific journals in the field. The standards for accepting articles for publication are at least as high as in most scientific journals.  In a review of the field by Professor Robert Rosenthal of Harvard University, who is not a parapsychologist, he concluded that the quality of the research articles in the parapsychology journals is in general superior to those in other fields of science [reference being researched].

Most of the authors of these articles hold academic or research positions at universities or research-oriented organizations. Most of these people have the Ph.D. or a comparable degree. Given all this, and the fact that hundreds of studies have been published reporting significant psi, to claim, as committed skeptics do, that there never has been a study published that was not fatally flawed is certainly prejudiced.

At this time most scientific parapsychology is a laboratory science which investigates very small manifestations of psi using statistics. This is called the “minimalist” approach, that is, investigation of very small psi effects. In contrast to this is the “maximalist” approach, which focuses on very large scale psi effects. At this time, there is very little investigation of large-scale psi phenomena. In fact, there are a number of outstanding parapsychologists today who don’t believe that large-scale psi effects exist. Clearly, large-scale psi does not appear in the laboratory. We must instead look to what are called spontaneous cases, that is, manifestations of psi that happen spontaneously in everyday life. In this book we will focus on such large scale manifestations.

Martin Luther King Assassination

There seemed to be no solution for me within academia. Eventually I went into the computer consulting business. This was very novel at that time; there were still very few people working with computers in the 1960s. I found the work to be absorbing and well paying; the transition into the business environment was a big change, but one that I eventually was able to adjust to.

One afternoon found me in the office of a client in Chicago. It was April 4, 1968 and I was seated at a desk, working. Without warning, I experienced what I can only describe as a force, which hurled me out of the desk chair and onto the floor. My first thought was that I was having a heart attack. I had worked in a cardiology research lab for a while at the university, and knew that if this were a heart attack sizeable enough to throw me to the floor, I should also be experiencing intense pain—and I wasn't. I next thought that I was too young and healthy for a heart attack to be likely. But in those first, few moments I would not have bet much money one way or the other.

After a few minutes I felt reasonably sure that I had not suffered a life-threatening trauma, and I decided to try and understand what was happening to me.  I felt that I was in some kind of strange state of consciousness. I decided to see if imagery would help me to understand what was happening.

I closed my eyes and looked within. First, I saw a blue-gray light, which looked and felt like death, to me. Next, I looked deeper and saw the clear image of a circle of bullets, standing on their flat ends, all bathed in that blue-gray, death-light. My angle of view of this image was oblique, so that there was the suggestion of a cone or dome-like figure. It suddenly came to me that this was a monarch's crown, and that monarch had just been assassinated.

I first thought of the Queen of England, but at this point the imagery was fading and no further clear information or imagery came. I wrote down the time.  I felt so disturbed by what had happened that I called the cardiologist in whose lab I had worked at the university. When I got Dr. Jones on the phone, I told him just the part about being hurled to the floor and the strange state of consciousness, but not the details of it. He thought the whole thing was absurd, but I persisted and he did examine me and ran an EKG the next day. I was very healthy.

Within a few hours the media carried the news of Martin Luther King, Jr's. assassination on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee by a sniper, at 6:01PM. I had written down 6:01PM after my  experience. When I heard the news, it suddenly all made sense.

It is difficult to convey the complex of feelings and thoughts that I had. I did not question if this were merely a peculiar coincidence, as an affirmed skeptic probably would. The experience and the details were much too rich and specific for that, and I interpreted this as a psychic experience. Although it is usually possible to propose alternative, materialistic-causal scenarios for such spontaneous events, one should consider if such scenarios are even more improbable than the possibility that the event was paranormal.

When I heard the news, I was at once relieved that I probably had not had some kind of transient trauma, and I was gripped with the feeling that all hell was going to break lose—and it did.

It has been noted that psychic information is most likely to break into consciousness when it bears important, personal meaning. At the time of this event, I was sympathetic to the Civil Rights cause of American Blacks, but I was not involved in any political action or demonstrations, which in the 1960s were very high drama, indeed.

What brought the assassination to my doorstep were the riots that followed. I lived in an integrated neighborhood in Chicago which was surrounded by ghetto on three sides and Lake Michigan on the fourth. When the ghettoes erupted in violence after the assassination I was right in the middle of it. The National Guard had to be called out, and when that failed to contain the rioting the Army was brought in. There was widespread violence and the air was filled with smoke from burning buildings. The city was in a state of war for many days; it was not an experience that one easily forgets.

The French philosopher and Nobel laureate Henri Bergson (1859 – 1941) suggested that one of the main properties of consciousness is to act as a filter, screening out information that is not locally limited to our senses. Were this not so, he argued, we would be flooded at all times with information from distant places, or about future events, which has little or no survival value to us as individuals.

This seems quite reasonable; it is actually an extension of the accepted fact that one of the functions of the brain is to filter out most of the sensory information that is constantly bombarding us. As you read this you probably are not aware of the large toe on your left foot . . . but now you are. In ordinary perception what passes through this filtering depends upon several factors, which are the determinants of attention. These include the qualities of the sensory variable, such as the intensity of a sound or the brightness of a color. Another factor is stimulus patterning, such as symmetry or textural differences. The novelty or familiarity of the stimulus is another factor, as is motivation. Research in parapsychology has shown that these same factors are involved in psi, but to varying degrees and only under some conditions. Perhaps the filtering involved with psi is opened, however rarely and briefly, by events which are meaningful and important enough to us. But what faculty, then, is so aware of the whole world and can make this judgment of what is important and meaningful to us, and sometimes opens the “filter”?

“Let's try using the Zener cards,” said Olof. “I will send to you.”

I felt excited and apprehensive. Olof had started to try and teach me how he does psychic things. These tests of my abilities required a lot of my energy and usually were not very successful. I got the deck of Zener cards from my briefcase, shuffled them in front of the video camera and handed them to Olof.  He lay them face down on the table. 

Zener cards were in the past one of the staples of ESP testing. They were used extensively by J. B. Rhine, who was Director of the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University from 1935 to 1965. These decks consist of twenty-five cards marked with five geometrical symbols: star, circle, wavy lines, square and cross. Each symbol appears on five cards of the deck.

Diary 2001

To be successful in wizardry, it must be done spontaneously, in the flow of things: When I cut the deck and it "flows," not sticks or hesitates—a micro state of satori. Visualizations or strong intentions can also be used to "set up" the desired effect. But then the conscious mind must be quieted or distracted. If not, the procedure will not work, since the information will not have been released into the higher states. This afternoon I demonstrated wizardry 101 to my secretary. I shuffled a 52-card deck, face down. Next I asked her to randomly pick one card out, look at it (and not let me see it), and randomly put it back in the deck. I then shuffled the deck several times, waiting for that sense of ease and perfection. During the third shuffle, a card stuck way out from the deck. I took this to be it. I asked her to take that card and tell me if that was her card. It was the three of hearts. She showed me where she had written down on her pad in shorthand, three of hearts, after she first drew that card.

That instant
The universe stood still
Mind and matter
Were one again
Perfect harmony

A Few Days Later. I spent several hours today viewing just part of one videotape of Olof teaching me. I had forgotten so much of what was taped 15 years ago! Some of the material is spectacular. At the moment, I feel very daunted by it. I can't present the heart of the teaching because I have not developed the ability to consciously and volitionally enter the states of consciousness required. I can set up the visualizations, but without being able to get the conscious mind to stop, I am very limited. What does work for me—sometimes—is to do the operations very fast, or to distract my attention onto something else, after setting up the intention. So I must practice. Maybe that's still OK. I can report what Olof did, then what I did to try and learn that—the false starts, the failures, and the successes. I would claim absolutely no great qualifications for the task. But I know from my past that I can sometimes do the Olof things. I will try tonight. The other matter is that one does not have to enter and stay in these altered states, just contact them very briefly. Quite something, that some Olof operations require contact with the void, but so rapidly that the experience of the void will not be conscious. (It takes perhaps half a second for a percept to become fully conscious.)

Came home about 5:30 PM with my colitis bothering me. Lay down in bed, breathed deeply a few times. Immediately I was in a gray-to-white lighted-space Felt like a deep pool of warm, embracing water. I disappeared, but (I) didn't think that (I) was asleep, since there still was consciousness. When I looked at the clock, one hour had passed, which surprised me.

Walking Through Walls

Of course, impossible. What illusionists do. How could a physical body pass through a physical barrier? At the quantum level, electrons do tunnel through energetic barriers with ease. You might analogize this to a car in a locked garage spontaneously transported outside. But at the large scale of the everyday world these quantum effects are averaged to the point that they are virtually zero. That's why Olof —or anyone else—could not walk through a wall.

But what if in his wizard costume Olof could walk through walls? From what you have already read, how might that happen? ....

Passing On the Teaching

So, if Olof did walk through walls, how could that happen? First, it would mean that there is something very flawed with the materialist world view of physical forces and particles. The physicists will likely tell you about the impressive edifice of data and theory that they have built. Physicists will admit that physics has yet to solve some major problems, but they expect that eventually these will be conquered.

Let's, for the moment, entertain an opposite view-that consciousness is the primary thing in the universe and everything physical is derivative. This is, of course, the way some Eastern religions look at it. But let's get back to how Olof described the process, in a way which is very similar to some practices in ancient Chinese Taoist yoga.

Close your eyes and take a dozen slow, deep abdominal breaths. That should relax you. Next, visualize an electric fan with shiny, metal blades. Visualize these blades turning clockwise, faster and faster. If you can't do it, don't be discouraged. Try it again in a few hours or tomorrow.

Pulling the Story Up Out of the Past: Wheels

Yes, I know about chakras being wheels or wheel-like, but that's just the energy dynamic at the chakra. Olof's wheels would circulate up the back and down the front, enclosing the body as a large tire would. This circulation is well-known. I believe that James G. Frazer in The Golden Bough discusses it. So do the Taoist yogis. But Olof also said that the circulation could be reversed-up the front and down the back. Furthermore, he said that there were many other directions the energy could flow. For example, along diagonals. But the main circulation was around the body, top to bottom. Also, by visualization it could be contained to circulate around a diseased part of the body for healing purposes. Somewhere in my records are the medical records of Norman Atenhoffer (Sp?), whom Olof apparently cured of lung cancer. Olof worked on him right after Atenhoffer's physician said that he had two weeks of life left. Here's what happened according to Atenhoffer(At) and Olof. From 200 pounds, he was reduced by the ravages of the lung cancer to 85 pounds. His wife had heard of Olof and brought At to see him at a small meeting of people interested in the psychic. Now, Olof seldom did any spiritual healing; why, I don't know. But with At, Olof felt a strong energetic connection, and perhaps there were other factors which Olof did not articulate.

At the meeting, Olof directed At to relax for five minutes in a chair. Olof told me that he visualized At's energy circulating around his body. Olof then instructed At to sit and relax at 8 PM the next four nights. At told me that after the second healing session, the next night, he had the worst coughing spell of his life. While he was coughing, some kind of black substance was being coughed up. The third night was a repeat of this—violent coughing and bringing up black material. The fourth and fifth nights were similar, but with less coughing. At told me that from that point on his health started to improve. After a few weeks—when he was supposed to be dead—he returned to his physician's office. I wasn't informed of what the physician said or what tests were done, except for a bone marrow sample being taken. This was done by hammering a sharp, tube-like instrument into a pelvic bone. At had several of these done during his illness, and he said that they were excruciatingly painful-so much so that he would cry.

This time, At was lying on the table waiting for the sample to be taken, for what seemed to be a long time. He finally asked the nurse when the sample would be taken. She said, "It has already been taken." At said that he was astounded by this. Further, that area of his body did not experience pain from other intrusions for three weeks.

I spoke with At about three years after this happened. He apparently had a complete remission and was back to full-time work. I questioned Olof about what happened, and he said that this was done with visualization of the circulating energy. He also said that he had worked on At more often than the 8 PM sessions.

During my apprenticeship with Olof, I never felt that I was experiencing the circulation, nor did I "see" it. However, once, when we were working with the cards, I saw a distinct fog-like presence surrounding a card. It extended about four inches. It was not circulating. I asked Olof if this was the energy and he said that it was.

Here I could go into a discussion of subtle energy etc. Next, I could go into the reversal of the circulation. By circulating in one direction, then reversing it, then reversing it again, etc., you might arrive at the state which Olof called "harmony." This, according to Olof, was the void. This is the state required to dematerialize physical objects. Here I could go into discussion of the void from Buddhist sources.

Thus, for anything physical in space and time, there is a subtle energy associated with it. Perhaps we can think of this as an energetic pattern, or in some way containing a pattern or form from which the physical object is created. In Olof's world view, consciousness is primary and material things are derivative. Therefore, if one is in a high enough state of consciousness to influence the subtle energy "shell," by the process of energy reversals, a
balancing occurs, which effectively cancels out the energy matrix associated with and mother to a physical thing. This can also be thought of as the union of opposites, so prominent in alchemy, and explicated in the writings of Carl Jung. Further, we may entertain the possibility that this is the subtle energy dynamic behind the union.

To go on with this model, when the energies are balanced, and thereby effectively canceled, the object will no longer be in space and time. Rather, it will be in the form of energy, and will be located in the void. It will have disappeared. Olof said that
eventually such an "object" will reappear in space time, but where, is sometimes unpredictable. Does a wizard or apprentice wizard need to be conscious in the void? No, the time in the void can be very brief, and still be sufficient to affect the object. Olof said that with practice, you can become more conscious in the void state.

Think maybe it's time for more card stuff-back to the practice range, so to speak. I'll do some card stuff and describe what happens, how I feel, etc.

Many Times Olof Said to Me

Many times Olof said to me: "The body is false."
The first time he said this, I replied, "What do you mean it's false?"
Olof: "I mean that it's an image made of slowed-down energy."
Norm: Contemporary physics conceives matter to be made of particles and energies and a lot of empty space. So the apparent solidity of things is just due to the way our perception works.
At a point like this, rather than continuing an intellectual discussion, Olof would typically steer us back into the experiential, back into the Zen of cards.

In his soft, Swedish accent, he might say: "What card you like to see?"
When we were doing sessions under the video camera, I would let the random number function key on my calculator select a number between 1 and 52. Let's say that this time the number was 23. I had a list of the 52 cars in the deck, each associated with a number between 1 and 52. Let's say that this time the three of clubs was selected as the target card.
Olof: "Where in the deck would you like to see it?"
Again I would run my random number program, which would select a number between
1 and 52. Let's say that this time 32 was chosen. Therefore, the three of clubs was to be the 32nd from the top of the deck.
I next shuffled the deck, several times, and cut it. At no time did Olof handle the deck. This was documented on the video tape.
Olof: "Look at the 32nd card."
I would count down from the top until I reached 32.
Olof: "Turn it over."
This was always a moment of excitement for me. Let's say that this time it worked and the three of clubs was 32nd card from the
top.
Olof: "Conditions are good!"
I am somewhat embarrassed to confess that for months I thought of this as just due to the way psi works. That is, not limited by space and time or ordinary causality.
So this was Olof's answer to the body being "false."
At that point in my studies with him, I took his statement to mean that psi can affect our bodies. It wasn't until Olof started having me cut the deck into four piles that it dawned on me what was happening. And it demolished any materialist beliefs that I still had about the world.

In Zen they say, "Every day you begin again." Olof never said it that poignantly. But it's true. Until our energies and consciousness are sufficiently elevated, it's back to first base over and over and over. Like a young bird learning how to fly.

Talking to Myself

Sex and Kundalini. Don't remember much more about such Olof pronouncements. Came across a statement buried in Meher Baba writings (WHERE???) that Kundalini, as practiced by yogis, will get one only to temporary states of enlightenment. Permanent states, such as Sahaj Samadhi, aren't gained in that way! How then? I think with higher processes, and definitely by balancing out (which nullifies) one's karma. This balancing, actually of the mental impressions from the soul's whole past evolution, these are stored in the mental body. One does not destroy them. Rather, the method is to balance them. There, of course, experiencing the opposites karmic. Rich, poor; ugly, beautiful; dull, smart; etc. Now, many, many years ago, when I was a lad, doing psychotherapy, several times I was able to facilitate in clients the union of opposites. Such as bring rage and nurturing together in imagery. E.g., "let an image come to you of your angry boss." Say, a lion appears. Now, do this with slow dramatic effect: "feed the lion a steak." Balancing even at this level does sometimes work. Turning very powerful white light with kriyas. Or even going into the void: no anger, no lion, no steak. "It's Nothing." So, OJ saying sex and Kundalini, may well be correct, if you take that to be the body's kundalini, not a more cosmic energy which some might term Kundalini. But also, Baba wrote about the earth possessing an energy, the same as we have in the "third fold of the body." I believe that's a Sufi thing. Bruce is here to fetch me. More later-but you see maybe kundalini is more associated with corporality at "lower levels"—physical bodies, "third fold" of the body—some kind of level of energy body?—and then the earth body itself. So maybe that's where Kundalini is found, and that might be its limitation, of being "attached" to the lower forms, so that's were it eventually reverts to. More later. Swami N

Dream at an Enlightenment Intensive

I am going through re-entry to the illusion of everyday life, slowly slipping back into
unconsciousness about Who I Am. How to explain what happened to the unitiated and perhaps the skeptical.

Week of September 8, 2002: The following dream came out of working on the question "Who am I?"

I was in a baseball uniform—cap, striped shirt and pants, and high stockings. I had just made a home run and was crossing home plate. I looked up into the spectator stands along third base line and was surprised that they were empty. The stadium looked the way they did, I think, maybe 75 years ago. Large with lots of wood, painted dark green. Next, I looked at the seats behind center field and along the first base line. No spectators. I was shocked. Next, I looked out onto the playing field and there was no team out there!! Yet, I was sure that I had just made a home run. Now the cherry on top of the dessert: I looked down in the vicinity of home plate, expecting to see balls and bats on the ground. No balls and bats.

I'll just say that I have no interest in baseball and haven't played it for over 50 years. So, I am the only player and I myself play the whole game, without even bat and ball, to an empty world

There is normally a split between me and what I think or sense. So I can ask a question, Who Am I, and the question is separate from me, that is, a mental object. It hangs out there like a cloud. My breakthrough was the collapse of this duality, this self and otherness. Then there is certainty because my consciousness now knows that it can split off into parts, but it is still all my consciousness. It's all me; the questioner and the question. There is a feeling of complete certainty and that the game has ended. When some people get it, they burst into gales of laughter, realizing that they have been chasing their own tail. You now realize that your consciousness can set up this self-other game.

Now, this didn't happen, but I know that the next step on this path is the experience that others are me; that is, they are split-offs which my consciousness has created. And I am the only One; there is only one consciousness. Just like my awake dream about baseball. For this step to occur, the sense of individual self, the ego, must dissolve, at least while the experience lasts. This state of consciousness becomes permanent only in rare "cases."

Olof. If everything is Me, and I am consciousness, then I can will anything to happen—like the home run in the baseball game—since everything is within My consciousness.
Olof card yoga. There, the entry and exit to the unity state is so brief, the brain is not
stimulated long enough to form a conscious percept or thought.
"Ja, where in the deck would you like to see the three of clubs?"

... In the beginning was the word.

Contact Norm Don by email at normdon@uic.edu

CD-Roms of extended video excerpts and text will eventually be available. If you do not have a high speed connection try viewing this web page at a public library.