MUDRAS
when they say, “the body never lies.” Researchers have also found that simply observing a gesture can stimulate the same patterns of neural firing as when actually performing it. We have mirror neurons in our brains. These neurons stimulate your body in the same way as if you were actually doing what you are seeing. These mirror neurons might explain why just seeing a par- ticular mudra or posture can trigger the ob- server to activate some of the same spiritual awareness, especially if the gesture was origi- nally connected to a powerful, transformative state of consciousness. The artists who por- trayed saints, teachers, and spiritual seekers through history in specific postures and mu- dras may have transmitted more than just a beautiful image. These images may serve as a tangible way to activate us today, helping us touch the ineffable in ourselves.
Seeing the posture is a beginning; physi- cally doing it allows further embodiment. The different yogas, Tai Chi, Chi Kung, other martial arts, and even meditation and prayer are all technologies to attain some kind of spiritual awakening. They all have physical embodied components that can’t be cogni- tively comprehended. Seen in this light, these practices are not intended to subvert the physical body in service of spirit or con- sciousness. Rather the interconnection of posture and awareness highlight how the mind and body may be equal partners in the realization of higher levels of consciousness. The ecstatic experience of the realized state is in part possible because of full physical embodiment. Many of the sacred texts of the world have hand gestures that accompany them. For example, Stan Tenen of the Meru Foundation has proposed that the meaning of the Hebrew texts may be secondary to a set of hand gestures and mental movements that accompany them. Like the Sanskrit Vedas, these hand gestures are thought to be inte- gral to the transmission of the meaning of the Hebrew texts.
Another interesting corollary here is what have been termed “Ecstatic Trance Pos- tures.” The Cuyamungue Institute, which was founded by the late Felicitas Goodman, has been researching how certain whole body postures, when held in trance states, produce very predictable and specific experiences. Looking through historical and prehistorical archaeological artifacts and artwork, Goodman catalogued over 80 postures that were portrayed in art dating back to the early Neolithic period. Goodman proposed that it is the physiology of the human body, which has remained unchanged for the last 30,000 years. A modern person may have an experi- ence in trance that would be very similar to a Neolithic medicine woman’s experience.
Patrick Marsolek is the director of Inner Workings Resources and the author of A Joyful Intuition. See www.AJoyful Intui-
tion.com for more information.
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BALL LIGHTNING Continued from Page 47
strong, sulphurous smell. By this explosion the main topmast was shattered into pieces and the main mast went down to the keel. Five men were knocked down and one of them much bruised. Just before the explo- sion, the ball seemed to be the size of a large mill-stone.” (Norton, Andrews, editor [1813], The General Repository and Review, Vol. 3., Cambridge, MA: William Hilliard, p. 157). Four years later, a Russian scientist, Pro- fessor Georg Richmann, was killed near Saint Petersburg as he endeavored to repro- duce Benjamin Franklin’s kite-and-key ex- periment of 1752. Ball lightning shot down the string to strike Richmann’s forehead, on which it left a red mark, blew his shoes open, and singed his clothes. An engraver he brought along to document his research was knocked unconscious but survived. (Clarke, Ronald W., [1983], Benjamin Franklin, A Bi- ography, NY: Random House, p. 87). The most aggressive ball lightning attack at sea occurred during a storm in 1809, when HMS Warren Hastings was simultane- ously beset by a trio of celestial spheres. A crewman on deck was struck dead by an orb that also engulfed the mainmast in flames. A sailor who tried to retrieve his shipmate’s corpse was hit by a second fireball that blew him back and gave him mild burns, while an- other seaman died after being struck by a third sphere. The entire incident took place in under one minute, although a persistent, sickening small of sulfur hung over the British ship for the rest of the night (Si- mons, Paul, 17 February 2009, “Weather Eye Charles Darwin, the meteorologist,” The Times, London).
Wilfred de Fonvielle, the French science writer, told how, “On the tenth of Sep- tember, 1845 a ball of lightning entered the kitchen of a house in the village of Salagnac in the valley of Correze. This ball rolled across without doing any harm to two women and a young man who were here; but on getting into an adjoining stable it ex- ploded and killed a pig which happened to be shut up there, and which, knowing nothing about the wonders of thunder and lightning, dared to smell it in the most rude and unbe- coming manner” (de Fonvielle, Wilfrid, 1875, Chapter X: Globular Lightning, Thunder and Lightning, translated by T.L. Phipson).
Patrick Baird was rendered unconscious by ball lightning that struck Western Aus- tralia’s Cape Naturaliste Lighthouse, where he was its keeper in July 1907. Apparently, Alex had good cause for concern. He did re- call, however, learning of a woman some years ago who was immersed in a specially- made, all-metal bathtub, when lightning shot down either the chimney or, more likely, the vent pipe. Instead of suffering electrocution, she survived. No less miracu- lously, her multiple sclerosis went into re-
mission. But so little is understood about both the phenomenon and the disease; what- ever relationship they may share is unknown. Perhaps more than coincidentally, persons afflicted with multiple sclerosis appear to un- dergo a range of psychic phenomena— particularly out-of-body experiences—mostly beyond the frequency and intensity of others not suffering from such a condition. An out- of-body experience is a sensation of floating outside of one’s physical form, often seeing his or her own body from a removed perspec- tive.
It seems clear, however, that the bright orb we encountered last fall was connected
On December 12, 1938, during a Mediterranean storm, a passenger aboard the TSS Viceroy of India witnessed a ball of lightning plunge into the sea and later made this painting.
somehow to meteorological conditions on the night it appeared near the ceiling and must have been a seldom-seen example of ball lightning. Until recently—in the mid- twentieth century—modern science did not even admit the possibility of such occur- rences, strictly relegating them to the realms of fairy tales and liars’ clubs. A 1960 study found that five per cent of the U.S. popula- tion—some thirteen million Americans— claimed to have witnessed ball lightning, while another inquiry analyzed reports of ten thousand cases (McNally, J. R., 1960, “Pre- liminary Report on Ball Lightning,” Proceed- ings of the Second Annual Meeting of the Di- vision of Plasma Physics of the American Physical Society, Paper J-15 ed., Gatlinburg, and Grigoriev, A. I., 1988, Y. H. Ohtsuki ed- itor, “Statistical Analysis of the Ball Light-
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