Tom Kenyon: Thoughts and Observations from the Channel
By Tom Kenyon – October 2012
Before you read over the material in this Hathor section, I would like to offer a bit of advice—an intellectual consideration if you will. I will tell you what I say to those who attend my workshops—keep an “imaginary box” beside you at all times.
If what I say doesn’t make sense to you or violates your view of reality, then I suggest you just toss it in the box. Never swallow or accept as truth, anything anyone says without sifting it through your own life-experience, your own sense of logic, and, very importantly, your own personal values.
Swallowing ideas without chewing on them and digesting them thoroughly can lead to a type of mental and/or spiritual indigestion. And for this type of ailment, there is no such thing as an instant antacid.
There are those who say that one should leave one’s sense of logic and rational thinking behind when entering into the spiritual realms of experience—that one must fully and completely surrender to faith and not let reason enter into the picture.
Personally, I think this type of thinking is dangerous. We need all our wits about us and all the intelligence we can muster if we are not to become deluded on our way to spiritual illumination. It is the true light of self-awareness that we seek, not the false luminosity of personal fantasy and desire. In this regard, logic and rational thinking are not the nemesis of channeled communications; they are critical allies.
Regarding Higher Dimensions of Consciousness
If I might be so bold as to summarize the Hathors’ central message, it is this—as humans we have access to other dimensions of consciousness. This interdimensionality is part of our innate being, but it is something that has to be cultivated or developed.
What do I mean, exactly, when I say interdimensionality? To explain this, let’s take a look at it from several perspectives—how interdimensional of me!
As you are reading this, or hearing it read to you, the language centers in your brain are making sense of the blabber we call English. At the same time, you might be hearing a sound from outside—perhaps a honking horn or the sound of an animal. You could also at the same moment, feel yourself taking a breath. All of these events—the reading of these words, the sounds you hear and your breathing—are dimensions of consciousness.
You can become aware of any of these dimensions by shifting your attention to them. But it is your attention to an event that makes it conscious. If you don’t pay attention, you won’t notice something taking place. If, for instance, you are completely engrossed in this article then you might not notice your breath, or the sounds outside. They exist independently of your awareness of them, but in your world of perception it will be as if they never happened.
Our inner world of perception also has many dimensions or realms. Most of these are inaccessible to us much of the time, because—quite frankly—we have been trained to focus on only a small bandwidth of internal experiences as significant—namely those that make us more productive or useful to society. While such practical states of mind are undoubtedly important, they are not the only states open to us.
In order for you to experience these inner worlds of perception, you have to alter your brain activity through meditation, or some other method. Then you can have a direct experience of these worlds and the rather amazing phenomena that take place within you. But until you experience these worlds directly, it is as if they do not exist, because they are outside the range of your perception.
The ability to access these higher dimensions or creative worlds within ourselves, although rather esoteric, offers unique practical benefits. For one, these other dimensions of consciousness can often reveal creative insights and solutions to problems that are not apparent in our normal ways of thinking and perceiving.
The history of science is full of breakthroughs and new insights that were brought about due to these non-ordinary states of mind. Let me be a bit more specific to help explain what I am talking about.
Science is usually thought of as the pinnacle of human reason. The scientific method is, after all, based upon rational observation and the logical solution of problems. However, in actuality, those who undertake science—the scientists themselves—have reported that, at times, the solution to a scientific dilemma came to them through non-logical means.
Take, for instance, the German chemist Kekule who discovered the molecular structure of benzene. He said that he struggled with this dilemma incessantly; it was an obsession, but no resolution was in sight.
Then one night he had a dream. In the dream, he saw a snake swallowing its tail. He woke up and realized that this was, in fact, the structure of the benzene ring. After translating his vision into the language of mathematics, he was able to prove that his nighttime insight had been correct.
One of the interesting things about Kekule’s dream image is that it was centered around a classic alchemical symbol—the uroboros. This iconographic element depicts a serpent swallowing its tail—just as in Kekule’s dream.
Thus, significant information can be revealed to us when we enter other dimensions of our own consciousness. The physicist, Albert Einstein, reported that he uncovered the principles of General Relativity through a series of fantasies. And he once quipped that one cannot solve a problem at the level of the problem; one has to go to a higher level to solve it.
The question of dimensions has intrigued physicists and mathematicians as well as metaphysicians for a very long time. The first consideration in regards to dimensionality is from what standpoint one is considering it. Mathematicians, for instance, often view dimensions in a different manner than do physicists.
The Hathors have a unique perspective on dimensionality, specifically the dimensionality of consciousness. It is their view that the higher dimensions of our consciousness can and do affect what we call material reality.
Flatland, Where We Live
When I conduct Hathor workshops in which people experience them directly through inner attention, I like to talk a bit about the concept of other dimensions of consciousness before their first encounters with these beings. To do this, I sometimes start with a brief description of a fascinating book called Flatland, written in 1884 by the Victorian satirist, Edwin Abbott.
I bring this novella into our discussion because it explores the paradox of how those living in a given dimension can never fully understand other dimensions outside their own.
Here is a very brief summary.
Once upon a time there was an imaginary world called Flatland. It only had two dimensions—length and width. Those who lived on Flatland were called Flatlanders. No one on Flatland had ever seen anything three-dimensional since Flatland was…well…flat.
One day a sphere (a ball) passed through Flatland. As it made first contact, a single point appeared in their world, which grew to be a small circle. And then the circle grew larger and larger. At one moment, the circle was very large, the largest it ever got. This moment corresponded, of course, when the ball’s largest circumference was passing through Flatland.
And then, for no apparent reason, the circle started getting smaller and smaller until it disappeared into a point. And then the point disappeared.
There were many ideas about what had happened, but no one on Flatland knew what had actually occurred. The Flatlanders simply could not imagine anything like a sphere because they could not conceive of anything outside the reference of their two-dimensional world.
I think we are like that.
We live in our day-to-day three-dimensional world thinking that this is all there is. If time is the fourth dimension, as some theorists (though not all) have suggested, then most of us have a pretty good grasp of it as well. By that I mean we can tell time, and can show up at meetings and appointments on time. And for most of us that is all we are interested in.
The Paradox of Time
But there are other ways of looking at time. Our modern mechanistic perception of time is only one aspect, and when we transcend or stop perceived time all together (as in meditation or certain types of esoteric practices) things get very interesting. Indeed, when we step out from the rut of perceived time (via meditation, etc.) we more easily enter other realms of human experience. These unusual states of mental and physical being have been described by mystics, yogis, and other illuminated beings for eons.
Their descriptions of their encounters with the numinous (a Jungian term for the light filled realms of being) were, of course, expressed through the cultural filters of their time. Thus the mystical language of Christian contemplatives and mystics are, on the surface, different from their Judaic and Islamic cousins. And certainly these descriptions are even more dissimilar from their Asian counterparts—Hindu and Buddhist yogas, the Taoist alchemies of China as well as indigenous shamanism throughout the world. But beneath the surface of their apparent differences, there are deep currents of similarity.
The similarities that I am speaking of here are not related to belief, spiritual lineage, or dogma. Indeed, many spiritual traditions are in complete opposition to each other on fundamental points of dogma. In spite of these differences, there are striking commonalities in regards to the methods these mystical, yogic and shamanic disciplines employ to enter the numinous. And the alteration of perceived time—whether attained through meditative trance, contemplative prayer, drumming or chanting—is central to all these traditions.
Indeed, we could say from the standpoint of modern neurophysiology that it is through their alteration of perceived time (and its attendant changes in brain state) that all yogis, mystics, saints and shamans apprehend what they call the Divine, the Transcendent Self, the Tao, or Great Spirit (depending upon their intellectual and philosophical bent).
In other words, mystical and religious experiences occur (neurologically speaking) due to distinct changes in brain processing. Please note I am not saying that mystical experiences can be reduced to, and are the sole result of physical changes in the brain, but such experiences are definitely characterized by simultaneous events in the nervous system. This may sound like splitting hairs to some, but for those of us involved in the pursuit of scientific insight into mystical states of mind, it is crucial to be as rigorous as possible.
My personal conviction is that the numinous realms of being (i.e. mystical experience) open to us a fascinatingly rich area of human potential, but only when the imprisonment of dogma (religious and/or cultural belief) has been stripped away.
The methods used by mystics, yogis and shamans to generate altered states of consciousness—the types that lead to numinous and transpersonal experiences—have been a long-standing interest to me. I even wrote a book, Brain States, which is a guide that shows the reader how to create altered states of awareness—as a means to access the more creative potentials of his/her brain and mind.
From the standpoint of neuropsychology, channeling is just another expression of our brain/mind’s potential—albeit an unusual one.
As a psychotherapist and as someone who was involved with brain research for over ten years, I regard channelings—in general—as a type of transpersonal psycho-artifact. By this I mean that the information (or message) that comes forward through the act of channeling is born from an interface between the personal psychology and transpersonal aspects of the channel.
The Process of Channeling
Anyone who channels does so by altering his or her awareness in some manner. The result, regardless of the method used, is that the channel enters into a deeply altered state of internalized awareness (trance). For the time-period of the communication one is more or less detached, and somehow suspended from one’s normal ways of being in the world, including one’s perception of perceived time. This is a direct result of changes in brain state, i.e. an increase in alpha and theta activity on the part of the channel.
As exotic as the channeling state may sound, I believe that it is an inherent ability that most, if not all of us, possess. It is simply a matter of learning how to voluntarily change one’s own brain state.
But there is another element in the channeling phenomenon that is critical for us to understand. It is the question of “filters.” I personally don’t think that there is such a thing as a totally clear channel. We can approach being a clear and open channel, and hopefully get ever more impeccable, but the Presence orinformation that presents itself through the channel is somehow affected by the channel—especially by his or her emotional state, subconscious beliefs and miasmas (toxic personal distortions).
This unavoidable filtering of information by the channel is why I said earlier to always have an imaginary box by your side. If something doesn’t make sense to you, toss it in the box. Don’t accept it as truth. Test it through your own sense of logic, your own life experience and own your values.
It is my hope that those of you who read these Hathor messages will do just that. See what works for you. Toss out the rest.
One of the worst things that could happen with this type of information, in my opinion, would be to deify it in some kind of new age cultism. Instead, look at the messages simply as another perspective on our world. If the information helps you to be more resourceful and happy in how you deal with your life (as it has with mine) then this channeling stuff will have been worth the effort.