Remember the Mythbusters episode where they seemingly claimed to have debunked the psionic helmet? Well, now mainstream science says that magnets may help make the brain grow stronger. While the exact mechanism remains unknown, the boys in white lab coats have determined that magnets can induce electric fields in the brain tissue which, in turn, activate or deactivate groups of neurons. They theorized that this process aids learning and memory by strengthening brain circuits through a process called long-term potentiation (LTP). Emphasis on LONG-TERM. Something that a Mythbusters episode is NOT!

“So can you help me open my third eye?”

In my ten years or so of facilitating esoteric courses, this is one of the things that comes up the most in conversations with beginners on the Path, right up there with “I need a love potion ASAP, can you whip me up some of that mojo?” I guess we have “Charmed” and its ilk to thank for the MTV generation becoming so enamored with psychic abilities and powers beyond those of mortal men. Now there’s nothing wrong with being just your garden variety Homo sapiens sapiens, mind you. It’s just that everything on TV and in the movies point to Homo sapiens superior as having a better chance in all aspects of life. And we all know that, while the boob tube and the silver screen tend to exaggerate things to high heavens, these mediums have always been excellent barometers of the public pulse, and that pulse is saying that most people have this need to feel special in some way and to have an advantage over their fellow men.

Now a lot of people get interested in the occult and the paranormal and end up enrolling in esoteric courses hoping to develop extrasensory abilities. And clairvoyance happens to be one of the most popular choices available from the smorgasboard of psychic powers. But it’s not as simple as going to your neighborhood shopping mall, picking out a fancy pair of sunglasses, putting them on and getting instant etheric vision.

Have you ever seen the movie “At First Sight”? Val Kilmer’s blind character is given a chance to regain his eyesight via surgery after losing it during his early childhood. Just because his eyes could now see, it didn’t mean that his brain could automatically make sense of what he was seeing. So he had to learn to see, and he found the whole experience to be deeply disturbing.

A friend of mine went through a similar ordeal. She badgered my late teacher, an incredibly gifted psychic and healer, into opening her third eye via the process of shaktipat, despite his admonitions that the process could become traumatic for her. Seeing his warnings fall on deaf ears, and realizing that the only way she would see his point is if she experienced it for herself, he went ahead and administered the shaktipat, but cautioned her to be careful for the next few weeks as she grew accustomed to her new ability.

The adjustment period was expected to be rough, but nothing like the hell of a learning curve she went through trying to get used to her newly acquired clairvoyance. For one thing, it proved to be totally uncontrollable, turning itself on and off at unpredictable times. Once, she was giving a seminar on hatha yoga, when suddenly, everyone turned into blobs of light right before her eyes. Imagine trying to maintain eye contact with your students when that happens. Another time, as she was crossing the street, her etheric vision switched on without warning and she was suddenly confronted with huge spheres of light zooming towards her. Fortunately, I was able to pull her across safely before she merged with a gigantic yellow globe that was actually a massive eighteen-wheeler. It’s been five years since these incidents, but she’s still struggling everyday to turn her “curse” into a “gift”.

Now this post is not meant to be an argument against the development of psychic abilities. It is only intended to inform the seeker on the Path that the pursuit of paranormal powers is fraught with dangers that are usually glossed over in Hollywood productions that choose, instead, to focus on the glitz and glamour of it all. The glamour is the illusion, while the danger is the painful reality. Tread wisely, fellow seeker.

Magick, as famously defined by Aleister Crowley, is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will. It is generally understood that by this definition, the magician undertakes to understand himself and his conditions and applies that understanding in action to effect the desired changes in his present circumstances.

It has always been assumed that the process of skillful application of the right type and amount of life force in an accurate manner, through the appropriate medium to the correct object, and the changes brought about by successful execution of the aforementioned process, all take place within the magician’s universe, which is also assumed to be a closed system.

But there are tantalizing indications from Eastern mysticism and recent discoveries in quantum physics, that this may not be the case.

Buddhism promotes the belief in a universe with no beginning and no end and also asserts that an infinite number of probabilities actually exist. Interestingly enough, the quantum mechanical theory known as the Many Worlds theory, echoes this Buddhist perspective of reality. In effect, what this tells us is that there are an infinite number of universes existing all at once, where anything and everything is possible. It is only because of the limitations of the hardware we are born with (our brain) that we are able to perceive only a small slice of the entire multiverse, and this is what appears to us as our reality.

Integrating this concept with our previous definition of magick, we end up with a radical approach to actualizing magickal intentions. Magick can be defined as a method of shifting probabilities in one’s favor. But instead of being limited to shifting probabilities within a single universe, we are now presented with a virtually infinite number of probability lines to choose from where, in a number of them, our magickal objectives are realized. In this case, the magician either shifts the desired outcome into observable space or he shifts his perception from the current probability line to another where the desired outcome exists.

To take this a step further, we can now see the magickal act as the process that allows for the magician’s consciousness to make a quantum leap from one universe to another. The degree of difficulty of the leap would depend on how much divergence there is between the originating and the destination probability lines. So importance has to be given to the process of observation and selection of a probability line, so that a choice is ultimately made from the ones that are almost identical to the current line but with the desired outcome. To increase the chances of a successful leap taking place, the magician has to engage his senses, intellect, belief and will to the best of his ability and hope this is enough to override the general consensus reality structure that binds him to the current universe.

Unfortunately, this post oversimplifies what is, in truth, a process that requires a multidisciplinary approach to even begin to do it justice. Nevertheless, there is enough information here for the interested reader to pursue his own research into this new and exciting approach to magick.