Boise, Idaho – November 2024
The Higher Realm Consultations a 30″ X 40″ oil painting is now complete. It is in honor of my late ex husband, Adam, featured on the top right and his young son whom I’ve never met. Adam (not his real name), was a consultant in the energy industry. I hope his son will receive the painting as a comfort for the loss of his father and for spiritual strength, inspiration and guidance. For now, this is my own photograph of it. I will take it to a professional photographer very soon and will hopefully be able to show the fine detail in the artwork.
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I am currently reading for the second time Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda (1893 – 1952). He dedicates the book to the memory of Luther Burbank whom he refers to as “An American Saint.” Two weeks ago (as of this writing) I experienced an unexplainable sudden bending of the metal portion of my palette knife while mixing the color for the ‘light cathedral’ at the top of the painting The Higher Realm Consultations. I hadn’t been mixing for long, but a few minutes, and I apply little pressure when I mix colors. I use a waxy paper palette so there’s little friction when mixing. This happened once before with the metal portion of my paint brush while working on another painting in July of 2021, two and a half years prior, titled Manitou – Native American For The Life Force in All Things. In both cases just after the metal bent it hardened and could not be bent back. The bendings could not have been forced with a strong hand or tool. Any trace of the use of a tool would be obvious.
Above, the palette knife spontaneously bent while painting The Higher Realm Consultations. Below, the paint brush spontaneously bent while painting Manitou – Native American for the Life Force in all Things. These are the only times I have experienced this and only while painting and with my art instruments, not spoons as is typically reported of.
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What is interesting about the metal bending incidents is the paintings that I was then working on and the books I was reading at the time. While painting Manitou – The Life Force In All Things (keep this title in mind) and during which the metal top of my brush just bent over as I pulled it away from the canvas to get more paint on the brush, I was reading Miracles of Mind by Russell Targ PhD and Jane Katra PhD. Jane Katra is a psychic healer that healed Russell Targ of a cancer and this was the inspiration behind their writing the book. It was also through Russell Targ that I learned of metal bending, in particular by his familiarity with the Israeli Uri Geller who was renowned for his psychic abilities and spoon bending demonstrations.
At the time of the more recent palette knife metal bending occured I was reading Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. In that book the author refers to his friendship with the famous Indian scientist Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose and devotes an entire chapter about the scientist describing their friendship and some of the scientist’s accomplishments. Bose (1858-1937) was a polymath knowledgeable in biology, physics and botany and author of Bengali science fiction novels. He was educated in Calcutta, India, Christ’s College in Cambridge, England and University College in London.
The book Response in the Living and Non-Living by Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose is a study of metal and cell response to stimuli.
“Uniform responses – In the responses of animal, vegetable, and metal alike we meet with a type where the responses are uniform.“
Bose performed a comparative study of the fatigue response of various metals and organic tissue in plants in his laboratory in India. He subjected metals to a similar combination of mechanical, thermal, chemical (poisons), exposure to light and electrical stimuli and noted the same pattern of responses between metals and cells. Bose’s experiments demonstrated a fatigue response in both stimulated cells and metals, as well as a distinctive cyclical fatigue and recovery response across multiple types of stimuli in both organic plant and animal living cells and inorganic metals. I found a free version of his book titled Response in the Living and Non-Living describing in detail his experiments and the results [link to free version below]. It is worthwhile to go directly to Chapter XX, the general summary and conclusion.
Some examples of his findings:
Poisons – We find that ‘poisons’ also abolish the responses in plants and metals. Just. as animal tissues pass from a state of responsiveness while living to a state of irresponsiveness when killed by poisons, so also we find that metals transform from a responsive to an irresponsive condition by the action of similar ‘poisonous’ reagents.
Drugs – “Just as the response of animal tissue is exalted by stimulants, lowered by depressants, and abolished by poisons, so also we have found the response in plants and metals undergoing similar exaltation, depression, or abolition.”
Stimulus of light – Bose reports that these similarities went even further, the very abnormalities of retinal response to light and finding this response in the inorganic metals as well.
Diasphic – stimulating two points on the sample tissue at non uniform intervals resulted in the same uniform reactions in plants, animals and metals. Here I think of the radio broadcaster CEO Robert Monroe (1915 – 1995) then later founder of the Monroe Institute for consciousness studies. He and many others today have developed HemiSync sound products; binaural beats of two different frequencies applied to the ears to stimulate an out-of-body or mystical experience.
These unified reactions in organic and inorganic matter findings do not suggest to Bose of a universal life force in all things that according to physiologists, “… proving to us that these things are determined, not by the play of an unknowable and arbitrary vital force, but by the working of laws that know no change, acting equally and uniformly throughout the organic and the inorganic worlds.” I suggest that his work and reputation was constrained by the reigning atheist, materialist scientists of the day. Bose had conveyed to Paramahansa Yogananda of his findings that plants do in fact exhibit feelings, sentience, therefore a vital life force. Please consider reading The Secret Life of Plants by by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. It is one of my all-time favorite books. As well, I personally had an experience involving two quartz crystals that suggested of their want of escape from being tossed into the river. I refuse to share the experience for it would only be faced with incredulity or accusations of delusion on my part.
Radio Transmission
Bose also became interested in radio transmission. In November 1895 at a public demonstration at the town hall in Kolkata, Bose showed how the millimeter range wavelength, microwaves, could travel through the human body (of Lieutenant Governor Sir William Mackenzie), and over a distance of 23 meters through two intervening walls to a trigger apparatus he had set up to ring a bell and ignite gunpowder in a closed room.
Sir Oliver Lodge having witnessed the demonstration wrote, “Should Professor Bose succeed in perfecting and patenting his ‘Coherer’, we may in time see the whole system of coast lighting throughout the navigable world revolutionized by a Bengali scientist working single handed in our Presidency College Laboratory.”
The Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda
As already mentioned I am now reading for the second time the spiritual classic The Autobiography of a Yogi (first published in 1946). The book has sold over 10 million copies and translated into 34 different languages. Worldwide we are experiencing stressful and fearful times. Politicians and government administrators cannot help us. We need to help ourselves. I’m convinced that spiritual learning and development on whatever personal religious or spiritual path one is comfortable with confers upon us what we consider miracles. Miracles inspire further spiritual learning and development and can even be life saving to say nothing of the peace of mind and joyfulness they provide – of particular need during difficult times.
Paramahansa Yogananda (1893 -1952) was an Indian Hindu monk, yogi, and guru who introduced millions to meditation and Kriya Yoga. He is featured on the cover of the Beatles album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. George Harrison was greatly inspired by the book and referred to it throughout his life. He would give copies of it away to people he met. All who attended Steve Jobs’ funeral were given a copy of the book. Swami Paramahansa Yogananda opened the first vegetarian restaurant in Los Angeles – to say nothing of the many facilities for higher learning and spirituality he founded in the U.S. and India. A close associate of his wrote that “He is a Premavatar, an Incarnation of Love.”
I read most of the time in my reading, or sacred, room seated next to my painting of Manitou, a Native American shaman and hanging alongside of that, the painting I did of Jesus Christ titled The Triumph of the Human Spirit – Christ Consciousness (go to the menu above to view all my artworks). Yogananda’s book is greatly informative of Hinduism spirituality and yogi practices. The author also includes many biblical quotes and other references to the Lord Jesus Christ and teachings of several Christian saints as well as some Native American spiritual beliefs to point out the universality of western and eastern religious beliefs. It is exceedingly well written and fascinating. The synchronicities I’ve experienced associated with the writings in the book are too numerous to report of here. I found a striking similarity between the portrait of Swami Yogananda on the front cover of his book and Manitou in my painting. What do you, dear reader, think?
Yogananda Paramahansa above and Manitou below
Books are so easy to publish now and I am concerned that some may be edited not by the author (censored content), so I sometimes purchase older and less expensive books from Thrift Books and nearly always read hard copies. One can also find a free version of his book online and an informative video biography of Paramahansa Yogananda [see links below].
Preface to Autobiography of a Yogi – quite interesting!
By W. Y. Evans-Wentz, M.A., D.Litt., D.Sc.
Jesus College, Oxford; Author of
The Tibetan Book of the Dead,
Tibet’s Great Yogi Milarepa,
Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines, etc.
“The value of Yogananda’s Autobiography is greatly enhanced by the fact that it is one of the few books in English about the wise men of India which has been written, not by a journalist or foreigner, but by one of their own race and training—in short, a book about yogis by a yogi. As an eyewitness recountal of the extraordinary lives and powers of modern Hindu saints, the book has importance both timely and timeless. To its illustrious author, whom I have had the pleasure of knowing both in India and America, may every reader render due appreciation and gratitude. His unusual life-document is certainly one of the most revealing of the depths of the Hindu mind and heart, and of the spiritual wealth of India, ever to be published in the West.”
“It has been my privilege to have met one of the sages whose life-history is herein narrated—Sri Yukteswar Giri. A likeness of the venerable saint appeared as part of the frontispiece of my Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines. It was at Puri, in Orissa, on the Bay of Bengal, that I encountered Sri Yukteswar. He was then the head of a quiet ashrama near the seashore there, and was chiefly occupied in the spiritual training of a group of youthful disciples. He expressed keen interest in the welfare of the people of the United States and of all the Americas, and of England, too, and questioned me concerning the distant activities, particularly those in California, of his chief disciple, Paramhansa Yogananda, whom he dearly loved, and whom he had sent, in 1920, as his emissary to the West.”
The map of India below is featured in the book
“Sri Yukteswar was of gentle mien and voice, of pleasing presence, and worthy of the veneration which his followers spontaneously accorded to him. Every person who knew him, whether of his own community or not, held him in the highest esteem. I vividly recall his tall, straight, ascetic figure, garbed in the saffron-colored garb of one who has renounced worldly quests, as he stood at the entrance of the hermitage to give me welcome. His hair was long and somewhat curly, and his face bearded. His body was muscularly firm, but slender and well-formed, and his step energetic. He had chosen as his place of earthly abode the holy city of Puri, whither multitudes of pious Hindus, representative of every province of India, come daily on pilgrimage to the famed Temple of Jagannath, “Lord of the World.” It was at Puri that Sri Yukteswar closed his mortal eyes, in 1936, to the scenes of this transitory state of being and passed on, knowing that his incarnation had been carried to a triumphant completion. I am glad, indeed, to be able to record this testimony to the high character and holiness of Sri Yukteswar. Content to remain afar from the multitude, he gave himself unreservedly and in tranquillity to that ideal life which Paramahansa Yogananda, his disciple, has now described for the ages.”
W. Y. Evans-Wentz – Oxford University Press
Leslie Taylor, Boise, Idaho – November 2024
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Links :
Response in the Living and Non-Living by Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose
Free online book: https://archive.org/details/responseinliving1902bose/page/n5/mode/2up
Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansana Yogananda. One can also find a free online version of his book on this site: https://www.crystalclarity.com/pages/autobiography-of-a-yogi-paramhansa-yogananda
Video: https://youtu.be/LjpD1DKH2x8
To truly appreciate the series of synchronicities, some are more like miracles, object teleportation perhaps, that have occured during my painting of The Higher Realm Consultations please read the prior four articles in their proper order listed here below or in the menu above.