Dynamic Resonance Meditation

In 1962 Professor Jean de Heinzelin of the Belgian Royal Institute and the University of Ghent conjectured (in the June Scientific American) that the groups of tally scratches or notches on a piece of bone from a Mesolithic (ca 6,500 B.C.) site at Ishango in the Congo on the Upper Nile were "an arithmetical game." Perceptively sharpening this bright conjecture into an even more probable one, the amateur paleontologist Alexander Marshack, after reading de Heinzelin's article, decided to count the groups and sub-groups of scratches, and thereby was able to announce that they were not a game but rather represented a tally of in all six lunar months.

Marshack then went further and studied the available notched reindeer, bison, and raptor bones from late Paleolithic Europe (ca 35,000 B.C.), concluding that a general practice of tallying lunar days was used by early man — a practice that often even included notice (in terms of spaces between groups or sub-groups of notches) of the phases of full, half, or no moon.

This last phase is recorded in modern almanacs and ephemerides as "new moon," whereas that term more accurately refers to the first visible crescent, a phase that actually follows the dark or no-moon phase. For details of Marshack's work see. his Roots of Civilization, McGraw Hill, N.Y. 1972.

This recent contribution to understanding of Paleolithic life only confirms the thesis — already voiced in the 18th and 19th centuries — that man's cognizance of astronomical regularities played a fundamental role not only in the earliest religions but in the development of an agricultural culture and its concomitant social stability, enabling the rise of cities and centers of civilization.

These regularities might better be termed astrological, as their astronomical character was subsidiary to their use in interpreting the nature of a given time period.

Since in those times religion, social structure and civilizational advance cannot be separated, the thesis* may be more simply stated: ancient religion was primarily astronomically based and hence the highest ancient civilizations developed directly out of man's cognizance of stellar, planetary, solar and lunar regularities in position and time. Alexander Marshack's demonstration of Paleolithic lunar phase tallying adds simply one more piece of evidence to a well known and important thesis, and one that should be more vigorously prosecuted rather than continuing the interpretively dead approach of merely listing industrial artifacts and their relatively unilluminating uses.

*Carried into the present by 20th century investigators of the astronomical theologies of the ancient Near East.

Our point here is that we must now realize that man's accurate recognition of lunar phase changes for ritual or cosmological reasons dates back at least 37 millennia — a long, long time. Among peoples undisturbed and unaffected by the present global technological civilization we may expect to find more information about ancient reasons for seeking lunar phase knowledge. The surviving religious facts emphasize that those reasons were far deeper than merely agricultural, for the agricultural was itself only part of a much deeper life, death and rebirth philosophy. Such peoples are now almost nonexistent. Ethnology and cultural anthropology are, in the machine-dominated mid-twentieth century, rapidly turning into archaeology. Variety is vanishing.

However, in the era of World War I, cultures totally or almost totally undisturbed by the machine age still flourished, and that is why ethnographic records from these earlier decades are more valuable than later ones. One of the most isolated of such relatively untouched peoples in the first half of the twentieth century were the Witoto tribes** of Columbia who, however, call themselves the komüni (i.e. people or humans; cf. the Italo-Latin comuni or "communes"!), "witoto" being a Carib word meaning "enemy," probably referring to days when there were wars between the two peoples.

**The true Witotos of the upper Yapura River country.

By far the most valuable study of the Witoto are the two volumes, now not too easy to obtain, Religion und Mythologie der Uitoto (Göttingen and Leipzig, 1921 and 1923) by K. T. Preuss, then director of the Berlin Museum of Ethnology. Preuss, by the happiest of mischances, was stranded in Columbia when World War I broke out in Europe, and valuably used his enforced stay from September 1913 through September 1919 to make a thorough investigation and ethnographic record, including full observations of rituals, recording of myths in both original and translation, crestomathies, and a unique dictionary. He lived in La Esperanza, Columbia, from April 1915 to the end of his stay. In addition to the two volumes cited, his travel diary appeared in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, vol 52 (1920-1921), no. 2. The whole episode was one of the very few good things that came out of the other-wise senseless and brutal "inter-tribal" war between European peoples.

We have carefully given the sources because Preuss' document is unique and because the Witoto had a remarkable religion — undoubtedly, because of their isolation, comparatively directly handed down from archaic times. Their beliefs can throw tremendous light on the meaning of the now established ancient practice of tallying the lunar phases, for Witoto religion is dominated by the moon and the divine powers associated with its phases. Like so many other peoples the world over, they have persistent traditions of great floods and earthquakes that destroyed previous races of men (60n, 210, 211)* and tell that in far off antediluvian times the moon glowed and gave off light (141).** The twofold aspect of the lunar cycle (waxing and waning) was linked with the double axe (120) so notable also in ancient Aegean civilizations, whence it even travelled to the temple of Stonehenge in Britain, the symbol being found incised on a stone there. As in several other old traditions (e.g. Hindu, Chinese) the moon is linked with a dragon or great serpent (120). Even today the ascending and descending nodes of the lunar orbit are termed the Dragon's Head and Tail, and the time interval taken by the moon in returning to a given node is still termed in modern astronomy the "draconic" month.

*From now on, Arabic numbers appearing in parentheses will refer to pages in Preuss' two volumes, which are paginated consecutively. Press fortunately carefully recorded even where he did not fully understand the significance of the facts.

** An ancient epoch before the moon had cooled? The Witoto seem to have had some ancient, sophisticated source of scientific knowledge, for they also knew that the atmosphere shielded against solar radiation (49).

The Witoto, agreeing with ancient Indo-Iranian (soma-haoma) lunar tradition† ascribe the holiest power of the month to the dark of the moon when, in terms of the Indo-Iranian tradition, the soma or haoma most fully saturates the earth, and the invisible or higher light is brightest: at its dark phase the moon is conjoined with the sun itself, even though we see only a dark, moonless night. In both traditions, the dark of the moon is associated with maximum life-elixir flow (32).

†As texts in the Satapatha Brahmana and Taittireya Sanhita abundantly prove.

Moreover, the magically creating Word (which flourished in ancient Western traditions in Egypt and Sumero-Babylonia, as well as in Indo-Iranian culture, climaxing in the Logos doctrine of Hellenistic times) was also associated by the Witoto with the dark moon, and was externally figured as their ritual slit drum (32, 131), hollowed out of a tree trunk as are the great drums of the Congo to this day. "In the beginning the Word (naikino) gave the Father-Creator, Nainuema, his origin" (659), runs the ancient Witoto chant. Other texts confirm that Nainuema (literally "he who exists in the as yet unmanifest") issued forth from the dark moon as the sound from the great slit drum (139). Prior to Nainuema is Móma (pron. Mawma) the primordial divinity associated with the original (lunar) power even before it first issued as Nainuema (166f., 732 col. b).

The moon's phases in Witoto tradition synchronized with the flow of cosmic creative power and hence governed all fruitfulness and accomplishment, whether in the plant or human sphere. Dark and full moon phases were especially celebrated: the okima and wiké festivals respectivelv (139). The waning or fructifying, fertilizing moon, culminating in the dark moon, was associated with the male powers; and the waxing or developing, gestating, form-manifesting moon, with the female powers (85). This association recalls the ancient Tantric teaching that Siva is darkness and his consort Parvati, light, again linked to those traditions e.g. ancient Sumero-Babylonian and Celto-Teutonic, in which "moon" is a masculine, and "sun," a feminine word — a tradition found also in the ancient Japanese ascription of the sun to the great goddess Amaterasu.*

*We have noticed interesting linguistic-structural phonemic similarities between Witoto and Japanese.

In his aspect as Creator of the Manifest World Nainuema is called Dyonera, the Creator, lit. "he-who-speaks (or names)-with-power." The highest self of a human being, protector of the lower, transitory self, is called dyoneri, i.e. "lesser god," functionally closely related to the. Avestan fravashi* and sometimes symbolized by the Witoto as a falcon (nuike) (230): compare the ancient Egyptian higher or immortal self as the falcon divinity Horus. Note that the root for divinity in Witoto is dyo (pron. dyaw), from the root "to speak." Here is a remarkable kinship with the Indo-European Di(o) < > Dyaus < > Zeus < > Deus < > Theos and the Chinese Ti (God) and Sumerian Zi (Life, as a divine attribute). The Sanskrit root di(v) (cf. the Sumerian dingir, "god," symbolized by an 8-pointed star) means "to shine;" but the Witoto meaning, "to speak" i.e. send forth a stream of sound, throws much light on this logos-like shining, adding the dimension of speech and meaning, i.e. the flown-forth word as an invisible light radiating understanding. This invisible light of vibrant meaning can "shine" in the darkness. Dionysius the Areopagite saw it too, who lived and wrote in the Hellenistic Near East (most probably Syria), that crossroads of ancient Chaldeo-Egyptian inspiration and tradition.

*See the article in this issue by H. Dhalla, together with our own notes there. The ancient Avestan Yasht 13 likens the fravashis to "strong-winged birds."

Plate 55 (page 88) of Tantra Asana, edited and compiled by Ajit Mookerjee (published by Ravi Kumar; Basel, Paris and New Delhi, 1971) shows a leaf from a seventeenth century Kashmiri tantric manuscript, the caption reading (comments in square brackets ours) : "A female figure illustrating [the 9 + 9] positions of Amritakala [literally, the times for immortality], which have to be energised on respective dates of the white [waxing] and dark [waning] halves of the month for successful tantric asanas. The eighteen [9 + 9] focal centers in the female body [on a deeper level, the Corpus of Shakti or divine cosmic power] mentioned in the Ratirahasya [a work by the medieval tantric Kokokka] can be [resonantly] excited by the adept when harmonised with the exact location of the chandrakala [digits or microphases of the moon] on the respective days of the white [waxing] as well as the dark [waning] halves of the month"

This caption, though too brief and superficial, shows there was a definite tradition (agreeing, as we elsewhere show, with the pre-Vedic Indo-Iranian immortality teachings via the inner growth of a higherbody allowing full consciousness after physical death) which specifically divided the lunar month into 9 special days in both the waxing and waning halves, thus making a cycle composed of 18 days in all — a result we exactly arrived at by the striking correspondences between the two-fold cycle of lunar phases each month and hypernumber orbit analysis,* our findings having been attained well before we first learned of the 9+9 days of tantric lunar tradition in early 1972.

• The two-fold elliptic orbits of the power of ±w, such that w^2 = -1+w and (-w)^2 = -1-w. The first and last (ninth) meditation sessions of the waning fortnight correspond to (-w)^0 and (-w)^6; and the 1st and 9th sessions of the waxing fortnight, to (+w) ^0 and (+ w)^6. The fact that (±w)^0 = (±w)^6 makes these first and last sessions coincident on the elliptic w-orbit, thus agreeing with ancient Magian tradition where the first and ninth ritual points around the sacred fire (divine life symbol) coincide (see Fig. 3 of the article by H. Dhalla, this issue).

The Amritakala or times for (attaining) immortality to which the manuscript illustration from Kokokka's work refers, are no longer pre-served in the sense that the method of finding these dates has been lost.The method presently to be given reconstitutes this knowledge.

One of the names of the moon in Hindu tradition is amritasu or "nectar (soma)-distiller"; the root su (whence soma) means well-being or good condition. It refers to the immortal body, thus distilled from light (compare the title Phos or "Light" given in Hellenized Egyptian tradition to the potential higher self sleeping seed-like within each person).** A Gnostic Manichaean poem translated into German by M. Lidzbarski expresses the fulfillment of this prime human quest thus: "Undying Life found what belongs to it (i.e. found my soul), and my soul found what it looked for (i.e. infinite Life)."

**The truer name or nature of this apotheosis within each man's reach is associated in the old Coptic Gnostic treatises with the mysterious "Nikotheos" (lit. "divine victory"), who frees one from the "Adamic" body subject to dire fates and composed of the perishable four elements. See Prof. Jean Doresse's translations, p. 257, Coptic Studies in Honor of W. E. Crum, Boston, 1950.

Thus the evolution of consciousness and insight is the point of this cyclic, resonant time-factoring by a kind of natural polymerization of duration in terms of the 9 + 9 continuous re-cycling. That this knowledge was anciently known and lost is shown in the alchemical tradition preserved in an old printer's mark (figure below). The crab symbolizes the moon, and its two pincers the two crescents, one (the right pincer) waxing; and one (the left), waning. This double cycle holds a butterfly (the newly born winged creature), which this meditation process nurtures and matures: hence the rubric "MATURA" in the figure.

Fig. 1. An old printer's mark, based on ancient esoteric sources. The vessel of transformation — the human heart or consciousness — is symbolized as an alchemical vessel of sublimation and also as the vase in which the cyclical lunar distillation and sublimation process takes place, that vessel finally becoming the cup or grail containing the elixir, the divine nourishment — like a kind of royal, jelly — that induces the growth of a supraphysical body characterized by freedom from disease or death. That body is symbolized by a winged creature — mostly a bird, but sometimes a butterfly, the true psyche or soul, clothed in its "winged" form, able to "fly" to a higher order of reality. Thus the crab or lunar process matures the butterfly or higher state. Hence the word MATURA in the figure, below the crab, the zodiacal symbol traditionally assigned to the moon.

We now give the method of finding the key 9+9 dates each lunar month for resonant meditation practice.

The phasing is governed by a simple system of key numbers (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, and 13) which represent days to be added to the date of the full moon (for the nine sessions of the waning fortnight) or of the new moon (for the nine sessions of the waxing fortnight) in your locality each month, in order to determine the calendar dates of each of the two sets of nine sessions. The simple Resonance-Meditation Session rules follow.

The Times of the Inner and Outer Power Generating Sessions (the waning and waxing lunar fortnight) are found as follows

First obtain from your calendar, almanac or newspaper the date of the current Full Moon. The 1st day after that is Session 1. For the complete series of sessions, simply add days to full moon date thus: tastes

Time of session may be on waking, at sunset or before sleeping, whichever is most convenient. Face west if possible during waning sessions; east, during waxing.

Note the twice-occurring pattern of days for each set of nine sessions: Skip, 1, 1, 1, skip, 1, skip, 1, 1, 1, skip, 1, skip, 1, skip. If you should have to omit any sessions, be sure to include at least Sessions 1, 4, 5, 8 and 9 of each fortnight; if forced to interrupt the cycle for some time, always resume on Session 1 of the waning fortnight, the day after full moon.

The above example was calculated for the Pacific Standard Time zone. At places in a different time zone the full moon might fall in a different day, thus shifting session dates by one day. The easiest course is to consult your almanac or newspaper for the proper lunar dates and use the simple rule already given for finding session dates. For purposes of this meditation, a day begins at dawn and ends the following dawn, which is the most natural observational way of reckoning days, the present legal fiction of making a day begin at midnight being quite artificial. Thus full moons between midnight and dawn are counted as occurring one day earlier than the date given in a calendar, almanac or ephemeris. For dynamic resonance meditation, dawn — and hence a s new day — is considered as beginning two hours before sunrise. In practice very few full moons will be found to occur during the two hours before sunrise. In such cases consult sunrise times in your local newspaper.

With the key numbers given above, anyone can learn to extend the example beyond January 1973 by observing how the key numbers were actually used in constructing the example. The dates of new and full moon given are those for the Western Coast of the United States.

Other places, east or west, may show a difference of one day in the date of full and new moons because of the change of time with longitude. The easiest way for you to find these dates for your locality is to look them up in your daily paper or in a farmer's or nautical almanac.

If you are out of reach of a calendar or almanac, you still can apply this deeply natural meditation method by doing what the ancient peoples did. Under such circumstances observe the moon directly, counting the lunar month from full moon to full moon; for, unlike the ambiguous, hidden dark of the moon, the day of full moon can be accurately known by the unaided eye.

Having thus established the current date of full moon where you are, the dates for the nine sessions of the waning fortnight follow directly by the rule already given, the ninth session falling on the 13th day after the day of full moon as explained before.

Then the dates of the nine sessions of the waxing moon are given in order by adding 16, 17, 18, 20, 22, 23, 24, 26, and 28 days to the day of full moon for sessions one through nine respectively. This way you do not need to know the day of the dark of the moon, erroneously called "new moon" in our almanacs and calendars. You need know only what you can actually see: the full moon, thus shown by necessity to have been regarded as the beginning of the lunar month in most ancient times. Sec also Figure 2 on page 154.

Having established the ancient association of lunar phase resonance with the dispensing of vast cosmic powers, thus made accessible to man at certain (easily predictable) times, let us go on to the modus operandi for the psychological and practical use of such time factors. This is a method of making meditation work by accurate, resonant timing. Many people now meditate. But few know properly how to do so, and scarcely any know when. The resonant timing refers to a rhythm of induced positive feedback, like pushing a swing forward at the proper time to increase its power, or by pulling on the ropes at key moments, as many of us remember doing as boys and girls. What follows is an updated and enlarged summary of how to work with this important method for release of human capacity in terms of improvement in bodily health, in the kinds of events you attract, and in degree of development and exercise of your latent inner potential.

Together with the meanings or intent of each of the 18 monthly sessions, presently to be given, you have all you need to know in order to use dynamic resonance meditation and make the help that it offers, inwardly and outwardly, your own.

Imagine a giant engine that works on a 2-phase concept: the compression or charging phase, culminating in ignition (or "lasing," if a laser-power device); followed by an expansion, power-release (or radiation) phase, whereupon the charging phase recommences. Further imagine this entire bi-modal cycle to occur monthly, with the meditation days of the waning fortnight corresponding to the inner power generating or compression stroke (with its culmination or ignition point at session 8); and those of the waxing fortnight, to the external power generation or expansion stroke, the point of greatest power being correspondingly at session 8 of the waxing fortnight or 15-day interval.

All sessions are times when germinal powers for later blossoming in inner and outer life flow into those who "drink" by tuned awareness.

Combining the previous rules and the cosmic engine concept with a fortnightly bi-modal phase shift, the following diagram is obtained and we are now ready for the description of the 9+9 sessions, which may be practiced on waking, before going to sleep, or at sunset on the designed day, whenever is most convenient. During the waning fortnight facing west is best; during the waxing, east, the place where visible light first appears daily, the waxing moon being coupled with visible light increase, in turn associated with successful clarification of external affairs. The waning moon, on the other hand, although it appears to darken daily as seen from earth, is actually returning to the sun.

Fig. 2. The Great Wheel of Cosmic Power related to the luni-solar phases and ancient traditions.

The Taoists, who, before Buddhism or Confucianism became established in China, inherited the oldest traditions of that culture, speak of the all-powerful "Wheel of Thirty Spokes," here shown to be the 30 days of the lunation (outermost ring). The days are counted from the full moon since it is the full moon and not the dark or new crescent moon that can be accurately observed and timed. In ancient cultures, and there is evidence for this in Egyptian and Mayan remains, the lunar months were reckoned from full moon to full moon. The origin of the I-Ching is lunar.

The monthly cycle of self-development sessions, involving "meditaton" or consciousness-oriented rather than external sensory attention, start with Session 1, on the second day after the full moon, as shown in the next-o-outer ring. As Vedic and pre-Vedic rituals preserved in extant texts of the Satapatha Brahmana and Taittireya Sanhita show, Mitra governed the waning lunar fortnight and Varuna, the waxing. The holy life-power or heavenly soma, carried down by Indra (often in falcon form, later assimilated to the Garuda Bird of Vishnu), enters all water, plants and hence animals during the waning fortnight, the invisible light of life* — governed by Mitra, friend of all beings — that increases as the moon rejoins the sun. The plants felt to absorb soma most concentratedly were begun to be pressed for their juice just after full moon, and during the waning fortnight the soma rituals governed further preparation. All the divine powers are forms of the immortal life-fire or life-energy divinized as Agni, whence the Latin ignis, "fire" and the English igneous, "fiery" or "pertaining to fire." Thus the old texts tell us that Brahma is the fire in the embers just before disappearing completely into its invisible state. Mitra rules externally subsiding fires and Varuna, externally increasing fires. Just as Indra, often identified with the Soma-falcon, represents the full moon turning into the waning moon, carrying Soma to the earth, so Skanda, the leader of the heavenly hosts, represents the moon at its externally most luminous power phase, just becoming full Later Skanda in the role of maintainer of all manifest things, became assimilated to Vishnu, as did Indra-Soma to Garuda.

The light that shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not (John 1:5).

At the beginning of the cycle, when the external fire burst forth with smoke and the power to become a consuming conflagration, that stage was called Rudra (later assimilated to Siva) in the old texts. Similarly the Eight Immortals of Taoism, later forms of the much earlier divinities governing the powers of the Eight Trigrams (shown in the figure as the circuit of symbols between the two crescents) also sprang from the cosmic meaning of the primal eight phases of the moon: 1) full; 2) waning gibbous; 3) waning half-moon (the waning or yin power at its peak, since hereafter it comes nearer and nearer to the turning point, at the dark of the moon, leading to the waxing phases); 4) waning crescent; 5) dark moon; 6) new or waxing crescent: 7) waxing half-moon (yang power at peak); 8) waxing gibbous, followed by return to full moon. The origin of the I-Ching is lunar.

The sessions for self-development begin with Session 1 of the power- generating waning fortnight on the days indicated, until Session 9 is completed. Then, after a two-day interval, the sessions of the power-externalizing waxing fortnight commence, again proceeding from Session 1 (17th lunar day from full moon) through Session 9 (29th day). When these sessions are thus properly timed, a resonance effect builds up, increasingly discernible after the second month of practice, and much more so after the first year. There is a specially potent resonance peak after 13 lunar cycles and 6 sessions, culminating in the 8th session of the waning fortnight of the 15th lunation reckoned from full moon — about a year and three months.

As in all resonant phenomena, strength is gained from regularity and from the correct timing as given in the Figure. Diacritical marks have been omitted from the Sanskrit names in this discussion as they add nothing to the lay reader's pronunciation or understanding and may tend to make him or her feel unnecessarily inadequate. It would be a mistake for anyone to feel this way, for the idea and the practice of Dynamic Resonance Meditation are essentially as simple as they are profound.

Thus the waning moon means the growth or increase of inner or invisible light — the light of insight and inner victory rather than simply an "outsight" or outside, external victory in terms of successful worldly outcomes.

During each session there is a flow of power energizing some particular phase of these two grand and interrelated modes of your outer and inner life. This energy flows at these times as through an open spigot. Whether you drink or not depends on your awareness of what it is that is going on, and your preparedness through meditation practice to receive it. This is the great tree of life of ancient traditions also mentioned in the Apocalypse of John as bearing leaves each month for the healing of all people. But it is a tree whose flow of life energy works in and through awareness: it is your own awakened awareness that allows you to drink in that measure. This fact explains why so comparatively few here have been able to drink from this ancient fountain that has never ceased its outer and inner life-giving flow since time immemorial. The moon, changingly lit in the sky by the sun, is like a great luminous indicator for the dispensation of this cosmic energy,* whose ebb and flow we would not otherwise be able easily to know or use. Let us then use it, allowing each of the 18 sessions to lift us resonantly to still higher levels of understanding, capacity, and happiness.

Called soma in ancient Indo-Iranian tradition, cognate with the Greek soma. "body." This apparent corruption in the Greek actually embodies an criginal idea lost in later Indian tradition: the soma was the life-restoring, immortalizing energy that activated the higher or immortal body. like those hormones that serve to metamorphose a really only one-dimensional caterpillar into a three-dimensional winged butterfly. The soma flowed into all water, plants and animals during the fortnight of the waning moon, governed by Mitra, divinity of the invisible light of life, as in the old Graeco-Coptic acrostic

Phos (cf. phosphor, "light maker") meaning light; and Zoë (cf. zoology), "life." The soma entered some plants more than others, and one in particular called the soma plant par excellence, recently identified by R. Gordon Wasson with the psychedelic mushroom, amanita muscaria. But soma is a generic term for the invisible but more effective cosmic higher-life energy and is also a name for the moon, dispenser of soma to the entire world. To identify soma as merely a particular plant or indeed with any particular physical object is a grave error, which the Vedic texts and commentaries directly and rightly refute. Soma is the life-regenerating power, available to all creatures through the moon and to man particularly, because he can meditate. It is the chief hormone, so to speak, that activates the growth of the supraphysical body that survives death.

We do this by letting the intent or meaning (hereafter given) of each session sink into our minds and feelings as we begin it. In this realm of consciousness-energies, being aware is being there. There need be no forcing, but simply a knowing that the type of consciousness-energy flowing during the given session will of itself work in us to enable the realization of what the session signifies; much like an enzyme, that performs a specific physiological function, is released by its "molecular symbol" or operon encoded sequentially in the cyclical coils of the DNA double helix of physical life. The double helix of intertwining waxing and waning meditation sessions likewise livingly encodes the pattern of energy release for higher life manifestations.

Some people to whom we taught the practice orally have found that writing each session-meaning on a separate card in color and concentrating on the written words, provides an easy launching into the meditation, in which the idea of the particular session effortlessly fills your awareness and harmoniously integrates your feelings to the exclusion of all else. This is the state to aim for in each session. and it will bring you into contact with the flow of time-and-life energy which otherwise would reach you only in much lower and more diluted degree. The 18 meanings or intents follow. Your consecutive correct practice for one month (18 sessions) means one completed step of inner development and external harmony in your life. This practice is a key to the successful acceleration of human evolution toward its next stage.

1. During this entire fortnight, unwanted habits or attitudes will be changed more easily. This first session is a time for becoming consciously aware of and rededicated to the idea of inner growth as a human being, endowed with a potential both preceding your womb-formed, actually fragile physical body and transcending its dissolution. This awareness illuminates you and prepares for another cycle of inner growth and higher, embryo-like formation, in the brain, of the energy patterns that transduce the perfecting of a supraphysical body or vehicle that you can consciously use even before leaving your present physical body permanently. Most people, after the physical body has ceased to function ("died") are thus forced to function through a still only foetus-like supraphysical vehicle, in which they have not yet developed a full sensorium and can hence experience only to the extent of a kind of dream-like state, though such "dreams" are a real pathway of development for them and are more consecutive and vivid than ordinary dreams while still in the physical body. This is the Tibetan bardo state. The first session is to refreshen all these ideas and rekindle the full flame of aspiration to become more of what you truly can be and, in a deep sense of potential-realization, even already now are. The keyword here is Rededication.

2. This session energizes the channels that bridge the gap between the conscious mind to the so-called "unconscious," which in reality is conscious of so much more than we are in our ordinary "conscious" state that that state would be better described as "unconscious." The point is that we are actually functioning on two levels at once: one of manifest and the other of unmanifest awareness. This session develops the ability to tap at will the resources, of memory or other ability, that lie ordinarily locked up in the unconscious mind. The keyword is Access.

3. This session develops the power of your unconscious, which actually does your car-driving, walking, and all other habitual tasks for you, leaving your conscious mind free to make more demanding decisions. The so-called unconscious is the great repository of learned habits wanted or not, both of mind and body: habits of thought and attitude as well as bodily movement patterns. Some of these habits, unconsciously learned, either are no longer wanted by us, or actually work against us. Such unconscious sets are sometime called "complexes," "neuroses," and so on. The name is unimportant, but we do need to know that we caused them and can re-do them as we want them to be, redirect their locked-up energies in new, desirable ways. This third session follows up the last one by giving you the power to deal with and re-mould the force-patterns of emotion and belief in your unconscious mind. Then can come deep and beneficial "root-growth" unbeknownst to you. The keyword is Power.

4. During this session, higher life energies have access to you and can be absorbed, resulting in a reawakening of the growth process of the inner or supraphysical body, thus preparing you better for your eventual use of it when you leave your present molecular, carbon-based physical body. Higher life flow to inner body takes place. This fourth session opens a new and necessary avenue of energy, eventually providing the power to separate yourself from and even function out of the physical body. This process enables better life-energy flow for the rest of the fortnight. At this time each month appreciable temporary separations between the supraphysical and the physical body are more easily possible with practice, alert consciousness being present throughout. The keyword is Preparing Freedom.

5. The fifth session is one of spiritual purgation by valid, fearless logic and that inner honesty which is the only viable basis of all logic that is not mere word-masked deception. In this session you find you can attain the power to face and scrutinize yourself, and the redetermination to better and improve what you see; so that each month at this time you will be more pleased as what you momentarily are agrees more and more with what you want to be. This session, like the first, is linked with the two following ones in an operational group of three. The keyword for Session 5 is Honesty and hence Right Logic.

6. This session provides the power to combine and bridge the gap in most of us between logic and intuition. This gap hinders us from clearly, logically explaining our most penetrating ideas and insights, and also prevents our being able to break out of narrow conceptions, perhaps logical within their limitations, but quite inadequate or even erroneous in dealing with a larger picture effectively. The power that flows now enables us to wed clear logic and profound intuitive insight — the marriage from which all genius is born. The keyword here is Joining Logic and Intuition.

7. The third of this group of three, the seventh session enable us to ascend the peaks of Vision and see far beyond what we presently know or could even hope to express explicitly. This power to perceive beyond where we are, to know it is there before we see, is essential in maintaining solid faith based on inwardly experienced certainty and never on fatuous credulity — faith in our ongoing adventure in the overwhelmingly exciting enterprise of becoming what we truly are, by becoming more than we were. We are thus able to do more than we ever thought we could, sustained by a vision often scarcely conscious. In this adventure of self-development, the power of higher vision and the strength it gives are inestimable assets. Session seven develops that power. The keyword is Vision.

8. As in Session 4, here we break away into a climax, this time even more powerful. Here is where the gathering power begins to ignite and the laser that we have been light-filling begins to lase. This session releases the most powerful forces of the entire fortnight, and is in a sense their climax. In this session the supraphysical body consolidates a complete step of growth toward that super-birthday when we will be able to function, by means of this superior vehicle and sensorium, in a higher form of objective reality than we now can fully know. During this session the soma is distilled into a life-tincture that enters the still formative higher body and brings it one step nearer birth. This session prefigures the victorious and fully conscious transcending of physical death. The keyword is Immortality and Liberation.

9. This, the last session for the fortnight, is anticlimactic but very necessary. It provides the seed-time for fostering, until the next waning moon, the development you have so far gained. The protective energies of this session seal in the life-energy gained during the entire preceding eight sessions, returning it to the center of your being where it works quietly in terms of inner growth and the development of a "better model" body. The keyword is Preservation of the Light and the Life.

Now flow the powers (helped by the previous fortnight) that later blossom externally. It is a time to form new, wanted habits and attitudes concerning health of the physical body as well as the harmony and success of the situational or event-structure of the outer life. Here you will learn to "time track," to spin an Ariadne's thread that, followed, will lead you by the happiest and shortest path through any difficulty or interim period.

1. The first session of the waxing fortnight marshals help and health for all conscious body-functions, lending physical movement, breathing, and speaking more vital energy, harmony and effectiveness. The keyword is Engaging Life, Tuning In.

2. Session two of the waxing moon enables a linking between conscious and unconscious body-function, hence lending increased ability to meditate, control body temperature voluntarily, to do T'ai Chi Ch'üan, dance movements, yoga breathing, and all artistic performances whether in drawing, painting, sculpting or music. The keyword is Turning on or connecting to Power.

3. In this session help and health are given to unconscious body functions like heart, digestion, liver, kidney, ductless glands and controlling brain centers. At this time also, unconscious time-power is stimulated, in terms of event-formations, of which you may be quite unaware at the time, which will later prove useful and helpful to you. The keyword is Doing Better Than I Know.

4. In this session, energies that make for new growth and reborn faculties enter into the body and outer life. The energy to pick yourself up and start anew. A time for shedding unwanted or hindering patterns, situations or habits as old skin is shed. The keyword is Beginnings of Victory.

5. Prepare for this session by sweet smelling, invigorating baths, and by burning sandalwood incense if you so desire: for this is a session of outer cleansing and purgation. Medicine (herbs) and baths are of great effect now. The self-cleansing processes of the physical body and life-event structures are activated and given extra power to eliminate or burn up wastes or undesirable situations. The net result is a vibrant increase of mobilized body-energy and strength, aiding you throughout the month, until this session comes again. The keyword is Cleansing.

6. In this session love-power (the ultimate energy of the cosmos) enters into and transfuses the body till it almost shines, providing the very Root of Grace. Life-giving forces pervade all event-formation underway. The keyword is Clarification.

7. Luck and power come down to you in this session, enabling difficult things to be done or overcome successfully. Also a time when, unbeknownst to you, your reserves of health-energy and luck are replenished. The keyword is Extra Power.

8. Session eight is climactic in that help to the body and outer life by power for accomplishment is dispensed now, power that causes the environment to agree with you. It is like a time of grace from a higher beneficence. The keyword is Blessing.

9. This last session of the waxing moon is a time for seed-planting of the renewed strength for body and outer life gained from the previous eight sessions. The keyword is Preservation of Achievement.

As a final word, if it ever should become necessary to interrupt the practice, try to do it always just after a session 9, and preferably a session 9 of the waxing fortnight. Otherwise, the power gathered during the previous sessions will be dissipated and lost. Then begin again with first session after full moon.

The unique distinction of this method is that it enables evolutionary power to be accelerated and built up, by accurate resonant timing, to a far greater degree than you would ever be able to generate and concentrate yourself by any other course of meditation and action. It is the principle of a glass being shattered by a musical note to which it resonates. All the walls of your own Jerichos of problems can be likewise shattered by the powerful, liberating practice that has been explained.

The keys to more abundant life are now in your hands. Remember that your abiding feelings are the foundation and root of all your meditations. In the telling words of J. Goldman's play "They Might Be Giants":

The human heart sees things the mind cannot begin to understand.

The ancient bird-dragon pictograph figured below was once on high rocky bluffs overhanging the Mississippi River near Alton, Illinois, in Chippewa country, and called Piasa in the Chippewa language, meaning a large raptor and also their name for the legendary "thunderbirds" that pervade Amerindian tradition and both of whom (male and female) were messengers of the Great Spirit, by whatever name the Creator Divinity was called.

Fig. 3. Upper left: Restoration of ancient painted pictograph on a rocky bluff overhanging the Mississippi River near Alton, Illinois. in former Chippewa country.

The Chippewa, to whom the rock painting was already old, called it "Piasa," their name for the Thunder Bird, the Amerindian equivalent of the great Feathered Serpent of Ancient Mexico and Central America, cognate to the Chinese Dragon Divinity associated with the moon. Thus the I-Ching trigram "K'an"

(cf. the Mayan kan serpent) in archaic form figured a river dragon and is also called "abysmal darkness" and "moon" in I-Ching commentaries, i.e. the dark of the moon, when the invisible or dragon-like power is fully active (also see the K'an glyph, Figure 2, upper center).

Upper right: The lunar dragon-bird in western tradition, shown superimposed on the earth's and moon's orbits, the intersections of which until comparatively recently were called the Dragon's Head and Tail. The figure is from Chapter 45 of Book II of Cornelius Agrippa's encyclopedic work De Occulta Philosophia, known from the scholar Karl Nowotny's researches as well as from Agrippa himself to have collected and embodied ancient sources. The first English edition of Agrippa's work appeared in 1651 in London. The figure was reproduced by Frances Barrett in his Magus, London, 1801.

Agrippa's text in the old English reads: They (the ancients) made also the Image of the head and taile of the Dragon of the Moon…the likeness of a Serpent, with the head of an Hawke...For the Egyptians and Phenitians ["Phoenicia" comes from Phoenix, the divine bird of immortality linked with the mountains of Phoenicia, the present Lebanon, where Osiris' resurrection traditionally began] do extoll this creature above all others, and say it is a divine creature and hath a divine nature…and also that it often reneweth his age and becometh young again.

The great raptor that guards the luni-solar soma-power of life and immortality and carries it periodically to earth was a primordial Indo-European tradition. A great bird or dragon-bird guardian of immortal life appears also in Egyptian, Greek, Chinese and ancient American tradition: the "Feathered Serpent" of Maya-Toltec-Olmec-Aztec belief is the guardian of ik, the Mayan word for life-breath or life-power. The winged dragon also prominently figured in all alchemical symbolism pertaining to the elixir of immortality (the soma of Vedic and pre-Vedic tradition).

On the Alton rocks were depicted two such beings as in the figure, painted in red, green and black mineral colors. They were already in deteriorated condition when first viewed by Europeans (Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliot and their French Canadian companions) in 1673: and in 1867 part of the rock on which they had been painted was cut away in quarrying. The above figure is a restoration from accurate early descriptions by residents and travelers. Marquette's runs thus:

As we sailed round some rocks of awesome height and size we saw one with two monsters painted on it…The images were as large as calves, with deer horns on their heads, a fierce expression, and human faces above chins bearded like a tiger. Their bodies were covered with scales, with a long tail wound around and passing above the head, back between the legs and ending in a fish tail. Green, red and black are the three colors of the paintings, which are so well done that we cannot believe any savage is their author. Even good French painters would find it hard to do so well, especially in such a difficult location.

As the accompanying figure from Cornelius Agrippa's ancient sources show's, this old Mississippi Bird-Dragon, probably dating back to the mound-builders long before the Chippewa, thus links the thunderbird with the great Central American Feathered Serpent or Dragon tradition (Kukulkan in Mayan; Queztalcoatl in Aztec). All these forms are Garuda-types, and Garuda in turn was the divine raptor form of Indra, who transported the soma-elixir of immortality from moon to earth in Hindu tradition, and who was Horus (who likewise dispensed immortality) of the ancient Egyptian tradition, which is one of the most uniform and persistent of the human race: the immemorial Chinese flying dragon (lung: the character signifies "great dragon on moon") also was associated with the secret of immortal life. The Great Bird flew between the earth's and the moon's orbit, dispensing cosmic power to the earth. When we use the method of Dynamic Resonance Meditation, as explained in this manual we borrow the divine falcon's wings and fly, by higher consciousness, into higher reality.

The great power of the moon's phases throughout nature — evidenced by confirmed correlations between lunar phase and tides (in earth and water), plant growth, animal life and human behavior peaks — attests that there is far more to this method than autosuggestion. We are here dealing with the subtle reaches of a higher but quite objective world, which we are all destined to know when we leave this body in the natural course of events.