The Occult Is Becoming Mainstream

The following is a section from the transcript of a lecture I gave in Toronto. Scroll down for the full video and a link to the rest of the transcript.

So what is the relevance of occultism in an increasingly secular world? Is it even relevant anymore? I think it is! Although maybe we shouldn't call it "occultism" anymore because it's becoming more and more mainstream and accepted. There's a lot of science behind a lot of these occult practices, or so-called "occult" practices.

Just to start off with the basic, you know, the, you know, basic deep relaxation exercises is one of the most basic occult practices you could do. And that's simply relaxing your body. And deeply relaxing it, going through all the different muscle groups and relaxing each in turn. That has been studied, of course, by medical science and science in general. And there's something called "The Relaxation Response" that they refer to what the body goes through. It triggers this response when you become deeply relaxed and it boosts the immune system; it starts to heal tissues; all kinds of good things happen. So that is something that is firmly entrenched in science. And it's not really occult anymore.

And similarly, meditation, which can mean a bunch of different things but you know that includes concentration, contemplation and self-hypnosis and altered states such as that. All of these things have been studied by science extensively. And there are different brainwave states: The brain produces a predominance of certain brainwave frequencies when you're in these different states. So it's been... it's not just a quantitative analysis but qualitative. Like, there's actual frequencies of brainwaves that they can measure and they can tell when you enter into certain altered states. So that isn't really occult in that it's not really an esoteric practice if modern medical science understands it, right? But it's still considered a practice to enter into these altered states.

Now, we know that when we enter into certain altered states we become more suggestible, and that means essentially that our imaginative function becomes much more empowered to create these imaginative, immersive environments. Fully immersive, just like what we're experiencing right now, but based off of internal inputs. Basically, there's a lot of things we can do with that. Now we know that the brain will react in the exact same way and send signals to the rest of our body. When we strongly visualize or imagine something it reacts the same way as if it was actually happening.

So for instance, if you were to imagine yourself going to the refrigerator, taking out a cold lemon out of the crisper, slicing it open and sticking in your mouth or just giving a big squeeze and a bite, you know? If you actually sit there and concentrate on that visualization you're going to start salivating, you know? Your body reacts to that!

In professional sports we know that a lot of the time they use visualization practices such as in in pro basketball. When they're not actively out there practicing dribbling and doing layups they will sometimes, they'd sit there and actually just go over a perfect layup every time. And doing that over and over. You can visualize doing that a hundred times and it has an effect. It actually helps program the neural pathways in the brain and in the entire body that the synapses that control the muscles and the program, essentially, that you're running when you do a perfect layup your body is being conditioned for that just by visualizing it.

To read the rest of the transcript of this lecture, visit my website at:
http://www.jeremycrow.com/modern-occult.html