InPresence 0082: Thoughts As Spiritual Entities

InPresence host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in "parapsychology" ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). For many years he served as president of the non-profit Intuition Network, an organization dedicated to creating a world in which all people were supported and encouraged in developing inner intuitive abilities.

Here he refers to Rudolf Steiner's writings on the important of taking responsibility for our thoughts. He suggests that each and every thought we have is a spiritual entity. He points to other recognized spiritual entities -- deities, ghosts, archetypes, tulpas, and pookas. He references the movie, Harvey, about a six-foot tall, invisible rabbit (or pooka). He also discusses the case of Ted Owens, The PK Man, as a clear example of the power of thought.

(Recorded on May 13, 2018)

[AdamJPollockLiveProductions]

Fantastic stuff. I’m actually quite blown away by the In Presence series. Especially lately, they seem quite synchronistic to me.
I would really like to get some training in ESP as you’ve said.

[FRED-gxqk]

Jeffrey this was very thought provoking indeed may your work continue

[arrogantprotestant]

I believe your work is going to go to the next level as the rest of us catch up Blessing, love & peace

[mcarbone]

Love this channel and all the content ❤️👍thank you

[adc]

dear Jef. thanks for giving new direction to thinking process

[tewtravelers]

Having almost zero previous knowledge of anything related to mythology, Jungian archetypes, or the occult, I had a mindblowing archetypal "vision" while meditating that changed my life. I've been trying to understand what thoughts, the imagination, and consciousness is ever since that day.

Thank you again for these videos! I look forward to them each morning. Listening to you is always fascinating.

[sidetracked]

Best "in presence", yet. Went to sleep listening to Neville Goddard 's the law of liberty. He reads a letter from someone who imagined and wrote stories containing very specific and detailed characters that 6years later materialized in his and his wife's life.

[benbishop]

I like the idea that the body is IN the soul, rather than soul in body. If one can think of a place and go there, then we are most certainly not confined where our skin meets space.

[IAm-urcq]

.
it is good to have "positive" thoughts
but it is even better to be completely free of thoughts
.

[bettyeldridge]

Steiners works are on line and can easily be read. In my opinion, from experiences that don't include seeing any spirit or such, I suggest a thorough study of his: The Dead are With Us, a few paragraphs of which I attach: " First of all, I will tell you something that may seem to have no meaning for man so long as he has not developed his clairvoyant faculties; but when we think it over, we shall realise that it concerns us closely, leading on as it does to matters in actual life. Those who are able to have intercourse with the dead as the result of developed clairvoyance, realise why it is so difficult for human beings to know anything about the dead through direct perception. Strange and grotesque as it may seem, the whole form of intercourse to which we are accustomed in the physical world has to be reversed when intercourse is set up between the Earth and the dead. In the physical world, when we speak with a human being from physical body to physical body, we ourselves are speaking, When we speak, we know that the words come from us; when the other man speaks to us, we know that the words come from him. The whole relationship is reversed when we are speaking with a dead man. The expression ‘when we are speaking’ can truthfully be used, but the relationship is reversed. When we put a question to the dead, or say something to him, what we say comes from him, comes to us from him. He inspires into our soul what we ask him, what we say to him. And when he answers us or says something to us, this comes out of our own soul. It is a process with which a human being in the physical world is quite unfamiliar. He feels that what he says comes out of his own being. In order to establish intercourse with the dead, we must adapt ourselves to hear from them what we ourselves say, and to receive from our own soul what they answer.

'

[flyingleatherneck]

I’m binge watching this series and it’s fabulous. As good as binge watching Game of Thrones. By the way, I bought Ted Owens’ book — he seemed quite flabbergasted that no one would take him seriously and if Jeffrey ever reads this comment, since you knew him better than most, I’d like to ask what in your opinion was the reason that people such as Targ, Puthoff and others just didn’t engage with him? Did Owens seem just too wacky and out there? Because with Owens, the reader can sense his enormous frustration, that he is creating hurricanes and no one seems to really care!

[DodefiEnglish]

It took me years to get an idea of what Steiner speaks about in this book. Today it is one of the most influencial books for me. Interesting enough I did not understand much when I read this book for the first time. But yet - for unknown reasons - I have pushed myself fully through this book. And just recently I read it again just like you. And it was today that I transferred the majority of my bookmarks from this book to a notebook. Synchronicity?

[ravenlyons]

Caroline Leaf, a psychiatrist I believe, is doing some helpful work in this area. It would be great if you could interview her.

[johnpaul]

The most worrisome and recurrent thought I have these days is that the world's environment is much worse than we think it is. I mention that now and then--and get little or no response. It's as if a Fantastic Storm were bearing down on us, without appearing on the radar.

[ricardopenamcknight]

I mentioned this on another video, but I really don't think they are entities per se, but that when we interact with those metaphysical forces, we tend to project ourselves onto them anthropomorphizing them so that in a way we are seeing ourselves reflected back to us but tinted and distorted by the super-substance doing the reflecting. That's not to say they don't have any kind of intelligence, but I think if they do, as Plotinus and others have suggested, then it is a different kind of intelligence than what we think of as humans. What I think happens is that when we initially have experiences of these higher realms, we have subtle experiences of the forms that precede the manifested reality that we know but which are not necessarily like anything we experience in the manifested world that we know, and so in order to translate the experiences into something comprehensible we have to symbolize the process and insodoing we put it in terms we can relate to the physical senses. An ancient Israelite prophet may have seen an "entity" as wheels within wheels with eyes because it is utterly unlike a human or living creature and yet there's something animate and intelligent about it and it has eyes because it does not have a kind of "perception" that is limited by space and time as is the perception that we have.

Or in Ted's case he might see the forces symbolically like praying mantises because praying mantises are amoral creatures capable of callously eating their own mate, just as the forces at his disposal seemed to have been amoral and unconcerned with the lives and deaths of human beings. It has traits that are analogous to praying mantises and it has traits that remind one of the concepts of aliens because it lies beyond this world and has a different way of thinking and a different kind of being than what we have and so almost everything about it is alien to us. The idea that they are "space" intelligences is not new either, again look at the kind of stuff Plotinus and Iamblichus were talking about with the planetary intelligences thousands of years ago. These beings have always been associated with the stars which "rule over the days and times" or "spin metals into the earth" and so forth. Space in itself is, to us humans anyway, analogous to the idea of "beyond" and "outside of the world we know".

[duncantyler]

This reminds me of Daskalos’ teachings about creating what he called elementals. If anyone is interested, check out the book ‘The Magus of Strovalos’

[Dolphn-Productions]

Your in presence reminded me of this:
Watch your thoughts, they become words;
watch your words, they become actions;
watch your actions, they become habits;
watch your habits, they become character;
watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”

FRANK OUTLAW
I hope you go on to Bell book and Candle that might be an interesting in presence...
I wonder if Jimmy Stewart had a yearning for the occult?

[sawmill]

The PK guy seems kinda dark. I'm sure there are plenty of more powerful people who don't go around bragging about their power and using it in a negative way. Love is the way you serve. You are here to serve all humanity. Nothing but love! Nothing higher than love!!!

[cagedgreed]

My dad said, "whatever you think is created in another universe somewhere." That was a terrifying thing to tell a teenager watching murder mysteries, cop shows, the news, war movies, etc. I still haven't gotten it right to where I only think kind and loving thoughts. I wonder if even most saintly folks think bad stuff sometimes. Shame on me for thinking such thoughts. UGH!!!

[charlesjohnson]

Dr. Mishlove, this is precisely the question that has been on my mind since I "caused" (pre-cognition?) Hurricane Irma. Wittgenstein has an objection which I do not know how to answer. From the Philosophical Investigations: "641. "My intention was no less certain as it was than it would have been if I had said 'Now I'll deceive him'."-- But if you had said those words, would you have meant them quite seriously? (Thus the most explicit expression of intention is by itself insufficient evidence of intention.)" I am sympathetic to your view of thoughts as spiritual entities, however, a cynic would say that the desire to do so is driven by a demand for rationality. Analogously, pi itself is irrational, but the relationship between a circle's circumference to its diameter makes sense, and is easy to use.