Metaphysical Articles: Interesting Articles, Links and Other Media: Expanding Your Consciousness with 'The Inner Circle'

Mark Probert (1907-1969) was the chosen medium (or 'channel') for a group of 16 'controls/communicators' who referred to themselves as being of 'The Inner Circle.' As with many other prominent channelers such as Edgar Cayce and Jane Roberts, this case is extensively documented. Nonetheless, it would seem that a multitude of contemporary people are completely unaware of these cases.

The three transcripts of 'The Inner Circle' in this article are quoted in the entirety from the Second Printing of The Magic Bag (1953) — "A Manuscript Received Clairaudiently Through the Mediumship of Mark Probert" (Part One). The Third Edition of The Magic Bag (1963) is more widely available today in reprint books yet doesn't include these three chapters: "Man and Eternal Silence" by Lao-Tse, "The Nature of Germs" by Michael Faraday, and "Man, Know Thyself!" by Thomas Carlyle. These three transcripts provide examples of how word and analogy selections by 'channeled entities' express the unique personality and philosophy of each.

This is a photo of Mark Probert during a trance communication session. He was affiliated with Meade Layne and his Borderland Sciences Research Association. Prior to discovering his mediumship ability, Mark's jobs included five years of hotel work as a bellman in San Diego hotels. Below, a portrait of Michael Faraday provides a physical representation of the personality known by this name during his Earth life 1791-1867. The inclusion of his name with 'The Inner Circle' as one of the 16 'Teachers of Light' is an occurrence of 'The Michael Pattern', one of the patterns and prophecies linking famous cases of 'paranormal phenomena.'

The Inner Circle communicator 'Ramon Natalli' in the book is quoted referring to his realm of existence as being "our side of consciousness." The publisher of the book is Borderland Sciences Research Associates with founder/psychic researcher Meade Layne commenting: "The seances have been attended, from time to time, by psychologists, hypnotists, medical men, and physicists and other workers in the sciences . . . the Controls specifically disclaim any pretense to omniscience ('You will get nothing but opinion on all the planes') . . ." Nonetheless, there is noticeable consistency between The Inner Circle transcripts and basic metaphysical teachings in other channeling cases.

Meade Layne reported:

All sittings are conducted in full daylight or good artificial light, and without formalities or any kind of religious ceremony. There may be three or four people present, or as many as a small apartment will accommodate — between twenty-five and thirty. Sometimes, on special occasions when a hall has been available, the attendance has been more than a hundred.

Here is the list of the other identified 'controls' that manifested through Mark Probert:

Arakashi
Thomas Edison
Charles Lingford
Lo Sun Yat
Professor (Dr.) Alfred Luntz
Rama Kaoloha
Ramond Natalli
Dr. Sukuto Nikkioi
Irene Probert (after the end of her Earth life)
Kay Ting
The Maharajah Natcha Tramalaki
Sister Theresa
The Yada Di Shi'ite

Mark Probert's portrait of 'Lao-Tse' and an 1867 carbon print photograph of 'Thomas Carlyle' (1795-1881) by Julia Margaret Cameron

MAN AND ETERNAL SILENCE

LAO-TSE:

Out of the eternal silence man has come, and so shall he return. So also shall all other things pertaining to physical existence. Almost all of the ancient teachings of life have made meditation a predominant requisite for gaining true understanding of man's self and his place in the scheme of life.

In meditation one is taught to go into what is called the eternal silence.

When meditation is thoroughly learned, the disciple soon discovers that to meditate he need not hide out in the hills or forest or even close himself up in the quiet of a room, but can achieve just as good results in the busy marketplaces of large cities — for outward din has no doorway to inner silence. One needs to but to reverse the outward flow of his conscious awareness to an inner conscious awareness and hold it there till he is given the answer to that which he seeks to know. The silence is man's natural home. It is the womb of his very existence, and the source of all knowledge.

The vibration called sound belongs principally in the physical world. It is but one of the many methods used to attract the conscious awareness of one physical body by another and hold its attention in order to convey a message. It is the beginning stage of the force known as hypnosis. It diverts man from his mental world to his chemical world by strong appeal to his emotions. It is indeed a great magical power that can be used for good or evil. Its magical potentials can be seen by its use in almost all religious rites — both orthodox and occult. Your present-day scientific men are rapidly discovering its inner mystical nature and are using these secrets to cure brain disorders as well as the belief in physical illnesses of the body. Sound can be heard on any of the planes of consciousness. There is, however, a decided difference both in its nature and the manner in which it is heard.

Let us see if we cannot give a clear example of this thought: In the physical world one need not have his consciousness on the place from which a sound comes in order to hear that sound. Indeed, it seems that as long as the consciousness is aware of the physical world, it is never aware of sound about to happen, but only after. This is not the case on any other plane outside of the physical.

Starting from the world of ordinary sleep, the individual will find that he must be first aware of the cause of sound in order to get the effect of hearing it. Too, in sleep state the sound must originate outside of himself and penetrate his dream world. This will cause him to create a whole series of pictures in which he not only hears the sound but originates a source from which it is supposed to come. But whether or not the sound originates in the outer world, the fact still remains that the cause of the sound must be first known before heard; because the individual separated from or unconscious of his physical body and world originates both cause and effect. This seems to be a precognition of not only the event, but the cause of the event. It appears also that there is a long chain of reasons coming before or leading up to the cause. The chain of reasoning breaks only when the effect has been made or the message received.

Your scientific men have often made a conjecture as to whether there was more than one kind of time, and if two kinds of time could not be working simultaneously. Let me assure them that their speculations are even more than true — for there are not only one or two modes of time, but endless modes of time — and they can and often do work at one time and the same instant. For instance: a man asleep and a man awake are existing at one and the same time, but their conscious awarenesses are working in two different modes of time. Then, there is the man who has passed out of the body in what you call "death," and the man who is consciously projecting himself from his physical body. Here you will find four different modes of time, and all working together — separated only by the conscious awareness of each individual.

Need I say more? Is this situation not clear to you? If it is not, I can only say your time of awakening is not yet. But let this not dismay you, but go on with earnestness of purpose, and hold ever foremost the desire to expand your consciousness, and the God of Wisdom will ever be with you.

11-2-48

THE NATURE OF GERMS

MICHAEL FARADAY:

As all things in and of the physical world are made up of an endless variety of chemical compositions, one kind of substance differing from another only by its pattern of atomic arrangement and rate of motion of the particles within that pattern field, is it not possible that the so-called germ, or germs that beset all life that enters into and animates this chemical world are simply another chemical with an X-field of motion? That the life-force itself is an X-field of motion moving into an assumed know field of motion the chemical constituents of a body, human or otherwise — the life-force acting as an irritant upon the chemical world?

Germs, when formed in the body, act in much the same manner as the life-force, building up or destroying by irritation. The characteristic action of an irritant is of two kinds — namely, excitative and depressive. One tends toward construction, and the other to destruction. These two forces generally work in rhythmic harmony, but they are subject to change, due to the variable moods of the life-force. These moods, which are changes in motion of the life-force, produce lines of motion in the glands that manufacture the chemicals that nourish the body, and if these lines of force are not in harmony with the chemical that is being made, it will act as either a depressive or an over-stimulant.

As a depressive, it will slow down the normal action of the particular gland, reducing its output and weakening the quality, so that when it starts on its journey through the bloodstream, it is easy prey for attacking germs that crowd in on it and gorge themselves on the little nourishment they find in it, and then destroy the cell by mass breeding. If this continues, the bloodstream becomes so polluted that the lymphatic system, whose job it is to change these poisons into harmless chemicals, breaks down; and this, of course, gives free rein to the deadly germs.

Over-stimulation, on the other hand, causes an excessive manufacturing and output of one type of chemical. The adrenal gland is far more subject to over-stimulation than any other gland in the body, and its abnormal over-action is brought on by long periods of worry and anxiety. This can cause many serious mutations of the chemicals of the body. Some of these changes cause high blood pressure which will, if allowed to continue, eventually cause a paralytic stroke, or will form lesions in the main heart valves, thereby causing the heart to work twice as hard to get its needed rhythmic flow of blood. It is also the cause of diabetes, arthritis, neuritis, neuralgia, and several kinds of skin rash.

The real and lasting treatment for most diseases of the body as well as the mind will some day come through the learned efforts of psychiatry, and not medicine alone, as has been the case in the past and still is to a large extent. However, the above-mentioned ailments of the body are definitely to be classified as mental, brought about by what I have called "moods" of the life-force that is animating a particular body.

The life-force is so wedded to the chemical body it happens to enter into that its hypnotic spell of attraction causes it to believe that it is the body. A similar misconception no doubt would arise between an electric impulse passing along a wire and the wire itself if the impulse were capable of an individualized state of conscious awareness. Its sense of awareness would be so held by the field of attraction of the wire that it would believe itself to be the wire, and like man, it would go even farther in its trend of hypnotic thought: it would consider itself to be a certain kind of wire — a fat wire, a thin wire, a long or a short wire, a copper, steel or zinc wire. And the more things attached to it, the more it would seek to individualize itself and set itself apart from all other things as something distinctly different.

No doubt, too, it would suffer with an inferiority or a superiority complex, which would lead to a myriad other complexes, and perhaps after a number of years it would suddenly take note of the fact that its physical body was going through the change called wear. Then, perhaps, it would begin to wonder what was going to happen after its body wore out, and this thought would bring on the fear of the unknown.

Man is in reality a beautiful light-wave caught in the dark chasm of a chemical body!

January 7, 1949

"MAN, KNOW THYSELF!"

THOMAS CARLYLE:

If man is to know himself he will first have to stop thinking of himself as a physical body.

The eternal question that besets the thinker of today is the same as it was in the beginning — namely, who am I? And where from? And where going? There can be no doubt that these are questions of the utmost importance to man, and you have a pressing need in your present era for a better understanding of these questions. Much greater is your need than at any time in the physical history of man. Why? Simply because man's next point in his evolution is that of brain and mind — or what is not to aptly termed spirit.

Of the three questions, who, from and where, I do not feel that the first is of the greatest importance by any means, nor indeed can it be answered by material words; and were I pressed to give an answer, I could give only that which has been given before — that you are the eternal One.

To place a tag or name on the eternal One would be to make it temporal and mortal. To attempt to know It by known standards of the physical world would be to know only Its action in the physical-chemical world. Nor shall we do any better with this question on any other plane of consciousness. All we shall ever know is action, but never what or who the Mover is.

I have heard these questions argued by many who call themselves intellectuals, and some end the debate with this kind of answer: "We are nothing, we come from nothing, and we are headed for nothing." But this is merely mortal reasoning; though even as such, it is without logic. For, if matter is indestructible, think how much more so must be That which moves matter. Let us suppose one could receive the final answer to this question — the consequence would be the complete cessation of that one's conscious existence on any plane, for it would automatically bestow upon the receiver all knowledge, and there would be no further reason for having a consciousness.

It is said that when one receives illumination, he suddenly realizes the oneness of himself with the universe. He comprehends life as a unit, and himself as that unit.

But how is one to attain such an all-embracing state of awareness? Surely not through any known method of either concrete or abstract reasoning. In reasoning, the mind goes through a process of correlating the known facts and theories of a given subject and making comparisons of one with the other; and the answers arrived at will depend largely upon the reasoner's ability to place all the facts and theories in proper sequence so that they match like links in a chain. However, no amount of reasoning — or what is termed logical thinking — will bring one illumination. In fact, this wondrous state of awareness comes upon one long after reason and logic have proven themselves useless tools in seeking Self-Realization.

In the quest of the "overself," we are not seeking the ultimate, but rather the effort of the quest is to bring our physical into a wakeful state of awareness with our spirit self, or the high consciousness, so that we will find a more complete state of balance in our living.

There is nothing in the least mysterious about this desire to know yourself and your Self. In fact, it is a great psychological necessity. The rituals used to accomplish the desired ends may and often do seem strange and perhaps even silly to a beginner, or to those who know nothing about such things. I have nothing to say to those who are not ready to learn these things. But to those who are, or feel yourselves to be, let me state that rituals are a most helpful performance in your spiritual growth. It is part of the act in your ever-becoming. It conditions every cell of the physical body towards acceptance of the Spirit, and the Spirit towards more wakeful awareness of its physical vehicle, so that the two can work in more conscious harmony with one another. The mind will look after and take care of the physical body if it is directed to do so; but the business of commanding the mind must be made a ritual; otherwise, little or no effect will be felt or seen. Illness of the body comes about through an individual's failure to consciously keep alert the self to the needs of the body.

The most honorable Emile Coue was trying to teach one method of this conscious awakening of the self when he taught "Day by day, and in every way, I am getting better and better." Nothing, however, will be gained and by merely mouthing or parroting these words. The words "better and better" must be spoken so that they are felt by the body. This is what is aptly called "thrilling the body."

In psychology this usage of the mind on the body is termed "autosuggestion" or self-hypnosis, and of course it is just that. Not knowing anything about hypnosis and its potent action on the body, the layman, when he hears of self-suggestion laughs off its use by saying, "That's just kidding yourself you are well when you are sick." I will agree with such a statement. made out of pure ignorance, to this extent: you are but kidding yourself if you do not use it right. In fact, all life will become but a joke if you fail to approach it in wisdom and a will to understand. And the sad part of it all is that the laugh will be on no one but you.

June 22, 1949
July 15, 1949