Which way is up?

My high school science teacher once told the class of a fiendish experiment. To see what would happen to people floating around in space, NASA fitted a group of astronauts with convex goggles that turned the visual world upside down. The men (the only gender allowed to be astronauts in the 1960s) had to wear the contraptions day and night.

Of course they were stressed. But gradually they adjusted to the hardship of stumbling around blindly.

The shocker was that on day twenty-six, one of the men suddenly saw the world right side up. By day thirty, everybody could see straight! With the goggles on!

I was reminded of this recently when I read of the NASA experiment in the book The Answer, by John Assaraf and Murray Smith. They referenced the test results as a powerful example of the brain’s “neural reconditioning” ability.

The new book is an offshoot of the wildly popular book and DVD The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, in which Assaraf is quoted. But Assaraf does a better job of synthesizing the disparate sciences that relate to perception, thought, behavior, the conscious and unconscious mind, and the quantum field than anything I’ve come across.

The bottom line is the same as The Secret — the assertion that our thoughts create our reality. This is the same startling message that now-deceased channel Jane Roberts wrote about in a series of New Age books published in the 1970s, where the otherworldly entity “Seth” said about a million times, “You create your own reality.”

I used to feel so perplexed by this. Okay, so what now? How can I change my reality? I didn’t consciously create certain unpleasant aspects of my reality.

John Assaraf provide the answer to that question (ha ha). He shows how it’s the unconscious mind that is the workhorse/creator of our life experience, and he promotes a method of three meditations a day for re-wiring the unconscious. (You should only bother to do this if you want greater health, prosperity or enjoyment of life.)

I’m now trying to reconcile these messages with the profound wisdom of Echkart Tolle and his book A New Earth.

Tolle says that all my wanting comes from the ego, which is identified with form rather than essence. The ego is never satisfied, and form will never bring joy. We WILL grow old and die (duh), so don’t bother getting all attached to, or identified with, the body.

So I guess I shouldn’t wish for worldly success or more stuff (what about plants for my garden, Eckhart?).

What Tolle offers instead is a really different formula for personal change. That if I keep bringing myself into the present moment, I will feel right now an ineffable joy, peace, sense of power and connection (to that same quantum field Assaraf talks about) that I would never feel otherwise.

I don’t know about you, but this advice really turns my world upside down.

Oh, and I should mention a point Assaraf missed about those poor astronauts. After they removed the goggles, the world was upside down once again.

Tags: convex goggles, John Assaraf, NASA, neural reconditioning, Rhonda Byrne, The Answer, The Secret