2,190 words
“What you see around you is the expression of the mentality, not the reverse. Just by adopting a coherent form of thinking, you can actually change reality quite a bit.”
—Jonathan Bowden[1]
“Hello seeker! Now don’t feel alone here in the New Age, because there’s a seeker born every minute.”
—Dr. “Happy” Harry Cox
***
Not sure if you should make a donation to your favorite website, Counter-Currents.com? Perhaps not sure you can afford it anyway, in fact feeling a bit threadbare, badly off, ruined, underprivileged, bust, out at elbows, down on luck, out of pocket, down at heel, on one’s uppers, short, disadvantaged, even a bit in queer street? Well, sit a spell, Constant Reader, and I’ll tell you a little story.
This past Halloween, I sat down for my morning glance at the headlines on ZeroHedge.com, braced for the latest political and economic outrages, when my eye caught this seasonally appropriate screamer: Did The CIA Discover How To Manifest Your Best Life?
Dog of Flanders! Had Jason Jorjani broken into the mainstream? Alas, no; it’s only that someone has stumbled across a declassified report on CIA attempts to “weaponize meditation.” How’s that for scary?[2]
The article takes the usual snarky MSM approach, treating the topic as obviously crack-brained (which is pretty rich, since the article originates from the Epoch Times, which is funded by the Falun Gong cult and promotes the QAnon psy-op among other conspiracies). The comments at ZeroHedge are much the same, using it as an excuse to type up the usual right-wing knee-jerks: government wasting tax dollars, transhumanist billionaires, etc. before getting back to their “sure fire” investment scams—I mean, “proven winning techniques.”[3]
The Gateway report is a glorious mess of science and spirituality. It cites string theory, holographic universes, and something called “the cosmic egg,” which sounds more like brunch.
Essentially, it argues that the universe is a big hologram of energy, and human consciousness is just one shimmering part of that infinite field. By syncing your brainwaves, you can allegedly project your mind into this field, alter reality, and, if you’ve focused properly, manifest your desired outcomes.
It’s like The Secret, but with more footnotes and less Oprah.
All this is presented as if it were some outdated 60s fad taken up by out of touch 80s Boomers on the government payroll:
It’s 1983. Shoulder pads are high, hair is higher, and somewhere deep within the corridors of the CIA, a few serious-looking men in polyester suits are asking themselves: what if we could leave our bodies on purpose and go spying through the astral plane?[4]
Unbeknownst to them, but knowst to us, the reality of so-called “psy” powers, and their mutually fruitful entanglement with physics, have been known and explored for well over a century, by real scientists—not New Age marketeers or naïve spooks. And at least some hints of this have appeared in essays and reviews I’ve published on this very site.[5]
Things reach an apotheosis of déjà vu (how appropriate!) when the article saves you the trouble of reading the CIA writeup by providing its own cheat sheet:
How to Manifest Like a Spy (Sort Of)
Here’s a CIA-approved approach to manifestation, minus the lab coat:
Visualise. Picture your goal vividly, like it’s already happened. (Apparently, the universe loves confidence.)
Intend. Attach emotion and belief to that image.
Focus. Hold that thought. Don’t get distracted by emails or carbs.
Detach. Let it go. Nothing kills a cosmic vibration faster than neediness.
Repeat. Because even quantum physics loves consistency.
If you’re lucky, you’ll get a sudden insight, a burst of intuition, or possibly just a really nice nap.
Well, ha-ha to you, buster. For what we have here is nothing other than what the midcentury mid-Atlantic mystic, Neville Goddard, offered free of charge:[6] his “simple method for changing the future.”[7]
Mitch Horowitz has conveniently provided us with a summary of what Neville offered his rapt audience:[8]
To recap the formula: First, clarify a sincere and deeply felt desire. Second, enter a state of relaxed immobility, bordering on sleep. Third, enact a mental scene that contains the assumption and feeling of your wish fulfilled. Run the little drama over and over in your mind until you experience a sense of fulfillment. Then resume your life. Evidence of your achievement will unfold at the right moment in your outer experience. [9]
Other than the testable nicety of whether to repeat the entire sequence over and over or only repeat the third step until satiated and then drop the whole thing, this method is so similar to Neville’s that the same criticism can be made of it. Rurik Christwalker on Substack observes:
Sadly, the [Gateway] tapes require a high level of proficiency already. The high level of success that Monroe boasted of was achieved by using people with experience in the trials.
Before you can do the tapes you have to have a lot of prerequisite skills. Like being able to make your body fall asleep for one.
It feels like only the top 5% of people are catered to in the esoteric world. [10]
The first book to discuss Neville, Israel Regardie’s The Romance of Metaphysics: An Introduction to the History, Theory and Psychology of Modern Metaphysics[11]brings the same criticism—mildly—to Neville. He attributes Neville’s own success with his “simple method for changing the future” to his training — as well as his presumed natural talent — as a professional ballroom dancer on Broadway and in London and Paris. [12]
This is what enabled Neville to achieve, without appreciable effort, states of tremendously profound relaxation, without actually dropping off into sleep and unconsciousness. (Sleep researchers call this the “hypnogogic” state) And this is exactly why Neville never provides, and seems never to have seen a need for, elaborate instructions and training methods so as to bring his listeners up to his level. One can only assume that the ones with natural ability — like those who supposedly make “good” subjects for hypnosis — found the method worked, while the rest gave up after a few failures.
This isn’t the first article, podcast, or whole book, devoted to pointing, sputtering, and all but shouting they’re “not putting up with any damned nonsense” (as a parody of Chesterton once expressed it) as if the practical implications of quantum physics and New Age huckstering were one big ball of wax.[13]
And there’s certainly a lot to cast a jaundiced eye here, what with this Monroe Institute and its “Gateway techniques”; it’s still around, and “For around US$79, you can take a digital “Beyond Meditation” course. For $2,805, you can attend an in-person Remote Viewing programme and try to see through walls, time, and possibly your ex’s emotional unavailability.”
Here, I think the snark is warranted. As noted, Neville never charged a nickel for his method (other than his lecture fees); and since his books are without copyright, and he encouraged attendees to tape record and transcribe his lectures, his words and voice are available all over the internets, just like Mystery Science Theater or the Grateful Dead. All he ever asked, was that his listeners try it, and then report their results.
Not a few who have tried have found themselves agreeing with Horowitz:
I am suggesting, apropos of earlier suppositions by figures ranging from Arthur Schopenhauer to Jack Parsons, that at the core of magick lies a greater truth about the human condition, one that allows us to take more seriously the Psalmist’s melancholic injunction “ye are gods.” I believe that as we as a human community grow increasingly aware of our interdimensional existence—an awareness justified by psychical research, neuroplasticity, quantum mechanics and computing, placebo studies, interdimensional modeling, and today’s deepening UFO query (which itself encompasses the question of inter-dimensionality)—we may discover, as our Victorian counterparts did of the subconscious mind, that there exists a faculty of selection couched in the psyche as an under-recognized but ever operative, ever-potent facet of human existence. Your defined, impassioned, and acknowledged wish may be enough. It may, at least, open humanity to the simplicity of magick, for which Jack wished. Try. [14]
Of course, all you Constant Readers will know that this Timeless Wisdom has been on offer here for some time, free of charge.[15]
Yes, Ancient Teachings that the CIA spent millions of dollars—your dollars—to try to figure out, have been offered to you on this site, gratis.
This unique combination of metapolitics and practical metaphysics—and if Bowden, and Evola, are correct, the two are closely related—at Counter-Currents is well worth your financial support. Exercise your faculty of selection here, today.
Just try it.
Notes
[1] Jonathan Bowden, Why I am Not a Liberal, Studies in Reaction series (Perth: Imperium Press, 2020), reviewed here.
[2] Read it for yourself here: https://www.scribd.com/document/940414818/cia-rdp96-00788r001700210016-5#from_embed
[3] “Self-delusion comes in many forms; the magical universe is delusional from a positivist point of view, just a lot of atavistic superstition; but from the point of view of quantum theory, it would be positivism that is delusional, and there is no objective universe, only the realities we create by observing them.” Oliver Harris, Two Assassins: William Burroughs/Hassan Sabbah (Moloko, 2023), p103.
[4] For a less snarky discussion of the report, see the videos beginning here.
[5] The most accessible is probably Mitch Horowitz’ The Miracle Club (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2019), reviewed here; while Dean Radin’s Real Magic: How the Mind Weaves the Fabric of Reality (Harmony, 2018) is an entire book devoted to an up-to-date review of laboratory results, by a leading scientist in the field. Regarding the latter, Brian Josephson, Nobel Laureate in Physics and Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Cambridge, says that: “The author makes a convincing case for the reality and significance of magic”; while Kary Mullis, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, adds that “it succeeds in blazing new trails. Well worth the read.” But what do they know? Horowitz and Radin both have newer books: The Science of Magic: How the Mind Weaves the Fabric of Reality (Harmony, 2025) by Radin and Practical Magick: Ancient Tradition and Modern Practice (G&D Media, 2025) by Mitch Horowitz (especially chapter 14).
[6] As Mitch Horowitz says, “With Neville, there’s nothing to join, no label to wear, and little or nothing to buy. There’s just the man and his ideas – and your option to experiment with them.”
[7] Burroughs also described his “cut-up” technique as “method is simple.” The Third Mind, p.29. He also developed a method of correcting clumsy actions by visualizing and rehearsing the correct movements, which he called “Do Easy.” Europeans like to mock the American crank obsession with methods, but as an American myself, I ask: why make it complicated, other than to keep it a secret for the elite? According to Jack Parson, aerospace pioneer and magickian, “Simplicity has been the key to victory in all the idea wars and, at present, Magick does not have it. There is a skeleton in the Rights of Man [Crowley’s brief Thelemic credo Liber Oz], and the coverings in the main literature. But the true body has never been shown forth.” Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons by the pseudonymous John Carter (Feral House, 1999), quoted in Horowitz, Practical Magick, p.9 As Lithuanian Dr. Hannip.9 Aster says, “First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius.”
[8] Already by 1943, Neville was packing them in: see the New Yorker article “A Blue Flame on the Forehead” by Robert M. Coates, Sep 11, 1943.
[9] The Miracle Club (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2019), Chapter Ten: “Mirror Man: The Centrality of Neville Goddard,” pp. 132-33.
[10] “Only those for whom the knowledge is intended will find it.” W. Burroughs, The Place of Dead Roads, p115.
[11] Chicago: Aries Press, 1947; online here; the chapter on Neville is reprinted in The Power of Imagination: A Neville Goddard Treasury, edited by Mitch Horowitz (New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2015).
[12] “[T]he fundamental psychological factor in Neville’s teaching, [and] the fundamental fact about Neville himself . . . is a very simple fact: Neville is a dancer” (Regardie, op. cit.). Tima Vlasto has tracked down and uploaded evidence of Neville’s theatrical career. Such dancing, of course, in its calm, hieratic gestures and world-creating power, has nothing to do with the negroid jitterbugging of today, which Evola frequently condemned as part of the “negrofication” of the modern world.
[13] Despite claiming the laurels of the Greek Sceptics, the modern “sceptic” seldom takes Agent Starling’s advice to “turn that high-powered perception on [themselves].” Like the devotees of various sorts of political correctness, they never admit to being wrong, and feel free to outright lie about their opponents (who, as such are simply Evil and dealt with accordingly. If the work of Horowitz and Radin still seems too “out there” for you, consider the discussion of the “selective skepticism” of hipsters and the MSM that caters to it, in David Cole’s Republican Party Animal (reviewed here, and look out for the forthcoming new edition).
[14] Horowitz, Practical Magick, p. 191
[15] Feel free to search the site. Tima Vlasto, proprietor of the Cool Wisdom Books website, has curated a convenient online anthology here. And if you prefer to hold a book in your hand – and really, who doesn’t? – don’t forget Mysticism After Modernism: Crowley, Evola, Neville, Watts, Colin Wilson, & Other Populist Gurus (Melbourne, Australia: Manticore Press, 2020).
7 comments
…somewhere deep within the corridors of the CIA, a few serious-looking men in polyester suits are asking themselves: what if we could leave our bodies on purpose and go spying through the astral plane?
Great article. I wonder if these are are the same people that developed the program outlined in The Men Who Stare at Goats starring George Clooney. 🙃
Can a case be made for “negative manifestation”?
With all the doom and gloom here — some of it merely the cold stating of objective fact — who, then, conjured the sudden mainstream breakthrough of dissident Right ideas? One sees little optimistic imagination in these circles. Did dwelling in the ruin, summon its recognition?
Or is it simply that pessimists are right often enough to enjoy the rare, exquisite surprise?
Positive thinking works. Undeniable.
But when negative thinking yields positive outcomes, it hints at an objective universe.
After all, negativity presupposes positivity — and vice versa.
This might be the greatest comment of all time.
The simple truth is that, just as foreground implies background, every pessimistic picture of an outcome or the world carries with it an implicit positive image, and vice versa. Thesis: antithesis. The real question is why we allow our attentions and imaginations to dwell principally on one and not the other. And the answer, I think, has something to do with energy: the exhausted, sated and lazy tend to fall into pessimism. The energetic will positive outcomes, and expend energy to make it so.
There could be some very ordinary reasons as well: general decline of living conditions, the public losing confidence in The Powers That Be, leftists pushing too far and finding they’ve bitten off more than they can chew, etc.
If one needs metaphysical explanations, there’s some interesting stuff about meme magic and chaos magic in the archives here.
As a born pessimist I have personally benefited from what I’ve learned of meme magic and positive thinking from James O’Meara’s writing on the topic.
Somehow or other the chaos magic worked. The Left definitely overplayed their hand to help.
So maybe now it is time to imagine something positive as a replacement into being.
The observation is legion, ancient, and modern: The poor are more generous than the rich.
A poor man will give you one of his three shirts if you are naked, or half his meager lunch, or free lodging overnight, lest you suffer wind and rain, in his smelly old barn. So we who are lately straitened, lets give a little bit.
But good rich men are also observed (perhaps sporting the latest in hens-tooth haberdashery), but they can fly through the eye of that proverbial needle to give, and give generously — we need them and love them too.
About the brilliant insights on pessimism as an opposite, let me offer this:
Hermetic principle IV — “Everything is Dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree;
extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.”
Regarding, let’s just call it “Magic” for convenience here, regarding magic working only for the few:
There is a missing step, left out on purpose sometimes I would imagine and sometimes by the ignorance of the teller for whom it may happen for them naturally and beneath conscious awareness. Also it could be that in these matters one sometimes must discover certain ways for oneself — from principles more readily learned, from experiences of these principles, draw your own conclusion, a conclusion no doubt the same in the deep though drawn by others from different surfaces.
“Project your desire into the cosmic mind.” Well okay but how? Just dust off that old 16 mm “Cosmic desire projector” in the back of the old high school audio-visual room???
How do you connect? How does one project?
When you see the one life, it sees you.
That’s it, a great secret but the rub is how does one discover this for oneself, which one must in order for it to live, and thus operate for you?
I could tell you how I, or rather perhaps the I Am that is I does it, but as the wisdom says “one must find oneself” (and then it begins).
To teach another how to find oneself, to discover and gain the I behind the Me, and the I Am behind them both, to know and command — if but for moments at a time — the immortal gift of absolute being that is your gift and responsibility… Well that is a slippery fish, but one can learn to catch it, and release it into the awareness of another — but they must catch it. You can teach them to fish though!
So there they are, they have seen their own immortal essence, but how to see that of others, and of the one life of which we are all a part, of the creative mind of the cosmos, that which in fact does manifest all reality, and could manifest their desire if they could see and be seen by it, and feel into it an acceptable desire?
(Or later in ones progress, to remember into it ones purified ego, and thus be remembered into reality again as a true immortal, a rare great work rather than a long tail in spiritual senesence and dissoulution, or a passive recycling as a rinsed out vessel re-incarnated?)
That is a mystery as well, but if one can learn to help another learn to fish (spiritually), then one can learn to help another learn to see beyond ones own thread of immortal being to that of others and of the one life in which we are all. Will it be so, that one will learn to teach this. Know it, Want it, Dare it, and Keep silent — it will be, someday.
That is the “missing step”, take that as true — all the rituals, dancing, drumming, (some well meant drug use — not recommended!), the chants, incense, etcetera — all that stuff is “merely” but in no way unimportantly an attempt, and an attempt at a reproducible attempt, to approach just that: To see and be seen, feel and be felt, love and be loved, by the one-life cosmic mind, that was created by the ineffable absolute to live and experience and to create, and to co-create with us.
But why give away such a secret? Isn’t it dangerous?
Well some who half-way know it keep it back out of jealous greed — they want to rule, you and far more than you they want to rule the one-life and its creative power. But they are sick, and will only create cancer on the body of creation, but cancer always dies, by the death of the host or by the cure. We shall choose the cure of course!
Others “kept silent”, not in the spiritual but practical sense, for legitimate fear of being denounced for trampling by the masses and tortured before burning.
But there is another truth to discover: That to know is ultimately not enough, one must act. Then of course one finds out it has been discovered before. Soren Kierkegaard, for one, contributed this courageous and boldly optimistic gem, among his other sayings and maunderings of sometimes overly pessimistic self-pityings:
“I have understood the highest, that is not given to many in each generation. But even then it rushes upon me, the highest of all is not to understand the highest but to act on it.”
And as we all I think may feel, we must fight with weapons material (like donations to Counter Currents! 🙂 — and all those other worldly things we need do), but also spiritual. And we must win truth and a viable version of the 14 words or see the gift of material existence on the upward path withdrawn.
Finally, one last thing in this surprisingly long post — bear with me a minute more I want to comment on the spiritual wisdom I now recognize in an idea promoted by Greg: “The slow cleanse”.
You see, an “acceptable desire” to see and be seen, feel and be felt, into the cosmic mind is simply this: Anything that does not cut the thread of others acceptable desires.
The creative, the cosmic mind is impersonal, if you can get it to feel the feeling of your desire fulfilled, it will manifest that desire. Somehow someway perhaps as you expected or perhaps in some “mysterious way”. (and you will have to be alert in your soul, ‘trusting your gut’, to recognize the gifts it sends your way, the bits and pieces and how you must work with them, to help it help you).
But loving us all impersonally, in one sense being us all, it desires not to cut the threads of others’ being for you. That would be evil.
And evil can be forced, that is true, but that is black magic, the lie, and always the degradation and enslavement of the power of desire in others to an evil will.
So now I see in this “Slow Cleanse” idea, this vision and desire, this way to go after what we must have without unnecessarily harming others, though it may or may not happen that way, or get overtaken by other less desirable events, I see an “acceptable desire”, for the cosmic mind.
So let us give our hearts to the hawks as one of ‘our’ poets said, and our spare change, be it a few dollars from the straitened or a big fat check from the better off among us this season, to Counter Currents. Where Greg and the gang work magic sometimes, in fact if not by intent.
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