Episodes
Sunday Jun 04, 2017
Sunday Jun 04, 2017
In this 2011 discourse Bryan draws on research from Joseph Chilton Pearce on the five-fold brain system of evolutionary history. In sticking with the theme of this series, Bryan begins by giving an overview of the animal brains and the endless train of compulsions we are subject to. Though, we as humans are supposed to be a rational animal, making us more advanced and evolved, we get caught in the grip of strong desires and other impulses that keep up imprisoned. Again, he calls the desires we are subject to at times, “dog desires”, citing that we fall into beastial subconsciousness when we act only from our less evolved brains, contained within the five-fold system. Our minds become noisy, he says, and we all can be subject to hallucinations, not unlike those experienced by the schizophrenic (though by not by any means does he intend to downplay the struggles of schizophrenia for those who are disconnected from reality as experienced in this world).
He says, our motor behaviors and self-grasping behavior leads to a chain reaction of self-destructive habits or traps that cause us to lose precious space-time in our lives. He compares compulsion and habits to trances and hellish traps that we think ourselves into. We sink downward, matter ward, into our lower chakras, directing desire energy down and outward. As a shaman, Bryan draws a parallel between the lower triangle (muladhara, swadisthana, and manipura chakras) to the lower world that shamans travel into when they seek to tap into people’s power animals for the sake of healing and retrieval from the deep individual subconscious or into the collective unconscious consisting of “ruling idea energies” that can affect our behavior, thoughts, impulses, and attitudes. The creative and sexual energies of the lower chakras, are not in themselves “bad” but are not the entire spectrum of which make up the human condition.
Bryan cites the book “The Biology of Transcendence” by Joseph Chilton Pearce, calling it revolutionary in coming to understand the five-fold brain system and the entirety of the human condition beginning with the earliest brain, the reptilian brain, often associated with the “id” in Fruedian terminology and culminating in the fourth and fifth brains, the frontal lobes, and the heart brain respectively, with the heart brain being the most advanced and evolved. Yes, the heart is a brain and can be measured. When entrained, neurally and energetically, with the frontal lobes, earlier developed brains are incorporated and give sovereignty to the higher brains. This creates a desired state of harmony and peace, equilibrium and even-mindedness.
Beginning with the reptilian brain, Bryan proceeds to share his understanding of behaviors, thoughts, attributes, and actions often associated with each brain, continuing with the old mammalian, new mammalian, then the frontal lobes (called the “angel lobes” by some people), and finally the heart. Understanding the older brains helps us identify the art of deception, lying, dealing with threats, formulation of emotions, making decisions, learning to walk, developing language and more. For instance, the quick reflex-oriented faculties might work well in a “dog fight” as Pearce says, but doesn’t best serve us in the pursuit of higher awareness.
Bryan talks about the power of the imagination as a god-like quality but then again asks the listener why we suffer from an endless train of obsessive-compulsive thoughts that carry us away from the present moment. The trick he says, is becoming totally still. To surround yourself with silence. He wants the listener to know what he has learned about the fourth and fifth brains, that it allows us to transcend thought. Bryan further comments on the process of evolution in consciousness and how the higher brains learn to incorporate the lower ones in order to better serve the highest good. Conflict and division however can occur when we are not following “Nature” or the Cosmic Plan for the evolution of our Biology which is made to Transcend.
Bryan shares his experiences of both bliss and the absence of it with activity related to the Third Eye and the part of the brain called the Orbital Frontal Loop. In efforts to better understand what he has been through and where he is going, he shares his personal insights about the frontal “angel” lobes.
Sunday Dec 11, 2016
Sunday Dec 11, 2016
Bryan continues in what was the prologue of the book “Silencing a Thousand Barking Dogs”, which inspired this series at the start of this episode. He talks some more about the focalized experiences that seemed to happen outside of him, but the shift in awareness was really taking place inside him. He references Eucharistic Adoration that was dear to him at the time, the experiencing of Pure Presence (Real Presence) in the Blessed Sacrament held in a monstrance on an altar. Bryan spent many hours and months in Adoration, and later came to realize that the Christ Presence on the altar that he seemed to “feel” was really an activation and a recognition of the inward Christ Presence within him. So, the outward Presence led him to a greater interior reality, and to experiences of “Light Transmissions” (later he wrote a book and set of audio recordings published and released by this very title - for more information go to bryanrice.org) and continuous “Holy Tears”. These tears or the primal joy was experienced through a yielding into the Divine Presence by bringing himself into intimate union through the celebrating of Mass (not the traditional understanding of Mass as a sacrifice, but nonetheless, the “Holy Meal”). He says that everyone can experience the type of joy he refers to in their own way through other means such as devotional forms like Bhakti Yoga, to name one.
Bryan then shifts to what it was like after his glimpse of Eternal Bliss, when he had to go back down into the world, so to speak, and ground himself. He mentions having withdrawn from the world before returning to it, spending a great deal of time sifting through all the emotions and information attained in a recluse-like manner, avoiding engaging in outward relationships for quite awhile. Bryan spent a lot of time in silence, expressing himself in bursts of what he later came to know as mania, as understood by worldly psychological systems that resulted in an outpouring of massive life-size puppetry, art work, the writing of poetry, books, screenplays, and music. But he later had to come to grips with the reality that his recluse state could not last. He admits to having had trouble finding the Divine Presence in ordinary life experiences involved with other human beings. He attributed his creativity to the awakening of Kundalini Desire Energy at the base of the astral spine in the “Inner Edenic-state of Fruitfulness”, which he will get more into in a later discourse. Bryan refers to teachings of one of his gurus Paramahansa Yogananda, a Christ-like Hindu who came to the west, when he said there was a purpose to Moses raising up the golden serpent in the wilderness to heal the Hebrew people who had been bitten by snakes. This biblical imagery is rich, Bryan says with esoteric symbolism and related to Kundalini Desire Energy in an outward symbol, a way the people could understand in their consciousness at that time in the evolution of awareness. Again, in a later discourse he will explain the meaning of the saying “The Son of Man must be raised up like Moses did the golden serpent in the wilderness” (ordinary human consciousness must be transcended into divine knowing or “Gnosis”).
Bryan tries to make listeners understand how someone who experiences a “Radiant” “Divine Experience” can come to be identified as neurotic, psychotic, even obsessive, and having mood swings and disturbances in personality, to further seem to manifest Schizoid-like/Schizophrenic-like and Bipolar like symptoms. Using references to activity in the chakras, imbalances in Kundalini energy, and citing what is commonly understood by mystics as “The Dark Night of the Soul”, Bryan attributes his “post-realization” experiences to this period of necessary humbling and even integrating and balancing within the astral and physical anatomy, the influx of spiritual energy he received.
Bryan said back in 2011 when this was originally recorded, that he is going to dedicate his life to teaching others to become enlightened. But he makes the point that attaining enlightenment is not “a quick fix bliss experience”, that there is more to it, that it is a process of “finding” and “losing” the treasure we try to protect (that of Divine Realization). Bryan says the purpose of his being swept away in the “Red Sea” like experience was one of death to his ego and learning to come to terms with all the negative, spiritual “life” threatening capabilities that stem from identifying with the ego.