Although we may seldom give it much thought, there exists a world outside our perhaps limited, claustrophobic perspective on just what truly matters in the study of UFOs and other paranormal subjects. While there has admittedly always been a small core group of UFOlogists and students of the strange who have ventured beyond the borders of their libraries and television-centered environments and actually traveled to exotic locations around the world to visit various monuments or mingle with indigenous peoples and seek the truths to be found among them, most of us are forced by circumstances to only dream of such forays into other realities.
Click here to enlarge top photo. Photo credit and description: (Dirk Vander Ploeg) The Sun Over Machu Picchu.
Given that we are such “armchair tourists” when exploring the weirder parts of the world, we can certainly be consoled by, even irresistibly drawn into, some of the books on these places published by Timothy Green Beckley at Global Communications. The books written along those lines that are available from the venerable publisher – and Amazon.com – include titles like “Lost Worlds and Underground Mysteries of the Far East,” “Secret of the Andes and the Golden Sun Disc of MU,” “The Magic and Mysteries of Mexico,” and “An Occult Guide to South America.”
MYSTERIOUS INDIA AND ITS FASCINATING HOLY MEN
Let’s ramp up with “Lost World and Underground Mysteries of the Far East,” written by M. Paul Dare and first published in the 1930s. The book’s cover enticingly promises to teach us about the “Forbidden Magic and Superstitions of Ancient Societies,” and it does so in the kind of elegant writing style that is rarely found in present day tomes on similar themes.
As Beckley points out in his introduction to the reprint, we are all at least distantly familiar with the legends of Indian holy men who can levitate themselves, as well as household objects, after a quick nap on a bed of nails. Beckley writes of developing a fascination with such stories when he was a child and has fond memories of collecting literature on the subject by perusing the ads found in the back pages of his favorite comic books. Beckley says he was also influenced by his friend, the late John Keel, who traveled throughout the Far East in search of the world’s greatest mysteries, including the quest for the truth about the Abominable Snowman and the legitimacy of the Indian rope trick.
Beckley then tells the reader about discovering a first edition of Dare’s book in the basement of a used bookstore and how he instantly recognized that it was worthy of being reprinted. At the time the book was written, Dare was the News Editor of “The Times of India,” a prestigious daily newspaper in its heyday.
In the opening paragraph of chapter one, Dare begins by asking, “Where do genuine magical power end and the realm of frankly theatrical conjuring begin? This is perhaps the biggest mystery of all to be solved in probing the magical performances of ‘the mysterious East,’ and any consideration of it must inevitably involve a discussion of that perennial source of controversy, the Indian rope trick; and the author of any book on Far Eastern mysteries and beliefs feels that he owes it to his readers to start them off with this subject, since the first question always flung at anyone rash enough to admit having lived in India is: Did you see the rope trick? Can it be done?”
Dare goes on to summarize what the Indian rope trick is usually said to consist of.
“Briefly,” he writes, “the conjuror throws into the air a thin rope, or stout twine, which defies the laws of gravity by staying stiff and upright, its top vanishing out of sight in the open sky. The assistant, a boy aged about twelve, shinnies up the rope and likewise disappears. He refuses to come down, despite repeated commands, so the magician, a knife between his teeth, goes up after him, and then bits of dismembered boy fall to the ground amid piercing shrieks; after which, the conjuror descends to earth, cleans his hands and the knife, and the boy appears, whole and undamaged, from among the crowd. There are variations, but that is the essence of it.”
According to Dare, in the 1930s, the period in which he writes, the truth or falsehood of the Indian rope trick was a raging controversy that garnered lots of space in the news media of the period. Many so-called “experts” claimed that they could prove the feat was a total deception, and a society of magicians in England offered thousands of rupees to any conjurer who could demonstrate, in an unchallengeable way, that the trick was real. There were never any takers for that offer or many similar ones because, Dare is quick to point out, genuine Indian holy men abhorred money and would never accept payment of any kind for what they did. Also, the tiny percentage of such holy men who could actually read English never read the English newspapers anyway.
After presenting both sides of the argument about the Indian rope trick, Dare candidly discusses the fact that he had never seen the trick himself. While he admits that it is an unfortunate fact for an researcher of this kind, he had only heard second and third accounts about the trick from other people.
“The nearest ‘contact,’” he writes, “was a wandering Austrian artist who told me his brother had seen the trick and taken a photograph, in which neither rope nor boy appeared on the plate, though the juggler and the crowd came out clearly. This, one often hears, is the mystifying experience of other people who have tried to photograph it.”
Dare’s book also includes chapters called “Crime and Sorcery,” “Human Sacrifice,” and “Mysteries of the Serpent,” among others, that delve into these arcane subjects with the objectivity of a seasoned newspaper reporter who also happens to have a deep interest in occultism, thus making him the kind of authority worth reading. For such a person, India in the 1930s was obviously a wonderland of paranormal folklore and genuine mystery.
THE MYSTERIOUS SUN DISC OF THE ANDES
Another example of someone not content to be an armchair explorer is Brother Philip – a pseudonym for bestselling New Age author George Hunt Williamson, the name by which he is better known – one of the most famous of the early contactees. Brother Philip traveled to South America, specifically the Andes Mountains, looking for what Beckley calls, in his introduction to Brother’s Philips’ book “Secret of the Andes and the Golden Sun Disc of MU,” a “mystical kingdom few outsiders know about.”
Early in the book, Brother Philip explains the Golden Sun Disc in some detail. The Sun Disc’s original home was MU, which we are told was the portion of Lemuria that remained after the great Pacific continent sank into the ocean. It is of course an over simplification to say so, but Lemuria was the Pacific Ocean’s equivalent to Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean.
The Sun Disc was many things. It was on one level an object of adoration and served as a symbolic representation of the Great Central, or Cosmic Sun, which, in turn, symbolizes the Creator. But it was also a scientific instrument whose power came originally out of the dim past in the time of the “Elder Race.” As a scientific instrument, it was used in connection with a complex series of mirrors of pure gold, reflectors and lenses to produce healing in the bodies of those who were inside the Temple of Light.
“Besides all these functions,” Brother Philip writes, “the Sun Disc was a focal point for concentration of a dimensional quality. When the Disc was struck by a priest-scientist, who understood its operation, it would set certain vibratory conditions which could even bring about great earthquakes and, if continued long enough, might bring about a change in the rotation of the Earth itself. When attuned to a person’s particular frequency pattern, it could transport this person where he wished to go merely by a mental picture he created. It was, therefore, an object of transportation.”
Around 10-1200 B.C., MU itself was destroyed and the Disc was taken to Lake Titicaca in Peru and placed in a subterranean temple at the monastery of a group called the Brotherhood of the Seven Rays. The Incas, who came along later in the story, knew of the Disc’s existence and searched for it to no avail. However, when the Incas had proven themselves worthy by demonstrating that they would use the Disc unselfishly and to the benefit of ALL of their people, it was presented to them by the leader of the Brotherhood of the Seven Rays for the Incas’ daily use in their Temple of the Sun at Cuzco. The Disc was placed in a shrine that had been prepared for it, and it was secured with golden ropes, as it had been in ancient Lemuria.
“Even today,” Brother Philip writes, “the holes through which these ropes passed can be seen at the Convent of Santo Domingo in Cuzco, which is built on top of the Pre-Inca and Inca Sun Temple.”
This is the briefest of thumbnail sketches of what Brother Philip is writing about in the early parts of “Secret of the Andes and the Golden Sun Disc of MU.” He also discusses the mysticism that made up the various groups’ beliefs in some detail and explains how the search for these various artifacts was in some ways a holy quest, one that could benefit present day mankind immensely. He had made a longtime study of North and South American mythology and was adept in the fields of anthropology and archeology, which was initially motivated by his curiosity about the UFO phenomenon and his own place within it as a contactee.
In a biographical section of the book, an unnamed writer declares that Brother Philip (again, also known as George Hunt Williamson, who was one of the seven original witnesses to the legendary contact made between George Adamski and a blond Venusian in a California desert) finally “met” the UFO consciousness he had been searching for while on an expedition to South America. Once his lifelong questions were answered there, he ceased in his UFO research and disappeared from public view in the early 1960s, though he continued to quietly investigate other earth mysteries and to follow what he felt was the true Christian way, the Gnostic tradition.
Article continues tomorrow Wednesday, February 19, 2014. https://www.ufodigest.com/article/paranormal-corridors-0219
[To read more by Sean Casteel, visit his website at www.seancasteel.com]
SUGGESTED READING
 | LOST WORLDS AND UNDERGROUND MYSTERIES OF THE FAR EAST |
 | SECRET OF THE ANDES AND THE GOLDEN SUN DISC OF MU |
 | THE MAGIC AND MYSTERIES OF MEXICO |
 | AN OCCULT GUIDE TO SOUTH AMERICA http://www.amazon.com/Occult-Guide-South-America/dp/1606111655/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1392679233&sr=1-1&keywords=an+occult+guide+to+south+america |