Excerpt from "Dark Light Consciousness"

The dark magic of the brain is being revealed more and more each year by medicine, neuroscience and the fantastic scientific instruments we have created to explore it. And yet sometimes we forget that long ago our ancestors discovered forces within us that only now have modern science begun to unravel and understand. Within each of us lies the potential to activate a personal connection not merely to the unconscious level of the mind rediscovered and explored by Freud, Jung and the others of the early 20^th century, but to the Superconscious realm of the mind., long the province of mystics, gifted people in moments of artistic and scientific inspiration and personal episodes of profound illumination.

Called “Ureaus” by the ancient Egyptians and “Kundalini” by the Hindu yoga traditions, with other traditions from the world’s diverse cultures having their own name for it, it is our innate bioluminous evolutionary power for spiritual transcendence, often simply called the ‘serpent power’. It is called ‘serpentine’ because of its clinical motion at times and its shape and association with the shape and contour of the human spine, brainstem and brain core. The contemplative traditions as well as the classical disciplines have studied the phenomena for millennia. When awakened by various disciplines and means this biogenetic force is perceived as unfurling along the spinal column up into the brain, opening and connecting our individual consciousness with the wider consciousness of the universe enfolded within the dark matter and energy of the universe. This has been the observation and testimony of the greatest heroes of our species across the Ages. At the root of creativity and spiritual genius across innumerable cultures and civilizations, this intelligent force appears to create portals that enfold time, space and the luminous matrix of reality itself.

Drawing from research in physics, neuroscience, biochemistry and the latest findings from the field of neurotheology, along with the ancient traditions from Africa and India, a new research study in this dark and paradoxically light infused force and phenomena called DARK LIGHT CONSCIOUSNESS (Inner Traditions & Bear Company, Rochester, VT), explores the ancient Egyptian science of the Ureaus, revealing in clinical terms and detail how it is intimately connected to the living dark matter of neuromelanin . Neuromelanin is a light-sensitive, energy conductive substance found in progressive amounts in the inner spinal line, brain stem, the brain core and surface and indeed the nervous system of all the higher life-forms on our planet. This is not to be confused with simple surface skin melanin, which is variable from group to group, even varying greatly from person to person within the same family, and this more neurologically rooted neuromelanin, which is found in all humans regardless of surface differentiation. In fact the degree and intensity of neuromelanin directly and proportionally increases in amount as we progress up the evolutionary line from simple mammals to more complex ones to the primates, to the great apes and finally reaching its zenith in man . This neuromelanin is the so called ‘grey matter’ of the brain that is light sensitive despite being under the surface of the skull away from the sun. It manifests an increasing capacity to absorb and transduce light itself into more complex forms. The research explains how the dark light of melanin and neuromelanin serves as the biochemical infrastructure of what the introspective and spiritual traditions refer to as the ‘subtle body’, just as cold dark matter, together with gravity, forms the infrastructure and holds the galaxies and constellations together. With clearly illustrated graphs and instructions in everyday language moving progressively from chapter to chapter, the study shows how the classical disciplines of psychology and contemplation teach us to safely awaken and stabilize the biospiritual energy of the Ureaus through meditation practices, breathing exercises, and yoga postures as well as how to prepare the subtle body for more expansive and illuminative experiences.

In the last two decades research in the emerging field of neurotheology has shed considerable light on the interrelationship between neuroscience, biology, medicine and the biological roots of spiritual experience. In books like Newberg, MD, D’Aquili, MD, and Rause’s Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain and The Biology of Belief and Rhawn Joseph, Ph.D., The Transmitter To God: The limbic System, The Soul and Spirituality as well as innumerable popularized books by the quantum physicists suggesting that consciousness in a fundamental way pervades the universe ,e.g., Kafatos and Nadeau’s The Conscious Universe and Amit Goswami’s The Self-Aware Universe, to name only a few, indicates that there is a real and primordial connection between these realms of human exploration. The disciplines of the Ureaus and Kundalini provide modern science with explicit maps and empirically based methodologies for the exploration of these experiences. Modern psychology is also doing its part in DARK LIGHT CONSCIOUSNESS.

*DARK LIGHT CONSCIOUSNESS: Melanin, Serpent Power and the Luminous Matrix of Reality (Inner Traditions & Bear Company, Rochester ,VT; 1-802-767-3174)

Edward Bruce Bynum, Ph.D., ABPP, is a clinical psychologist and the director of the Behavioral Medicine and Stress Management Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Health Services/CCPH in Amherst Massachusetts. He is a winner of the Abraham H. Maslow Award from the American Psychological association, and the author of 4 other books in psychology, including The African Unconscious. DARK LIGHT CONSCIOUSNESS ( Inner Traditions& Bear Company, Rochester, VT) marks the fifth and final book in a projected 5 cycle series that began with, The Family Unconscious; Families And The Interpretation of Dreams; The Roots of Transcendence; The African Unconscious.