The Jinn from a Scientific(?) Viewpoint

The Jinn from a Scientific(?) Viewpoint

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This article came about as a result of a discussion concerning the nature of the JINN, and their apparent activity in the UFO and psychic fields.
The assumption that underlines the following viewpoint is that the Jinns are beings which dwell on a parallel level to man, but due to their existing at a different vibratory rate, they are not normally visible to us or detectable by us.
In spite of this invisibility, when UFO events or psychic events occur, there are often changes in an energy that we can measure - and this is the electro-magnetic spectrum.
This article, then, is an attempt to bring together (1): observed effects associated with UFOs and with psychic events; (2) traditional "occult" wisdom; and (3) contemporary scientific knowledge.
Our starting point is with the traditions of Islam, and, in particular, the Qur'an, which contains some quantity of information of a metaphysical nature, a proportion of which deals with the Jinn. This material is summarized in Gordon Creighton's article, "A Brief Account of the True Nature of the UFO Entities", published originally in FSR 29/1 (October 1983) and reprinted in FSR 33/3 (September 1988).

The Jinn and the Infra-red

In that article, the Jinn are described as having "bodies of essential flame",¹ or "smokeless flame",² or "smokeless fire".
In the same article by the Editor, ANGELS are described ( according to the Qur'an) as having bodies of light.³ Since they are generally invisible to us, and also for reasons which I will put forward later, I would suggest that the Angels' bodies are of an invisible energy from the opposite end of the spectrum, i.e. - the ultra-violet.
Before I get too involved with technical discussions, I would just like to point out that there is another well known Islamic book that also deals extensively with our unseen neighbours. In fact one might call it a manual of mankind's interaction with the Jinn! And this is "THE ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS",⁴ or "ARABIAN NIGHTS".

Why did UFOs Appear En Masse in 1947?

One of the questions that often crop up in the UFO field is: "Why did UFOs start to appear in great numbers, around and after 1947?"
Although plenty of UFOs were undoubtedly seen long before the year 1947, it does seem that something may have provoked their increased activity, and increased appearances, at that time.
Well now - an interesting answer to our question has been provided by the New Zealander Trevor James Constable in his second book, "The Cosmic Pulse of Life", in which he states that UFOs began to appear in numbers around the time when man started to use Radar. Or - to put it another way - the UFOs began to appear around the time when man started to fill the Earth's atmosphere with microwave radiation.⁵
Since the use of Radar became commonplace throughout the world shortly after World War II, the dates certainly coincide, and, if we look at the nature of Radar - bearing in mind that the Jinn may possess bodies of infra-red - then we can certainly see a good reason for their becoming concerned!
Microwave radiation is just below infra-red in the electro-magnetic spectrum (i.e. - just above Radio waves) - therefore our projection of microwaves into the Earth's atmosphere may well disrupt, or disturb, the bodies of the Jinn and the medium in which they live and dwell.

How the Jinn Materialize

In the Islamic texts it is stated that the Jinn are able to materialize or disappear at will. This would imply one of three things:- (!) They have control over the matter that we consider to be "everyday reality"; (2) They have control over certain aspects of our own psyche, and can create in us the subjective experience of matter; (3) They can create illusions of an external and very realistic nature in the same way that we create holograms. It is possible that this last suggestion includes the first.
The reason for this is as follows:-

A Blueprint for all Matter?

Various researchers on the cutting edge of nuclear physics (i.e. Paul Davies) and also in the border-line medical field (i.e. Harry Oldfield)⁶ have speculated that there exists a kind of blueprint for physical beings and physical materials - this may be an electro-magnetic lattice or hologram which tells each atom r molecule what to do and where to go.
The reason for this kind of speculation is that our present knowledge of natural control systems is unable to explain the degree of specialization that many atoms/molecules/cells exhibit.

The Mysterious "Crashed Discs"

Suppose, then, that the Jinn were able to construct and to destroy electronic blueprints, and suppose, further, that, once set up, a blueprint will attract to it, from our environment, the necessary minerals, gases, etc., in order to make up the corresponding physical form. When the blueprint is removed or destroyed, the physical form will disintegrate or "return to dust".
This may provide an explanation for the physical reality of the crashed discs, whilst still allowing that they are actually of etheric origin.

Jinn may function on Two Levels?

In ascribing intelligent behaviour to the Jinn, it must be accepted that they have at least two levels of functioning - i.e. (1) the body of electromagnetic energy, and (2) a psyche of some finer energy. This might be called "etheric", or possibly "astral", in the Western Occult Tradition.) The reason why I am unsure about this terminology is that it may well be the case that the term "etheric", as used, is a traditional, empirical description of the electromagnetic environment which surrounds us. Therefore the psychology of the Jinn would have to be on what we call the "Astral Level".
Here I think it necessary to clear up a misunderstanding which often occurs with regard to the term "Ether" or "Etheric".

The Etheric Level

In the Western Occult Tradition, the "Etheric" is described as the innermost of a series of "bands" around the Earth, penetrating deep into the Planet, and reaching to a certain height in the Atmosphere. Higher above that in the Atmosphere is the "Astral";⁷above that is the "Mental"⁸ - and so on, depending on which terminology you prefer to use.
At some point one of the unseen levels must be so expansive that it is - in fact - interplanetary. (This would perhaps be the "Spiritual" or "Casual" Level.)
Another use of the word "Ether", which conflicts with the occult method of usage, is to employ it in order to describe the interplanetary medium.⁹ This application of it was used, up until the late 19th century, by astronomers and philosophers, but, as I have explained above, the "interplanetary medium" would in occult terminology probably be called the "Casual" or "Spiritual" Level.

Trevor Constable's "They Live in the Sky"

Therefore problems can occur, as, for example, in Trevor J. Constable's¹⁰ first book, "They Live in the Sky",¹¹ where the (apparently beneficent) contacting entities describe themselves as being "from the interplanetary Etheric". Later in the same book, they are responsible for protecting Mr Constable from attack by a lower order of unseen entities which I would call "Etheric", using the occult terminology to refer to the unseen "band" closest to the Earth.
Be it noted, therefore, that any reference in the present article holds to the usage of the term as employed in the Western Occult Tradition.
Having thus set out the basis of this idea concerning the nature of the Jinn, I would now like to bring in some corroborating examples from the field of Psychical Research.

Changes of Temperature and Psychic Phenomena

In the typical "Ghost experience", a change in temperature is often felt around, or preceding, the appearance of the apparition.
Since, to my knowledge, our experience of heat is directly related to the amount of Infra-red present, then if an apparition were created by concentrating or converting localised electro-magnetic energy, one would expect there to be a drop in Infra-red (and probably other frequencies) around the phantom, - hence a drop in temperature?

Matthew Manning

Matthew Manning¹² the British psychic, describes in his book "The Link"¹³ how, when he was sleeping in his boarding school dormitory, "poltergeist" activities would occur. On one such occasion a large red circle appeared on the wall, and it became very hot. This - it turned out - was a way of attracting his attention, used by the earth-bound spirit of a girl who had died some fifty years before in tragic circumstances.
The obvious inference is that the red circle that became hot (so hot in fact, that the people were afraid of a fire starting) was a concentration of Infra-red.

"Psychic Photographs"

There have been in the past many psychic and paranormal photographs. Many admittedly were probably fakes. However, a proportion remain which have been authenticated. In his book "Beyond the Spectrum",¹⁴ Cyril Permutt surveys many of these photos and he describes the techniques required for securing paranormal psychic photography of this kind. He found that the best results could be secured with Infra-red, and this again would seem to bear out a theory which I will put forward in the following paragraphs.

The Earth's atmosphere

Pursuing the idea of there being various different Planes in the unseen world, which surround the Earth, and pursuing also the thought that they might be connected with electromagnetic energy., I began an investigation of the Earth's Atmosphere and it's practical structure.
Putting it in a simplified form, it seems that High Energy Radiation (Cosmic Rays, etc.), from the Sun, penetrate right through the Earth's atmosphere and are absorbed by the Earth, to be re-emitted as Infra-red, Radiation, producing most of the warmth that we experience. The Infra-red is kept in the lower part of the Atmosphere by clouds and by the Ionosphere (Ozone Layer) from which it is reflected.

"Infra-red" denizens could dwell inside Earth!

Lower-frequency Infra-red penetrates deep into the Earth. Consequently, if a being had a body of low-frequency Infra-red, it could live deep down inside the Earth, interpenetrating what we consider to be solid materiality.
The Ionosphere has - as is presently well publicised - another function: this is the reflection of Ultra-Violet coming from the Sun and hence reducing the amount of it that reaches us. Therefore it can be said that above the Ozone Layer there is a comparatively high level of Ultra-Violet and a low level of Infra-red, whilst below the Ozone Layer there is a much higher amount of Infra-red, but comparatively little Ultra-Violet.

The Angels dwell in Ultra-Violet

If we take the Islamic description of ANGELS¹⁵ as having bodies of Light, and if we ascribe this to the lighter or finer end of the spectrum (i.e. the Ultra-Violet), then we have an explanation for the age-old tradition that Angels live "in the clouds", i.e., above the Ozone Layer, where Ultra-Violet prevails.

Lower-level creature inhabit Infra-red

This is why, I suspect, Cyril Permutt, author of "Beyond the Spectrum", had greater success with his Infra-red photography, since we humans dwell in the Etheric, where Infra-red predominates. It must be comparatively rarely that the "FORCES OF LIGHT" come down and help us on our way. Conversely, of course, most "ghost experiences" occur in darkness or in dark places, from where the "Forces of Light" (Ultra-Violet) have receded.
From the "occult" point of view, as given in the Western as well as the Eastern Traditions, it may very well be that the upper limit of the so-called "Etheric Plane" is the Ozone Layer (Ionosphere), and that above and beyond this lies the "Astral".
The tradition that unseen beings originate from different areas within the Etheric (i.e. Dense Etheric) may be explained by variations in frequency of Infra-red: i.e. Dense Etheric around 10¹² Hz., and Finer Etheric nearer 10¹⁴ Hz., which would seem to imply that there should be a corresponding frequency gradient through the lower part of the Atmosphere, the frequency rising with the height above the Earth's surface. (Whether this is a fact or not remains to be seen.)
At this point I would like to make it clear that, whilst it is possible that electro-magnetic energy is the medium of the Etheric, it is equally possible that electromagnetism interacts with a finer energy which is the true Etheric medium, but that it interacts in such a way as to be like a stain or indicator, showing the form of the unseen Etheric/Psychic energy.

Baron von Reichenbach

The German scientist Baron von Reichenbach¹⁶ wrote, in the last century, about what he called "the Odic Force", visible to sensitives, and emanating from each end of a natural crystal, one end being OD POSITIVE (red and warm), and the other end producing OD NEGATIVE (light blue and cool). Could these be the Infra-red and Ultra-Violet respectively?
Trevor J. Constable¹⁷ suggests that if one looks through a red filter at ordinary daylight for some time and then looks at a living thing without the filter, the aura of that thing becomes visible for a short while. This information probably originates with the British Dr W.J. Kilner,¹⁸ who worked during the early part of this century on the human aura, employing magenta filters. Now, if the eye accommodates in the same way as our other senses do, then, after looking for some time through the red filter, it may begin to recalibrate the visual range, taking red as it were the usual light blue (of the sky in daylight). Hence, when the filter is removed, the usual range may, for a short while, extend down into the Infra-red.

Clairvoyant faculties

This latter idea brings up an interesting explanation for psychics like the Anthropologist Dr Rudolf Steiner,¹⁹ who are able to see into the Spiritual Realm. Suppose that for reasons of exceptional physiology (or possibly only of mental programming) they are able to perceive a greater range of frequencies than is normal, and can therefore see into the Infra-red and the Ultra-Violet realms?
In conclusion, I would like to bring a few points to the fore:-

Man's pollution of both the material level
and the finer levels?

Ever since the Industrial Revolution, spurred on by 19th century Rationalism, we have been poisoning and disturbing life for other types of physical beings on this Planet. Perhaps with the harnessing and mass employment of electromagnetism, we have now started on yet a further stage, i.e., the poisoning and disturbing for a whole variety of beings dwelling on the subtler levels of this Planet?
If so, is it any surprise that many of them should be hostile towards us?
I see no reason to consider the lower unseen kingdom - i.e., the Lower Etheric - to be in any way different from the Animal Kingdom in which we ourselves live. Some of the animals here like us humans. Some of them hate us. And some are simply benign and objective.

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NOTES & REFERENCES (BY EDITOR, FSR)

(1)	"Min nari al-samumi

(2)

Min marijin min narin (Incidentally, one very highly-placed British-trained Arab doctor, Dr Adil Mosa Al-Nahhas, MB, Chb (Baghdad), MSc (London), who was educated and trained at London University and St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, and who in 1984 was the Head of the Department of Nuclear Medicine, in the Institute of Radiology & Nuclear Medicine, Aliwiya, Baghdad, Iraq, had this to say in a letter to me about the UFOs and the "JINNS" dated March 22, 1984, and which I subsequently published on page iii of FSR Vol.29, No.4 (1984). "Regarding the explanation of the verse from the Holy Qur'an which you quoted on page 8 of FSR Vol.28, No.6, I could not find in any of my reference sources a better explanation for the UFOs than yours. The sources all speak of some sort of 'smokeless fire, a pure flame which penetrates even the orifices of the skin and which kills!'" (In further private correspondence with me, Dr Al-Nahhas, who has long been a subscriber to FSR, agreed with me that maybe plasma, or something of the nature of plasma, may be involved. At any rate - something - as he says, that is not yet known in our modern Science.) Apropos of this matter of the "Islamic theory about UFOs", it is to be noted that, in the new and enlarged 1989 edition of her very important book "The Tujunga Canyon Contacts" (first published in 1980. See her article "Can We Battle These Entities?", in FSR 33/3, 1988), Ann Druffel, FSR Consultant and Contributing Editor to MUFON UFO JOURNAL, has shown herself to be the only person in the Western world who has had the guts to state that she thinks the "Jinn Theory" may very likely be right. (Several other leading "Ufologists" have written privately to me to say that they too think there "might be something in it". Not one of them has had the guts to say so publicly). On page 285 of the new paperback edition of the "Tujunga Canyon Contacts", Ann Druffel discusses the "underground denunciation, slowly increasing to diatribe, directed against FSR, mainly by English researchers who disagree violently with Creighton". Some of my correspondents seem to think that this deluge of venom is directed at me "because I am a Muslim"(!). I don't happen to be a Muslim. I have been a student of Hindu Vedanta and of Buddhism for almost 50 years. And I happen to detest a great deal of modern Islam, and the modern Ayatollahs, for their cruelty and bigotry and sub-human intolerance, in which they are even far worse than the Christians have ever been. (And that is saying something!) The reason for the hate-FSR campaign is far simpler and far easier to find than that. It is:- In the seven years since I took over the editorship, FSR has not foundered without trace, as they all hoped it would. Several of the venom-bags even wrote to me at the outset giving me details of how they intended to bring this about. The objection to me is in any case not based on any "religious" grounds, since none of these individuals is remotely "religious", as their conduct proves. (On the other hand, had I been a Commie, like some of them, things would no doubt have been very different.)

(3)

While the Qur'an has several express references to the fact that the physical body of man is made of "soil", or "clay", or "loam", as it is rendered by various translators, and that the bodies of the Jinn are of "smokeless fire" or "smokeless flame", as already stated, the description of the bodies of the Angels (Malak, pl. Malayikat) as consisting of "light" (nur) is not to be found - so far as I can see - within the Qur'an itself, but in the body of traditional notes and references known as the Hadith.

(4)	The Thousand Nights And One Night (Alf Layla wa-Layla).

(5)	We should not overlook the claim, which has been repeatedly voiced, and appears to be well-founded, that curiously enough - it was the Americans' radar which brought about the malfunctioning and resultant crashes of the first discs in 1947 and 1948!

(6)

My friend Harry Oldfield, the British pioneer in Electrocrystal Therapy, has made a remarkable impact upon the medical profession and the hospitals in recent years. With his books and articles and his School of Electrocrystal Therapy, and his many journeys overseas to demonstrate and to lecture, he has really "started something", and that "something" deserves attention. See: The Dark Side of the Brain: Major Discoveries In The Use of Kirlian Photography and Electrocrystal Therapy, , by Harry Oldfield and Roger Coghill. (Element Books, 1988)

(7)

It seems difficult to establish when this term "astral" was first employed by Western mystics and occultists. Interestingly enough, however, it is a fact that away back in the earliest Sanskrit literature of 2,000 years ago, there is a philosophical or metaphysical term, "Akasha", which may possibly encompass both "astral" and "etheric". And it is also a highly interesting fact that, when the British scholars in the 19th century set about translating India's great classical texts into English and making the richness of Vedanta known to the world, they cast around for a long time in search of a good rendering for "Akasha", and finally they plumped for the words "Ether" and "Etheric". According to the ancient Hindu philosophy and cosmology, "Akasha" is in fact one of the seven recognized states of matter. Whereas we in the West perceive and recognize "matter" in three forms - solid, liquid, and gaseous - the ancient Hindu writers state emphatically that there is also "Ether" ("Akasha"), and that there is not merely one form of Ether, but four different levels of it, thus giving a total of seven levels on which existence is possible. During the 19th century the hypothesis of the existence of the Ether (from the classical Greek word for the upper atmosphere) as a substance filling all space, inclusive of those volumes occupied by ordinary matter, and serving to transmit those forces (gravitational, electric, magnetic) which one material object exerts on another located at a distance, seems to have been accepted by all competent Western scientific authorities, although there was, of course, diversity of opinion as to the Ether's possible properties. So far, then, one might have said that this Western concept of the all-pervading Ether corresponded very largely and very neatly to the old Hindu idea. By 1850 the concept of the existence of the Ether appeared to have triumphed, but the failure of the famous Michelson-Morley Experiment in 1881 dealt it a fatal blow, and by 1900 it seems that no Western scientists any longer believed in it. Nevertheless I recall that by the 1920's, so important a scientist as Paul Dirac, who died only recently, was expressing most emphatically his conviction that "we would have to return to the Ether Theory". So - who knows? Maybe the ancient Hindus were right after all!

(8) and (9)

What is called the "Mental Level" in Western philosophical, religious, and "occult" speculations corresponds very exactly with the level of what is called in Sanskrit "Manas", MIND, cognate with the Latin word MENS. In the Hindu scheme of things this was another one of the seven levels of which the Universe is constructed.

(10) and (17)

Trevor James Constable, a New Zealander by birth, was serving as the Radio Officer aboard the huge British luxury liner RMS Queen Mary in the years immediately following World War II. And our Editor of that time, Waveney Girvan, published the first article by Trevor James (the pen-name being used then by Constable) in FSR Vol. 5 No. 6 (Nov/Dec. 1959), under the title "Saucers And Psychism". Subsequent articles were "Scientists, Contactees & Equilibrium" FSR Vol. 6, No. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1960); "Space Animals - A Fact of Life", in FSR Vol. 6 No. 4 (July/Aug. 1960); "Get Off The Defensive" in FSR Vol. 6, No. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1960); "The Case For Contact", in FSR Vol. 7 No. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1961) and Vol. 8 No. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1962); "Ufology: Something More Than A Science", in FSR Vol. 8 No. 4 (July/Aug. 1962). Naturally, Trevor James Constable's claims to have made Infra-red photographs of some mysterious and unknown forces or energies or even craft or living beings (some of the photos look, as Constable says, merely "two-dimensional") have been received with total suspicion by not only all scientists, but also by all laymen who cling to the purely materialistic explanation for everything. I regret that I lack the necessary knowledge required to say more about it. But I will state most emphatically my complete confidence that Robert James Constable is no trickster, but, more likely, a great pioneer. (As such, he cannot expect to be treated any better than his remarkable contemporary, Dr Wilhelm Reich, who had the misfortune to re-discover - as Constable has done - some of the things that the great German scientist Baron Karl von Reichenbach (1788-1869) had been investigating. Though pilloried then and forgotten today, Karl von Reichenbach at least did not die t the stake or on the scaffold, as so many pioneers have done. But Dr Wilhelm Reich did. He died in 1957 as the result of incarceration in a United States prison, and because he had discovered too much. Such a termination of life is called murder. And justly so.)

(11)

They Live In The Sky!", by Trevor James, appeared in 1958, when he was 26 years old, and was his first book. It only underwent two impressions and the photographs in the first were much better and clearer than the second. The brave sponsor and publisher of this "uncomfortable" book was Dr Franklin Thomas, and there were plenty who felt no surprise when they learned that Dr Thomas had died very soon after its appearance. Trevor James Constable's second, and far better known, book, is "The Cosmic Pulse Of Life", published in 1978 by the Merlin Press. It discusses at length the ideas of Dr Rudolf Steiner and Dr Wilhelm Reich and likewise the hounding and persecution of another equally important pioneer investigator of "unpopular" subjects, Dr Ruth Drown, who was also "legally murdered". (12) The young British paragnost, Matthew Manning (born 1956) has obliged not a few doctors and scientists to take "psychic phenomena" seriously. In June 1974 he was the subject of extensive tests and experiments on Toronto. Twenty-one leading scientists, among them Britain's Nobel Prize Winner in Physics Prof. Dr Brian Josephson, and Dr George Owen, examined Matthew and his abilities, and having done so they at once stated publicly that he was probably the most gifted psychic in the western world. The scientists' discovery in Matthew of an entirely new brainwave pattern has set a milestone in psychical research. With his three books and numerous lectures and cassettes and many TV and radio appearances, Matthew Manning has become known to most households in Britain and many overseas. He is also a healer with many remarkable successes to his credit, and there are cases of people, formerly gravely ill, who have been cured simply by listening to his tapes.

(13)	His main writings are:- 1. "The Link: The Extraordinary Gifts of a Teenage Psychic". (Pub. By Colin Smythe, London, 1978.) 2. "In the Minds of Millions". (Pub. W.H. Allen, London, 1977.) 3. "The Strangers". (Pub. W.H. Allen, London, 1978.)

(14)	Cyril Permutt; "Beyond The Spectrum". (Pub. Patrick Stevens, 1983.)

(15)	The ANGELS. See under (3) above.

(16)

BARON VON REICHENBACH (1788-1869). A remarkable pioneering German scientist, who, like so many others whom we have mentioned, had the misfortune to be born far ahead of his time. There is a mysterious vital force or energy that permeates all Nature. It is bluish in colour. It can be demonstrated visually, by heat, and by electrical charge, in plants, animals and human beings. It may well be the most important Force in the Universe. But it has one strange and perplexing characteristic: it can only be perceived by individuals of great sensitivity under careful guidance by sympathetic scientists. In other words, it is in the same predicament as the study of telepathy, clairvoyance, and other subjects of Parapsychology. Baron von Reichenbach was not the first human to have stumbled upon this mysterious force, to which he gave the name of OD. Two thousand years ago and more, the sages and gurus of India knew all about it. And they had a name for it. They called it PRANA (the Life Principle). It was also the Vis Medicatrix Naturae (Healing Power of Nature) of Hippocrates in the days of ancient Greece. It has been rediscovered many times, and continues to pop up, as the Mana of the Polynesians; the Telesma of Hermes Trismegistus; the Pneuma of Galen and the Greek Stoics and others; the Astral Light of the Kabbalists; the Spiritus of Fludd, and the Magnetic Fluid of Mesmer. And nearly a century after the death of Baron von Reichenbach, another German, Dr Wilhelm Reich, was rediscovering it and calling it ORGONE - and lost his life on account of his "unwelcome" revelations. Von Reichenbach had a brilliant career as a metallurgist, building some of the first big steelworks, blast-furnaces etc., and achieving vast wealth as an industrialsist. He was also a recognized expert on meteorites. But all to no avail. None of that earned him a decent hearing anywhere once it became known that h e had discovered this new universal cosmic force and named it OD. In 1845 he published his findings. From then until the day of his death in 1869 he and all his indefatiguable studies were totally ignored or condemned without a hearing. But they remained the precious possession of a small number of scientists and students who have kept the memory of von Reichenbach and his work alive for posterity. The most important of Baron von Reichenbach's publications are the following:- 1. Untersuchungen uber die Dynamide des Magnetismus, der Elektrizitat, der Warme, des Lichtes, in ihren Bezihungen zur Lebenskraft. (2 vols.) (English title: Researches Into The Forces Of Magnetism, Electricity, Heat, and Light, in relation to the Life Force.) The English translation by Dr William Gregory, Professor of Chemistry in the University of Edinburgh, came out in 1850. 2. Odische-Magnetische Briefe. (1852). (English title: "Odic-Magnetic Letters".) He also wrote a mass of other material, none of it, I believe, ever translated into English. In his native land, Germany, Baron von Reichenbach had a vast reputation as a scholar and a scientist. Today you will not even find his name in the Encylopaedia Brittanica! Yet Chemistry, in particular, owes him several important discoveries, notably those of paraffin (1830), eupion (1831), creosote (1832), and pittacal (1833)! In the field of geology, he was the first person to produce an exact, scientific account of the geological formation of Moravia (now part of Czechoslovakia). This was published in his "Geologische Mittheilungen aus Mahren", in 1834.

(17)	Trevor James Constable. (see under (10).)

(18)

Dr Walter J. Kilner, B.A., M.B. (Cantab.) M.R.C.P., etc. Some time Electrician to St. Thomas's Hospital, London. This remarkable man discovered a scientific, physical, method for rendering the human aura temporarily visible, and wrote a remarkable book about it. From 1879 to 1893, he was in charge of all electrotherapeutic work at St. Thomas's Hospital, and wrote many learned papers on a wide range of subjects. In 1883 he became an M.R.C.P. (Member of the Royal College of Physicians). He had a private practice at Ladbrook Grove, London, then a very fashionable neighbourhood. In his spare time he was a keen and brilliant chess player. In 1908 he conceived the idea that the human aura might be made visible if viewed through a suitable substance, and he experimented (successfully) with dicyanin, a remarkable coal-tar dye. Published in 1911, his book was at first called "The Human Atmosphere". Kilner said that there were marked changes in the appearance of the human aura in states of health and sickness, and that his viewing screen could be used for diagnosis! In a review published in the august columns of The British Medical Journal (January 6, 1912) a decidedly sceptical view of the whole affair was of course proclaimed. "Dr Kilner has failed to convince us that his aura is more real than Macbeth's visionary dagger." In making his claim about use of the aura to diagnose disease Kilner was of course only doing what clairvoyants have been saying for centuries past, and are still doing today! (Phoebe Payne, one of the 20th century's greatest clairvoyantes, used to work professionally from her office in Chelsea, supporting and confirming the medical findings of her husband, Dr John Bendit, M.D., and with resounding success, as I know personally, for I was their medical patient over quite a long time period. Incidentally Dr Bendit received his PhD. From Cambridge University on the strength of his thesis on the psychic and diagnostic powers of his wife! (G.C.) Gradually some very important people began to be interested in Kilner's studies and discoveries. Sir Oliver Lodge was one of them. But in 1914 the First World War interrupted the work. In 1920 a new and revised edition of Kilner's great book received a far more favourable reception in "The Medical Times". Many reputable medical men were noe endorsing Kilner's views. And in March 1922 there was even an enthusiastic review of the book in the prestigious but cautious journal, "The Scientific American". But Kilner did not live to see either of these favourable reviews. He died on June 23, 1920, at the age of 73. Afterwards, an Englishman named Harry Boddington devised the well known "Kilner goggles", which may possibly still be available today in some quarters. Kilner's book, more aptly re-titled THE HUMAN AURA, was edited by my good friend Leslie Shepard, and re-published in 1965 by University Books Inc., New York, U.S.A., otherwise it would by now probably have "sunk without trace". (Incidentally, in 1968 the same American publishers brought out what is probably the only book available in English today on Baron von Reichenbach. This is THE ODIC FORCE, LETTERS ON OD AND MAGNETISM, translated into English by F.D. O'Byrne, and once again the Foreword is written by Leslie Shepard. As Gurdjieff always taught, for every piece of "new knowledge" mankind acquires, ten pieces of "old knowledge" are lost. Undoubtedly this is true, but nobody has done more to attempt to attempt to stem the process than Leslie Shepard.)

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Very fortunately, there is little likelihood that the human race will be permitted to forget Dr Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) or that his enormous output of books and articles and lectured will be lost, although it is true that there is still a lot of valuable material by Steiner (written in an unusually difficult style of German) which nobody has yet translated into English. Steiner's Key Works: OCCULT SCIENCE: AN OUTLINE. (DIE GEHEIMWISSENSCHAFT IM UMRISS.) KNOWLEDGE OF THE HIGHER WORLDS: HOW IS IT ACHIEVED? (WIE ERGLANGT MAN ERKENNTNISSE DER HOHEREN WELTEN?) THEOSOPHY: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SUPERSENSIBLE KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD AND THE DESTINATION OF MAN. (THEOSOPHIE, EINFUHRUNG IN UBERSINNLICHE WELTERKENNTNIS UND MENSCHENBESTIMMUNG.) THE PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM: A BASIS FOR A MODERN WORLD CONCEPTION. (DIE PHILOSOPHIE DER FREIHEIT.) For a general account of Steiner's life and work and ideas, see the excellent A SCIENTIST OF THE INVISIBLE: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LIFE & WORK OF RUDOLF STEINER, by Dr. A.P. Shepherd, D.D. (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1954)