Theos-Talk Archives (August 2004 Message tt00385)

Someone emailed me privatel asking for evidence that Judge was a 
yogi. In case it is of interest to anyone else, here is a copy of my 
response.

Yes, but do not know if I can remember where they were. Judge and 
Blavatsky both wrote about a phenomenon known to yogis but not to 
outsiders in which the mind awakens when the body is asleep and 
remains awake throughout the night. The first time one experiences 
this it is scary because the body goes into what scientists call "REM 
paralysis." This is what keeps most people from walking in their 
sleep and causes you to dream that your legs are stuck in molasses or 
whatever. When your mind awakens and your body is still asleep all 
your muscles are paralyzed, but the phenomenon only lasts until the 
body awakes the following morning.

In her TRANSACTIONF OF THE BLAVATSKY LODGE HPB says "only Adepts" can 
do this, but that is not true because I have experienced it myself, 
as have numerous others. You can then use your sleeping hours for 
meditation, astral projection, or whatever you choose. You just 
cannot move. Intriguingly, this sort of sleep is more rereshing 
physically than the sort normal people know.

I THINK I may have read about Judge doing this in LETTERS THAT HAVE 
HELPED ME, but am not sure. I do know I read about it. This is not 
common knowledge even today, and only a yogi would have known about 
it in 1880. So Judge and Blavatsky were either yogis or learned 
about it from people who were.

Someone on the theos talk list posted a story about Judge doing a 
lecture or demo or something and being seen by the audience as he 
appeared in previous lifetimes. I have seen this phenomenon myself 
(it is done deliberately in Rosicrucian Lodges) and can verify from 
direct personal observation that the story is credible. That others 
do see one transfigured is a fact. What a skeptic would question is 
whether there are past lives and whether the images seen are really 
the way the person looked in past lives. This is not a trick, though.

One last point that Judge wrote about, and this is in LETTERS THAT 
HAVE HELPED ME, is a very advanced yoga practice in which the yogi, 
when dying, transfers his consciousness principle (soul if you will) 
into the body of another person who is vacating it prematurely. This 
is considered ethical so long as the previous occupant is not evicted 
by force, in which case it becomes black magic, the specialty of 
Chuch the Whatsit. Some very young boy "died" leaving a perfectly 
usable physical body which Judge (at the time an aged and dying yogi) 
then took over for his own use. From the point of view of the 
parents the boy was deathly ill, then made an amazing recocery, and 
had a completely different personality after his recovery. The new 
personality had an interest in things that did not interest the 
previous one, namely metaphysics, yoga, etc. Theoretically the new 
occupant slips in through the "aperture of Brahma" (Brahmarandhra), 
which is a suture in the top of the skull through which the crown 
chakra is accessed and through which kundalini sometimes shoots out. 
Once again the story is credible, since there are yogis who can do 
this, and it suggests Judge was extremely advanced. 

If you are interested in further details of the practice you can 
consult Olcott's OLD DIARY LEAVES, volume 1, and Evans Wentz's book 
TIBETAN YOGA AND SECRET DOCTRINES. I believe Olcott may mention this 
is much less detail in a later bolume of ODL in connection with his 
notes on Swami Dayanand. Neither of these have much practical info, 
which is still handed down by oral transmission. (Not to be confused 
with an automatic transmission.) Exiting your body in this manner 
could be quite dangerous if done incompetently.