Ever since COVID-19 hit, it has appeared that 90% of what I write is about COVID-19, the antivaccine motion that was turbocharged by the pandemic, and related quackery, equivalent to repurposed medication for COVID-19 that don’t work, false claims that COVID-19 vaccines trigger sudden dying, “turbo most cancers,” and all method of different maladies. But, the extra “boring” well being nonsense remains to be with us; it’s by no means gone away. So once I encountered one thing known as “Entry Consciousness,” I assumed it might be a pleasant change of tempo to debate this fairly odd “therapeutic modality.” Furthermore, as Jonathan Howard argues, as horrible as misinformation and quackery involving lethal illnesses is, it’s nonetheless essential to critically look at seemingly “benign” modalities like Entry Consciousness, as a result of (1) lots of the concepts behind such “benign” remedies undergird lots of extra harmful quackery and (2) the these “benign” remedies are sometimes not almost as benign as they first appear. Furthermore, usually these similar concepts may be traced again a lot additional again in time. They persist, reappearing in new types over time.
Which brings us to Entry Consciousness, which is an unholy mixture of vitality medication and what’s arguably fashionable phrenology.
Three years in the past, Harriet Corridor wrote about this specific type of nonsense, however fairly briefly. So I wished to take a look at it a bit extra, if solely to coach myself about one thing that I both had by no means encountered earlier than or simply didn’t bear in mind ever having encountered earlier than. Once more, as Harriet identified, Entry Consciousness, irrespective of how bonkers its precepts are, just isn’t benign, and Jann Bellamy briefly talked about how Entry Consciousness. has invaded social work, whereas my studying has opened my eyes to how a lot this type of pseudoscience has invaded athletics too. With opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics lower than three weeks away, one wonders whether or not we’ll begin seeing credulous tales on Entry Consciousness being utilized by Olympic athletes, the best way that we’ve been seeing the promotion of cupping for Olympic athletes in 2016 for the Rio Olympics and 2021 for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Just like the case for cupping, there’s a direct line between seemingly “apparent” quackery and the much less apparent quackery that we see in “integrative medication,” which is maybe why somebody like Dr. Vinay Prasad, who earlier than the pandemic thought that debunking quackery like homeopathy was a waste of time, didn’t take lengthy to drift into COVID-19 contrarianism and echoing even RFK Jr.’s previous antivax tropes.
“Entry Consciousness”
So what the heck is Entry Consciousness? For those who do some searches, it doesn’t take lengthy to search out this 5 minute video:
Discover how completely satisfied and enthusiastic everyone seems to be. That’s no shock, in fact, on condition that this can be a promotional video, with individuals saying how sad that they had been earlier than they found Entry Consciousness. A number of the claims are fairly overblown, too, for instance:
Entry Consciousness What may the world be? Conflict and famine and all of the issues which are thought of dreadful right here wouldn’t must happen. It could be a spot the place when there’s a forest fireplace, we may convey rain. The place there’s a way of must bomb, that want goes away. So all the things may change with nice ease if individuals have been prepared to make use of all these instruments. I do know that sounds idealistic and a bit loopy, however I do know it may work.
Whoa. World peace, if everybody would simply embrace Entry Consciousness? That’s some declare there! It’s additionally so very, very deep, ma-an:
It’s a set of instruments that you simply use, and in some unspecified time in the future you truly grow to be them, you be the instruments. I can’t even specific how a lot has modified as a result of if I look earlier than and after … two lives. It’s a complete new world, the place for me personally, I used to be truly allowed to reside. That’s what Entry is for me, a world the place I’m allowed to reside as me. That’s that … That’s that. Entry Consciousness is a approach of getting your life again …it’s a approach of getting the enjoyment of dwelling again, and in the end create a unique area so that you can reside as, that lets different individuals know that change of their lives, and alter on this planet is feasible. Consciousness consists of all the things and judges nothing.
“Contains all the things and judges nothing”? What does that even imply?
This, apparently:
Most individuals say, “be acutely aware.” What do you imply by that? In case your eyes are open, you might be acutely aware. No, you’re not. Being awake just isn’t acutely aware; being conscious is acutely aware. Consciousness is about by no means slicing off your consciousness of something. At all times having that place the place you’re prepared to incorporate all the things, so that you miss nothing and also you get the selection that’s at all times obtainable. For those who reside from the place the place you’ve got a unique alternative, you get how a lot is feasible for you, that isn’t it attainable for others. What may you select at this time, to create the world and the long run that you simply’ve at all times recognized was attainable?
Common readers will acknowledge simply how vacuous all that is. It’s Jack Handey’s Deep Ideas utilized to consciousness and well being, a spine to a “therapeutic body work” that claims to supply its recipients all types of instruments to vary their lives, because it distinguishes between people—those that choose others—and “humanoids,” individuals who supposedly, for instance:
- acknowledge their oneness with the universe and so they don’t pit themselves in opposition to it.
- search for methods to make issues higher.
- have a tendency to take a seat in judgement of themselves
- recognise their oneness with their our bodies and the world round them
However how does one obtain this ever-so-deep accessing of even deeper consciousness, brilliance, and nonjudgment (apart from of oneself, which to me sounds probably dangerous if taken too far)? Effectively, that’s the place all of it falls aside.
For those who go to the Entry Consciousness web site, the splash web page proclaims it to be:
The house of Entry Bars® and pragmatic instruments to vary issues in your life that you simply haven’t been capable of change, till now.
ALL OF LIFE COMES TO ME WITH EASE, JOY AND GLORY®
OK, then, however how? First, there are the Ten Keys to Freedom:
- Would an infinite being actually select this?
- All the things is simply an attention-grabbing perspective.
- Stay in 10-second increments.
- Stay because the query, not as the reply.
- No type, no construction, no significance.
- No judgment, no discrimination, no discernment.
- No medication of any type.
- No competitors.
- Don’t hearken to, inform, or purchase the story.
- No exclusion.
Naturally, you’ll be able to pay to search out out the main points of all of those “keys.”
Sarcastically, the one one among these that I may approve of with out a lot reservation is #9, “Don’t hearken to, inform, or purchase the story”; that’s, if the “story” is the one which Entry Consciousness is attempting to promote you. However what do the remainder of these even imply? Who cares if an “infinite being” would “select this”? We aren’t infinite beings; the idea that we’re is a spiritual, not a medical or scientific, perception. For those who’re peddling faith, it’s best to simply admit it.
I additionally puzzled what the heck “dwelling in ten second increments” means. Right here’s one description:
I usually discuss to individuals about dwelling in ten-second increments. The concept is being current for each second of your life. For those who reside in ten-second increments, you create being within the current second. Most individuals, fairly than dwelling within the second, attempt to create a plan and a system for the long run so it can present up the best way they need it. They create the plan and assume they don’t must be conscious any longer. However there’s just one place we are able to reside—and that’s proper right here, proper now. The rest kills you. You don’t get to have a life. You miss out your personal life.
For those who reside in ten-second increments, you can begin to interrupt down the conditioning that has you figuring issues out and planning prematurely. You may discover ways to select in every second. You may’t choose in ten seconds as a result of it’s right here and it’s gone. We lengthen our agony in life by judging ourselves and attempting to repair what we now have judged. That is very true of the best way we father or mother.
To the extent that this simply means studying to maneuver on and never perseverate over your errors and issues that you simply might need executed in another way and/or to attempt to benefit from the current whilst you’re dwelling it and never be consistently fascinated with what you ought to do tomorrow, that’s all effectively and good. Nevertheless, all the remaining simply appears like extra Deep Ideas, mixed with appeals to what’s very transparently a variation of “vitality therapeutic.”
On first studying, I additionally puzzled what “no medication of any type” means. Does it imply simply no alcohol or mind-altering medication, or does it imply no medication in any respect? My most beneficiant first evaluation was that it most likely simply means no mind-altering leisure medication, like alcohol, marijuana, or others, however, sadly and problematically, it additionally seems to imply no psychiatric medication:
When Entry Consciousness™ says “no medication,” nobody is recommending you cease taking your insulin for those who’re a diabetic or your thyroid treatment if that’s what your physique requires. Medicine on this sense applies to all road medication (together with that “pure herb” marijuana) in addition to prescribed drugs that hold you from exhibiting up as you. Amongst these prescribed drugs are these prescribed for ADD and ADHD (together with Ritalin which is extra hallucinogenic per weight than LSD), in addition to the thoughts altering anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medication.
The hazard of those mind-altering medication, though they’re legally prescribed, is that they alter who you might be. One girl who had executed cocaine and alcohol for 13 years earlier than getting sober in a 12-step program truly stopped additionally taking her anti-anxiety and anti-ADD medication when she grew to become concerned in Entry Consciousness™.
Discover how Entry Consciousness equates psychiatric medication for ADHD, nervousness, melancholy, and the like with “road medication.” That is profoundly anti-psychiatry, no much less so than Scientology, with advocates even likening the impact of medication to possession by demons “entities”:
One other attention-grabbing consequence of utilizing medication is that it invitations entities to return into the physique. This doesn’t happen with a glass or two of champagne, nevertheless it does happen with heavy alcohol use, in addition to using different medication. When an entity occupies the physique, the physique’s “proprietor” doesn’t have full management or use of it. It’s exhausting for these round her or him to know precisely who they’re speaking to, because the entities’ personalities are often fairly totally different from the unique particular person’s, and customarily not an enchancment upon it!
For those who’ve ever observed the smoky really feel to bars or pubs, even now that smoking in them is banned most locations on this planet, then you’ve got been perceiving the entities that encompass alcoholics. That smokiness is the alcoholics who not have bodily our bodies to drink the alcohol, attempting to enroll others who do inhabit our bodies to take a drink for them to fulfill the entity’s craving.
Road medication all invite entities to return into the physique, as do a number of the “mind-altering medication” obtainable with a prescription. These embrace the medication that change your persona, equivalent to anti-depressants, anti-anxiety, and anti-ADD medication. The expertise of being anesthetized for surgical procedure also can invite entities into the physique. As this can be a fairly finite incident, the issue of recurrence of entities that’s the rule with common customers of medication doesn’t happen.
Hmmm. Perhaps “demon” was the unsuitable phrase. Alcohol in bars sounds extra like possession by ghosts than demons. No less than Entry Consciousness helps you to bear anesthesia for wanted surgical procedure as a result of anesthesia is a “fairly finite incident.” Nevertheless, you get the concept.
I like how the Entry Consciousness weblog entry that I cited above is named Can Consciousness Change Your Money Circulation, Half V, due to course there seems to be a little bit of a component of prosperity gospel to this complete grift.
In fact, up to now I’ve simply described the philosophy (equivalent to it’s) of Entry Consciousness. What are these “instruments” described on the web site and by its practitioners? Chief amongst them are Entry Bars.
Entry Bars
Right here’s the place the “new phrenology” is available in. Why? It seems that “Entry Bars” are supposed factors in your head for which gentle contact can supposedly trigger all types of psychological and well being advantages. For those who imagine Entry Consciousness, there are 32 of those factors, and so they supposedly retailer ideas, reminiscences, and feelings that may be manipulated for optimistic intent by mild touching or “working the bars.” This three-minute video on the Entry Consciousness web site describes the method, promising to “reset your mind” with it:
Entry Bars is a mild contact hands-on course of that releases tons of of hundreds of factors of view which are limiting you in numerous areas of your life and physique. These areas embrace physique, growing old, therapeutic, sexuality, cash, pleasure, disappointment, management, consciousness, creativity, plus many extra. What would it not be wish to have extra freedom in all these areas?
Having your Bars run tends to be a soothing and nurturing course of. At worst you’ll really feel such as you’ve had a fantastic therapeutic massage. Greatest case state of affairs, your complete life can grow to be one thing better with complete ease!
this, my first impression was: Who doesn’t like a pleasant, mild scalp therapeutic massage? It’s a part of the rationale many get pleasure from going to the hair stylist, as a result of earlier than the stylist types your hair usually step one is a pleasant shampoo and scalp therapeutic massage. OK, it’s not likely a scalp therapeutic massage, not less than not because it’s proven on this video. Slightly, it simply appears like mendacity on a cushty pillow and letting the practitioner gently maintain your head. I like the a part of the video the place one of many audio system says, “The worst factor that may occur is that you simply simply loosen up.” I can’t actually argue with that. It does look stress-free. Nevertheless, rest can also be most likely one of the best factor that may occur, as a result of actually touching a number of the 32 bars (working the bars) gained’t do something extra for you than that. It’s all of the extra superb in that you simply—sure, you!—can grow to be an Entry Bars practitioner after only a someday on-line course, and Entry Consciousness lists as of yesterday 486 such programs all around the world, with over 15,000 practitioners, once more, all around the world.
In fact, I used to be interested by precisely the place these “bars” are positioned. I wished a map, and Google was my good friend:
A extra detailed map wasn’t too exhausting to search out:
However what, you ask, is the proof that any of this has any relationship to biology, medication, neuroscience, or psychology—and even simply to anatomy? The quick reply is: none, not less than no good proof. The longer reply is: In fact Entry Consciousness has a neuroscientist or two who declare to have “proof,” revealed in—attempt to not giggle—the Journal of Vitality Psychology: Principle, Analysis and Therapy by somebody named Terrie Hope, PhD. within the type of a “trial”/case collection of working the bars in seven topics with mild-to-severe nervousness or melancholy and a newer, even smaller case collection of 4 UK law enforcement officials with nervousness and melancholy. Unsurprisingly, Hope is a naturopath “with superior research in quantum medication, transformation and consciousness and has revealed a number of scientific analysis research referring to neuro-activity, nervousness, melancholy and modifications in stress ranges and consciousness.”
However the place did “Entry Bars” come from? On Czech Wikipedia, there’s an article that references an article in French that describes the origin of the method, in addition to the newbie practitioner’s handbook. Happily, Google Translate tends to work effectively with French (not like another languages); so I’ll simply quote the related half, translated:
Entry Consciousness Bars is a supposed therapeutic observe promising “complete well being and ease and pleasure with our our bodies,” because the promotional brochures declare. Invented in 1995 by Gary Douglas, an American who had a detailed relationship with members of the Church of Scientology, the observe arrived in France round 2010 and has been rising since 2015. For 2019 alone, the official web site lists greater than 500 lessons and occasions in French.
In observe, the “therapist” locations his fingers on one of many 32 factors positioned symmetrically across the cranium to “activate” totally different bars : that of sexuality, cash, energy, consciousness, therapeutic, but additionally the tunnels of area and time, “reactivation”, the “growing old toaster”, and many others.
And:
The primary doc (71 pages) is meant for first-level practitioners. From the outset, the founders of Entry Bars insist on the necessity to “free oneself” by accepting that “all the things we expect, really feel, imagine, choose or have determined is solely an attention-grabbing perspective”. This foundation seems, in gentle of the next paperwork, extremely crucial for the acceptance of the brand new – supernatural – truths proposed by Gary Douglas.
As a result of the American merely claims to have “requested inquiries to the Universe” and to have acquired, in return, “medium and channel skills”, which allowed him to invent the “32 factors on the pinnacle that we now name the Bars”. Info that “didn’t exist on this actuality earlier than it was transmitted to Gary”. The latter then “realized that the Bars have been a instrument to assist individuals perform in another way on this planet” and that he needed to “provide lessons to strengthen and facilitate extra decisions and potentialities in others”. The time period “provide” is clearly relative, for the reason that many lessons and trainings are clearly paid.
In fact they’re. Elsewhere in a weblog put up, Entry Consciousness mainly admits that Douglas simply pulled the Bars out of his nether areas, so to talk:
The place did the Bars come from?
The Bars have been initially channeled by Gary Douglas, the founding father of Entry Consciousness, in 1990. They didn’t exist on earth previous to that.
How good. Additionally, it’s all mainly simply “vitality therapeutic”:
Are the Bars like Reiki or Cranial-Sacral work? Are they Acupuncture factors?
The Bars by no means existed on earth earlier than they have been channeled by Gary M. Douglas. Whereas the factors might look like cranial-sacral or acupuncture factors, they’ve a unique perform when executed as a part of the Bars. Now we have not seen every other technique generate the modifications which are created by the Bars.Reiki practitioners are likely to do very effectively at studying the Bars since they’re already conversant in vitality. The Bars and doing the Bars for others appear to have a extra wide-ranging impact on the entire lives of the individuals doing the Bars than Reiki practitioners appear to expertise.
There you’ve got it! Gary Douglas “channeled” the Bars into existence, and so they’re in no way like reiki, cranioscaral remedy, or acupuncture, though they very a lot are.
I additionally like how Gary Douglas mainly “invented” the 32 bars based mostly on “data that didn’t exist on this actuality earlier than it was transmitted to Gary.” However who’s Gary Douglas? In response to a web page from the Entry Consciousness web site that’s now solely obtainable on the the almighty Wayback Machine:
Gary describes the creation of Entry as a collection of revelations and insights. “What we now name Entry began coming by in about July 1990 once I was a profitable Realtor in Santa Barbara, California,” Gary explains. “I started channeling details about factors on the pinnacle that act like a pc financial institution for all our ideas, emotions, feelings, concerns, attitudes and choices; something that we determined that was essential at anytime on this life or every other lifetime. I felt that possibly this might be a category for therapeutic massage therapists or physique employees. I got here dwelling and known as 4 associates to return to a category on vitality work. That was the primary Entry class.”
There you go. Douglas was quickly joined by Dain Heer, a chiropractor, due to course Heer is a chiropractor. He apparently skilled an Entry Bars session and immediately grew to become a believer.
There may be, in fact, extra to Entry Consciousness than simply Entry Bars, due to course there’s. There may be additionally the Clearing Assertion, which supposedly “clears the vitality beneath the phrases,” in addition to Entry Physique:
The Entry physique processes are an lively, hands-on technique that creates miraculous change, potentialities, and area in our our bodies. They unlock the stress, resistance, and dis-ease of the physique by shifting vitality dynamically.
An Entry Consciousness Physique Course of is a hands-on technique that makes use of totally different hand placements on varied positions on the physique whereas asking particular energies to run at every spot. These processes facilitate the physique’s return to its unique features, which help with restore and longevity. The energies are the pure energies that our bodies entry from in every single place within the universe.
Nope. Nothing like reiki or acupuncture, is it? Truly, this sounds quite a bit like “therapeutic contact” or “therapeutic contact,” besides that the practitioner truly does contact the topic. And, in fact, a cardinal signal of quackery is there, using the phrase “dis-ease” as a substitute of illness.
Entry Consciousness: Extra “vitality therapeutic” nonsense mixed with fashionable phrenology
The underside line is that Entry Consciousness, its practitioners’ denials however, actually is quite a bit like reiki, craniosacral remedy, therapeutic contact, acupuncture/acupressure, and each different type of “vitality therapeutic” nonsense. It’s primarily spiritual or mystical in nature, requiring the idea in “energetics” or “vitality fields” which are manipulated by the practitioner by touching these varied factors. Like many types of vitality therapeutic, it’s mainly religion therapeutic that substitutes New Age mysticism for Christianity as the faith or supernatural perception system undergirding it.
I’m certain that somebody like Vinay Prasad will say that Entry Consciousness is so clearly ridiculous that I simply wasted my time writing 4,000 phrases deconstructing it, but when there’s something that the pandemic has taught us it’s that nothing is just too ridiculous to grow to be broadly believed, even the concept COVID-19 vaccines include nanobots or one way or the other flip you magnetic your self.