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Shah, Idries - The Sufis - On Psychokinesis
Identifier
000568
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Idries Shah – The Sufis
Magic is worked through the heightening of emotion. No magical phenomena take place in the cool atmosphere of the laboratory.
When the emotion is heightened to a certain extent, a spark (as it were) jumps the gap, and what appears to be supernormal happenings are experienced. Familiar as an example to most people are poltergeist phenomena. They occur only where there are adolescents or others in a state of relatively continuous nervous (emotional) tension. They hurl stones, seem to cancel the force of gravity, move tremendously heavy objects.
When the magician is trying, shall we say, to move a person or an object, or influence a mind in a certain direction, he has to go through a procedure (more or less complicated, more or less lengthy) to arouse and concentrate emotional force. Because certain emotions are more easily roused than others, magic tends to centre around love and hatred. It is these sensations, in the undeveloped individual, which provide the easiest fuel, emotion, "electricity" for the spark to jump the gap which will leap to join a more continuous current.
When the present-day followers of the witchcraft tradition in Europe speak of their perambulation of a circle, seeking to raise a "cone of power," they are following this part of the magical tradition.