In my "Lilac Cologne" post, Roger asked me another question that I've not yet addressed.  He asked me how I'd assess the claim that OBEs prove the existence of an afterlife.  I'd like to address his query in this post, but expand it to  include various types of "phasing".  

I prefer words like "convincing" or "persuasive" to "proven". In philosophical analysis of the soul concept, at least 2 models dominate: the "ghost within a machine" view and the view that the body [brain] is like a transmitter and consciousness
is like radio waves that vibrate with unique frequencies to produce our sense of an individual soul.  If the "ghost within a machine" view is correct, then proof of survival seems more conceivable.  But if the transmitter view is correct, then it must be asked whether the energy of consciousness permanently ceases to funcion as such when the transmitter is destroyed.  Alternatively, it can be asked whether a spiritual body or light form operating in other dimensions can transmit the same vibration that reconstitutes the individual.  Of course, these are just analogies.  But the 2nd one makes me reluctant to imagine  "proof."

Just a word on why I want to expand the scope of inquiry to include all forms of "phasing," including Bruce's method of Focused Imagination.  Obviously, this expansion is warranted as a courtesy to Bruce.  But beyond that, I've recently changed my mind.  A couple of years ago on Robert Bruce's site, someone told me he experienced both OBEs and Bruce's mode of astral exploration.  He added that OBEs are much more convincing and that Bruce's method, though it can promote genuine astral experiences, can more easily be delusory.  I was intially influenced by this claim.  But upon further reflection, I now reaize that the most convincing astral explorer of all, Emanuel Swedenborg, used a method more akin to Bruce's than OBEs.  I'm also now convinced that the early Christian apostles, prophets, and mystics probably explored the heavenly realms through a method similar to Bruce's.  Towards the end Bob Monroe seems to have preferred the term "phasing" to "OBE."

To be sure, I have serious misgivings with several astral claims made by both Bruce and Robert Monroe.  But, after rereading Monroe's books, I now realize that he taxes my credulity far more than Bruce's books do.  Besides, I've not yet read 2 of Bruce's books!  Initially, I am in the process of attempting to explore by OBE, but only because of the resources I currently have on hand.

Here are the 5 questions I propose to explore.  I will gradually offer my answers over time, but, as always, I encourage anyone to jump in with their two cents worth whenever they feel so inclinced.

A. Are Sleep-induced OBEs more than lucid dreams?
B. Can LAB tests prove that the soul can really
   leave the body and be present at a soecified
   identification target in another room?
C.  How should we assess the general superiority
    of  natural OBEs or "phasing" as compared with
    induced OBEs?
D. What are the most evidential OBEs during NDEs?
E.  How should we assess the contradictions
    between OBE (and "phasing") adepts and the
    higly varied credibility of the evidence they
    provide?

A. ARE SLEEP-INDUCED OBES MORE THAN MERE
   LUCID DREAMS?

Keith Harary. a lab-tested OBE adept, alleges that, during an OBE, he floated above his body and noticed a bedroom candle still burning.  He put his "face" close to the candle and blew it out.  Upon awakening, he noticed that the candle had completely burned down.  He concluded that his OBE efforts had blown out a non-physical candle.  

Stephen LaBerge, an expert on lucid dream research, rightly counters that the illusion of blowing out a physical candle shows that Harary was merely having a lucid dream.  LaBerge has had some OBE lucid dreams and dismisses sleep-induced OBEs as misunderstood lucid dreams.

If OBE adepts can be so easily fooled, one wonders how many, if any, sleep-induced OBEs are genuine.  I myself have experienced a few OBE dreams.  During the dreams and shortly after awakening, I was absolutely sure that I had just experienced a genuine OBE.  I had floated near the ceiling and gazed down at my sleeping body.  I had argued with a dream character that I was back in bed and that she was a mere figment of my imagination.  She seemed totally independent of my will and acted horrified by my claim.   Some of these dreams engaged my senses just as vividly as waking life.   But upon later reflection, I realized that these were just dreams.  For some of these dreams, this realization seemed more immediately apparent than for others.  For example, during my argument with a "dream lady" about his illusory status, I was ostensibly in Boston at high noon when in fact I was sleeping in Western New York in the small hours of the morning.

Sleep-induced partnered exploration of the astral can be challenged in the same way.  Keith Harary had previously experienced the well-attested phenomenon of shared dreams.  Harary's co-dreamer later confirmed that the context of their shared dream was the same.  If such shared dreams do not qualify as OBEs, then the overlapping experiences claimed for partnered astral exploration may not demonstrate genuine exploration of astral dimensions.  

Even telepathic hits durng partnered exploration may have no probative value in demonstrating the reality of such dimensions.  Dream telepathy has been demonstrated in research conducted at the Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn.  When the subjects were in REM sleep, someone in another room focused on an art reproduction and tried telepathically to transmit an image of the painting to the sleeper.  The sleeper was awakened for dream reports after each REM period.  Judges were later able to impressively match dream reports with the pictures projected during those dreams.  

LaBerge expresses 2 misgivings about claims that shared dreams constitute genuine astral travel:
(1) Closer analysis sometimes proves that these co-dreamers share identical dream plots, but differ significantly in their recollection of minor details.  This point intrigues me.  In reading about the partnered explorations in "Curiosity's Father", I was more impressed by the differences than the similarities.  (2) It has never been proven that these shared dreams were experienced at the same time during REM sleep.   If each co-dreamer experienced the "same" dream plot at different times, then the similarities should probably be ascribed to ESP rather than to an OBE.

This dream research might explain away some intriguing claims on the "Astralpulse" website.  One astral explorer claimed to enter the fictional worlds of writers through OBEs.  He even claimed to discover plot lines of works in progress that the author-acquaintance had not yet divulged.  This claim prompted me to ask myself: "If this is possible, then why not assume that all OBEs are just variants of lucid dreams spiced up by the ESP triggered by psi-conducive states?"

On the other hand, Charles Tart tested a Miss Z whose REMs decreased during her alleged OBEs.  Decreased REMs have been reported during the OBEs of other subjects as well.  This pattern suggests that at least some sleep-induced OBEs are not just dreams.  But were the OBEs genuine?  Miss Z correctly identified a 5-digit number that was placed on a high shelf out of her visual range.  Monitoring devices were attached that prevented her from cheating by getting up.  But she might have gleaned the number by reading Tart's mind.  There was also a weak possibility that the target constituted a subliminal stimulus in its reflection from a plsatic clock surface in the room.  In any case, this success has not been replicated.

Of course, Bruce's method applies to waking consciousness and not all OBEs are sleep-induced.  This means that the scientific study of trance states is more appropriate in analyzing his method than sleep.  And of course, as Bruce keeps reminding us, there is no substitute for direct experience.  Hopefully, I just need an upgraded quality of direct experience of the astral realm.  

May I interject a brief thought?  I have often wondered whether imagination, meditation, dreaming, lucid dreaming, astral travel, OBEs, and NDEs represent a spectrum of experience going from normal waking consciousness to the consciousness of the spirit world.  Perhaps there is no clear-cut point at which a person is either "in the body" or "out of the body."  In other words, perhaps at all times we are to varying degrees in the body or out of the body, depending on where the primary focus of our consciousness lies.  In waking reality it is the body/senses and rational mind alone.  In imagination and meditation it is a combination of the body and the mind, and maybe some elements of the spirit world in certain cases.  In dreams it is mostly the mind, especially the subconscious, sometimes partially the body, and sometimes partially the spirit world.  In lucid dreams, astral travel, and OBEs it might be more open to the spirit world and have no influence from the body.  In NDEs it may be primarily the spirit world with only some degree of influence from the subconscious mind, and none at all from the body/senses.  In death, of course, it is only the spirit world.

I guess what I'm saying is, consciousness could be more complicated then simply an in-body/out-of-body dichotomy.  Of course that jives with the idea of "Focus Levels" I have read about on Bruce Moen's website.  Just a thought for everyone's consideration.

Freebird

B. CAN LAB TESTS PROVE THAT SOULS CAN REALLY
   LEAVE THE BODY TO BE PRESENT AT A SPECIFIED
   IDENTIFICATON TARGET?

Not to trivialize Freebird's speculations, but unless the soul in some sense leaves the body during OBEs, it is harder to preclude ESP as the proper explanation for target identifications.  Most OBE lab research focuses on verification of one's departure from the body; so let's assume for the sake of argument that this orientation is correct.

LaBerge's critique of some of Keith Harary's claims has merit, but LaBerge is hard pressed to explain away Harary's OBEs in a Duke University lab under controlled conditions.  Harary reposed in a room a half mile from the room where his 2 kittens were confined.   He tried to project in 8 designated periods and make his OBE presence known to the kittens.  How?  Well, it was determined that the kittens would normally not meeow during his physical presence.  The kittens meeowed 37 times during 8 control periods during Harary's absence,  but not once during 8 OBE visits from him.  To me, it seems more likely that the kittens were detecting his OBE presence than that there was simply ESP communication between kittens and owner.  

In a similar experiment with a hostile snake, the snake rose up and struck the side of its container at precisely the moment Harary claimed to have been in front of the snake in his OBE state.  The snake's timing is striking, but unlike the kittens, the snake then curled up, fell asleep, and refused to cooperate with science.  :-(

Robert Crookall analyzed over 700 OBE reports and found that 81%  of the claimants acquired a firm conviction of postmortem survival directly from their OBEs.  But given Harary's OBE skills, I am haunted by his adamant rejection of the claim that OBEs prove the existence of life after death.  

Karlis Osis and Donna McCormack tried to eliminate telepathy as an explanation for OBEs.  They conducted "perspective tests" in which a box was placed on a shelf in  a room about 40 feet from 2 strapped-down OBE adepts, Alex Tanous and Pat Price.  The box had a viewing window which distorted the image of the object displayed inside.  The researchers made two assumptions: (1) If OBEs are merely hallucinations or lucid dreams accompanied by ESP, then the actual object in the box might be described.  (2) If Tanous or Price was having a genuine OBE, their description of the object should reflect the distortion created by the naked eye's point of view, as if they were actually hovering in front of the viewing window.  To rule out mind-reading, a machine randomly selected the object to be viewed.   Though they often failed in their attempts, Tanous and Price scored many hits--all from the naked eye's point of view.  The researchers concluded that they had actually left their bodies to make their identifications.

Dutch scientists weighed the bodies of adepts before, during, and after the OBEs.  They found a weight loss of 2 1/4 ounces during the OBEs.  This finding would be exciting if it had been replicated.  But so far no one has replicated the finding.  

But the role of weight or force was measured in another experiment involving Tanous and Price.   In their OBEs they tried to "see" a target in another room, a target to which a feather and a strain gauge were attached.   Several correct target identifications were accompanied by the anticipated pschokinetic effects.  This study, of course, assumes that the feather's movement and gauge's registration of force are best explained in terms of the subjects actually being present at the target during their OBEs.  

Sometimes, unanticipated evidence emerges from lab accidents.  For example, in one experiment, the subject floated through the wall to observe the target in the next room and found it pitch black.    He angrily complained, "How do you expect results from me when you can't be bothered to  turn on the light?"   Actually, he had inadvertently produced significant results!   Unknown to everyone, the light bulb in the next room had blown.  His awareness of this cannot be explained as ESP.

wrote on Feb 18^th, 2005 at 12:28am:

Dutch scientists weighed the bodies of adepts before, during, and after the OBEs.  They found a weight loss of 2 1/4 ounces during the OBEs.  This finding would be exciting if it had been replicated.  But so far no one has replicated the finding.   But the role of weight or force was measured in another experiment involving Tanous and Price.   In their OBEs they tried to "see" a target in another room, a target to which a feather and a strain gauge were attached.   Several correct target identifications were accompanied by the anticipated pschokinetic effects.  This study, of course, assumes that the feather's movement and gauge's registration of force are best explained in terms of the subjects actually being present at the target during their OBEs.

There was a study done in 1907 by Duncan MacDougall, M.D.  Using highly sensitive equipment, he found that people suddenly lost a small amount of weight at the exact moment of death, which could not be accounted for by any explanation other than the soul leaving the body.  It was significantly less than 2 1/4 ounces, however.  Maybe the soul of a person at death is weak and burned out, so it weighs less, whereas a healthy person having an OBE would have a soul with more mass and thus more weight loss.

One problem with MacDougall's study is that it only involved six people.  Another strange finding is that a couple of the people lost weight at death and then suddenly lost more weight again a few minutes later.  I suppose this could be explained if the person had an attached entity such as an earthbound human or demon.  Yet another interesting finding -- and unfortunate, if this research can be trusted -- is that when MacDougall tested 15 dogs, none of them showed weight loss at death, implying that dogs have no soul.

Anyone who wants to read the story MacDougall published about his experiment can read it at http://www.ghostweb.com/soul.html

To my knowledge, this 1907 study has not been replicated.  If anyone knows of a more recent study of a similar nature, please let us know.

Freebird

C. HOW SHOULD WE ASSESS THE GENERAL
   SUPERIORITY OF NATURAL OBES OR "PHASING"
   AS COMPARED WITH INCUDED OBES?

From his study of over 700 OBEs, Robert Crookall (died: 1981)  concludes that spontaneous or natural OBEs tend to be  more evidentially impressive than willed or induced OBEs.  In my view, this descrepancy needs further scrutiny and should perhaps be factored into our attempts to synthesize often conflicting astral claims into a provisional, coherent view of the afterlife realms.  Crookall's conclusion can be reinforced by modern research on OBEs during NDEs.   In my view, the quality of verifications provided by spontaneous NDE far exceeds that of induced OBEs, so much so that I will devote a special section just to NDEs.

Apart from NDEs, the spontaneous OBEs that most impress me are well-attested cases of bilocation.  
I've previously posted my first example on this site, but not my second example.    

(1) In September, 1774 Alphonse Ligouri, a Catholic monk, went into a cateleptic trance and remained motionless in his cell for 5 days.   When he awoke, he announced that had been at the bedside of Pope Clement XIV and that the pope was now dead.  The startled monks dismissed the story as pure fantasy.  Rome was at least 4 days away by horse and carriage, and there had been no official word of Clement's condition.   But news of Clement's death arrived a few days later.  Was Father Ligouri actually there in spirit or is his alleged OBE explicable in terms of ESP combined with a dissociative experience?  No, unimpeachable witnesses later verified that he was there!   Superiors of the Dominican, Observatine, and Augustinian orders all later confirmed that they were with Father Ligouri as he prayed at the pope's bedside!  This is perhaps the best attested case of bilocation ever recorded.

(2) My late 19th century example demonstrates the folly of dismissing all OBEs as mere lucid dreams:
"Mr. S. R. Wilmot sailed from Liverpool to New York, passing through a severe storm.  During the 8th night of the storm, he had a dream in which he saw his wife come to the door of the stateroom.  She looked about and seeing that her husband was not the only occupant of the room, hesitated a little, then advanced to his side, stooped down and kissed him, and after gently caressing him for a few
moments, quietly withdrew.

Upon awakening from this dream, Mr. Wilmot was surprised to hear his fellow passenger, Mr. William J. Tait, say to him: `Your a pretty fellow to have a lady come and visit you in this way.'  Pressed for an explanation, Mr. Tai related what he had seen while wide awake, lying in his berth.   It exactly corresponded with the dream of Mr. Wilmot!  

When meeting his wife in Watertown, Conn., Mr. Wilmot was almost immediately asked by her: `Did you receive a visit from me a week ago Tuesday?'  Although Mr. Wilmot had been more than a thousand miles at sea on that particular night, his wife asserted: `It seemed to me that I visited you.'
She told her husband that on account of the severity of the weather and the reported loss of another vessel, she had been extremely anxious about him.  On the night of the occurrence she had lain awake for a long time and at about 4 o'clock in the morning it seemed to her that she left her physical self and went out to seek her husband, crossing the stormy sea until she came to his stateroom.   She continued: `A man was in the upper berth, looking right at me, and for a moment, I was afraid to go in; but soon I went up to the side of your berth, bent down and kissed you, and embraced you, and then went away.'" (quoted from Janet Mitchell, "Out-of-Body Experiences," 62f.)

D. WHAT ARE THE MOST EVIDENTIAL OBEs DURING
    NDEs?

(1) To me the most exciting survival evidence from NDEs is marshalled in Kenneth Ring's latest book, "Mindsight."   Ring documents the visual NDEs of 30 blind people.  Vicki Umipeg is one of the best examples.  Born blind, she is unable  to experience visual dreams.  Yet during her NDE Vicki "sees" dazzling colors that she of course has trouble distinguishing.  She encounters many people, including her grandma and two formerly retarded and blind ex-schoolmates, all of whom are brightly colored.  But Vicki's most dramatic and significant encounter is with Jesus, "a figure whose radiance is far greater than the illumination of any of the persons that she has so far encountered."

These cases suggest that once the soul detaches from the body it can experience any sense it is unable to experience during physical existence.  But the probative value of these cases is somewhat undermined by the absence of a similar study demonstrating that the deaf can hear voices and sounds never heard before during NDEs.  If that too can be proven, then we will be closer to proving the xxistence of a soul which can exist apart from the body.

(2) Another type of survival evidence derives from NDE cases in which people "hear" conversations both in and far from the operating room and "see" the operation of  medical equipment and objects far from the operating room.   Here are just three impressively verified examples:    

(a) During her NDE, Maria "saw" a distant sneaker with a worn toe and a shoelace underneath it on a 3rd floor ledge of the Seattle hospital in which she was being treated for her serious heart attack.  
A hospital social worker later verified her report.  

(b) W. A. Lafmann saw an old friend, Mr. Blose, during his hospital OBE:  "I tried to greet Mr. Blose by hitting him on the back, but my arm went through him...I saw that he went across the street and looked into a shop window where a miniature `Ferris Wheel' was on display."  Mr. Blose later verified Lafmann's report about the `Ferris Wheel.'

(c) Third, consider Mrs. R.M.s hospital OBE: "I wondered where my daughter was and the next instant I was standing beside her in a gift shop.  She was looking at some `Get Well' cards.  I could `hear' her read the verse.  She decided it would be disrespectful and bought another.  Then I was back in my body.  When my daughter came with the card, I repeated the verse she had read [from the unpurchased card!]."  The OBEs in (b) and (c) were experienced by seriously ill hospitalized patients, but it remains unclear whether their OBEs should be classified as NDEs.  

Skeptics have challenged the value of NDEs in which the patients accurately describe operating room equipment and procedures.   How do we know that these patients lacked prior knowledge of this?  To settle this question, cardiologist Michael Sabom (1982) compared the accuracy of the descriptions by NDE patients of resuscitations with the descriptions by cardiac patients who experienced no NDE, but who were asked to imagine what a resuscitation looked like.  The results showed that near-death experiencers were describing actual OBE observations of their resuscitation rather than imagined events.  

(3) Unique verifications emerge from NDE cases in which two distant experiences of dying are interconnected.   Sometimes a patient sees someone in the NDE tunnel who has died so recently that neither the patient nor his family has yet learned of this death.  Then there is the case of Albert Baldeo, a friend of my Dad [posted previously].   Albert was present at his father's deathbed.  Just before dying at 12 noon, his father gazed in the distance and said, "Hurry up, brother.  Hurry  Up!"   At exactly the same time, the brother of Albert's Dad was dying in a nursing home 10 miles away.  Just before dying, this brother was observed by witnesses to shout, "Wait for me, brother!  Wait for me!"  A perfect fit!  

(4) Less commonly, there are cases where children encounter relatives in the astral tunnel that they have never heard of.  These children later tell their parents something like, "She said she was my Aunt Doris.  Did I have an Aunt Doris who died?"

(5) A patient can occasionally be healed during her NDE.  Consider the [previously posted] case of Phyllis.  A couple of years ago, I met this highly skeptical woman at a wedding reception.  Phyllis had a PhD in medical research.  Being exceptionally cerebral, she retreated from her emotions in times of crisis.  Her mother had recently died and she couldn't deal with this; so she didn't.  Then she experienced her own crisis, a serious car accident that launched her into an NDE.  She found herself ascending to "a mall that wasn't really a mall," complete with a small orchestra playing softly in the background.  It was a mall composed of white light.  Phyllis came to a table at which her deceased mother was seated.  When Phyllis sat down, her mother admonished her intensely, "YOU HAVEN'T COME TO TERMS WITH MY DEATH.  YOUR DETACHED REACTION IS BLOCKING MY PROGRESS HERE!"  This uncomfortable conversation was anything but the expected warm mother-daughter encounter.  Phyllis felt relief when she was able to return to her body.  She fully recovered from her injuries.  

Not long after, she was back in the hospital to have surgery for a life-threatening illness.  As her condition worsened, she had her second NDE.  Back she returned to the mall in Paradise.  Once again, she joined her mother seated at a table.  Phyllis dreaded this contact because she had tried to forget about her mother's last NDE challenge.  The unearthly music played by the mall orchestra provided little comfort.  "YOU STILL HAVEN'T DEALT WITH MY PASSING!  I WANT TO MAKE PROGRESS HERE!"  Then her mother did something very interesting.  She pointed to the table and declared, "YOU HAVE TO MAKE THIS DISAPPEAR!"  

The table was apparently a part of elaborate thought structures that bound Mom to her daughter's problems.  I was shocked by her mother's claim because I had assumed that excessive grief--not detachment--inhibits the progress of our deceased loved ones.  Feeling very ashamed, a sulking Phyllis finally said, "WELL, I GUESS I'LL RETURN TO MY BODY NOW."  

Her mother's startling reply was totally unexpected: "NO, YOU'RE NOT READY TO RETURN YET.  YOU NEED TO GO WITH THESE PEOPLE."  Two men appeared and escorted her to "an elevator that wasn't really an elevator."  It as an elevator of of white light.  They ascended to a Healing Center where Phyllis experienced a procedure that she couldn't understand.  When she returned to her body, she was completely healed and didn't need her surgery!  She wondered, "What did they do to me and what can humanity learn from this?"  Can astral adepts visit this center and receive a healing for conditions that earthly doctors cannot treat?  I'm fascinated by this question.      

Don-

To add another example, I used to share an office with an older woman who told me about her experience undergoing breast cancer surgery at Bethesda Naval Hospital.

Blanche had the typical experience of having lifted out of her body after she was under anathesia, rising to a  point somewhere above her body and near the ceiling, and watching and hearing everything that was going on.  After she was revived, the doctors told her they had come close to losing her during the operation.

She said she knew that, because she could observe  all of the frantic activity going on to try to revive her.  She later told the doctors about what was said and to whom, and told me they were stunned at the clarity and accuracy of her recollections but didn't seem to want to pursue it, instead just telling her she must have had enough sensory input to have picked up on all of it.  She also described the immense feeling of peace and serenity and how she didn't want to come back to her pain wracked body but she still had younger kids then and knew she had to be there for them.  Otherwise she said she would have gladly slipped away, indicating (altho I don't recall her saying so) that the decision to return was pretty much up to her.

Well, doctors especially in the 1970s probably didn't want to acknowledge the possibility that the body just might be comprised of more than flesh and blood, not to mention the possible existence of an afterlife.

This of course doesn't "prove" anything, there are many examples of this sort of thing happening, but it just adds another case to the growing body of experiences that indicate that something is going on that medical science has yet to be able to clearly identify.

I think as long as the person having the NDE returns to the body and relates what they experienced, it is going to be extremely difficult to say that this conclusively proves the existence of the afterlife.  

But just like the cases of demonic possession and the cases of people who are inexpicably saved from what would have been a certain death, it's one of those grand mysteries that is reluctant to give us much more than a brief peek at what lies beyond.

Roger
ps- I am anxious to hear your reaction to Newton's books if and when you read them.  They give a possible insight into things that, at least for me, I don't recall reading elsewhere.

Betty Eadie's book "Embraced by the Light" was a bestseller for two years for good reason.  Betty experienced one of the most in depth NDEs of all time.  She also experienced a spectacular verification of its authenticity.  During her OBE, she encountered the unborn daughter she was ultimately destined to adopt.  On January 13, 2004 she was interviewed by George Noory on "Coast to Coast."  I will quote from the transcript:  

"I went on the learn that each one of us came to earth by choice,...that we actually chose our parents, and our life situations that we would experience.  And we did this so that we would have the spiritual growth that was necessary for each of us as individuals."

The most compelling OBEs are often those that clash with one's preconceptions and are therefore less likely to be the delusory product of wishful thinking.  Note that Betty's NDE forced a belief system crash in which she felt compelled to abandon her former belief in reincarnation:  

"I always believed in reincarnation because that was the only thing that made sense to me before the experience.  But during the experience, I actually asked about reincarnation, and I was told that reincarnation upon this earth--going through life's repeated lives--would not be necessary for the majority of the people, that there are other worlds that God created, and that our continued education would be best served in those places instead of here."

This perspective receives independent confirmation from the biblical and early Jewish teaching about the soul's preexistence, a teaching which neither Betty Eadie nor most Christians seem to be aware of.  For an in depth analysis of the case against reincarnation in the early church and Judaism, see my post "Reincarnation in the Bible and Early Church?" in the "Judaism and Early Church" section of Robert Bruce's "Astralpulse" forums.  

The prexistence of the soul is a standard Jewish belief in late antiquity.  Thus the Essenes believed that "the soul is immortal and imperishable.  Emanating from the finest ether, these souls become entangled, as it were, in the prison house of the body, to which they were dragged down by a sort of natural enticement (Josephus, Jewish Wars 2.8.11)."  And when were souls created in the first place?  2 Enoch, an apocalyptic Jewish work from c. 50 AD offers this answer: "For all the souls are prepared for eternity before the formation of the earth (23:5)."  In the Old Testament, Jeremiah's prophetic calling seems to have been prearranged during his soul's preexistent phase: "The Word of God came to me, saying, `Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you came to birth, I consecrated you, I appointed you as a prophet to the nations (Jeremiah 1:4-5)."  More intriguing is the implication in the Catholic Old Testament that the soul can acquire a good or bad character prior to birth: "I was a boy of happy disposition.  I had received a good soul as my lot, OR RATHER, BEING GOOD, I HAD ENTERED AN UNDEFILED BODY (Wisdom of Solomon 8:19-20)."

Many New Agers mistakenly assume that the disciples' question in John 9:1-2 implies a belief in reincarnation: "As Jesus went along, He saw a man born blind from birth.  His disciples asked Him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?'  `Neither this man nor his parents sinned,' Jesus replied, `but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.'"  Bible commentaries typically contend that the disciples' question reflects a rabbinic belief that a fetus can sin in its mother's womb.  But this rabbinic belief stems from around 300 AD--far too late to serve as the background for John 9:1-2.  Rather, the disciples' question reflects the belief attested in the Wisdom of Solomon that the soul can acquire a good or bad character prior to birth
Jesus does not dispute this belief, but merely asserts that this particular blind man was not born blind because of his own sins committed in his preexistent state.

The Coptic Gospel of Thomas is a collection of sayings of Jesus put together in eastern Syria between the late first and early second centuries.  Two sayiings in this Gospel ascribe a belief in the soul's preexistence to Jesus: "Blessed is he who came into being before he came into being (Gospel of Thomas 19)."  "The man who is old in days will not hesitate to ask  a child seven days old about the place of life, and he will live (Gospel of Thomas 4)."   The latter saying is an example of Semitic hyperbole: it does not seriously assume that babies that young can talk; rather, it implies that if they could talk, they could potentially recount their prior existence in heaven.

Note that Betty Eadie's NDE allows for the possibility that a very few souls actually do reincarnate.  This implication differs from biblical teaching and clashes with the anti-reincarnation stances of astral adept Emanuel Swedenborg and the prolific medium, Susie Smith.  I believe that even the best astral souces inform us about what is generally the case, but not necessarily about what is always the case.
_______________________

NOTE: This post will initiate a flurry of often controversial posts from me to tie up loose ends from my prior posts.   I apologize for once again being a bit of a board hog.  But I pledge to you that, 2 weeks from today (Mnnday), I will begin a vacation of at least 2 months from this site to renew my efforts to experience a genuine OBE.  True, so far I've learned by direct experience that my OBEs and retrievals are not authentic.  But I am a  great believer in the importance of replication and the need to reassess my current skepticism.  I am now motivated to try a 2-pronged approach: (1) disciplined practice with my complete set of Gateway CDs; (2) practice of the excellent methods described in the new guide by Robert Bruce and Brian Mercer, "Masterying Astral Projection: 90-Day Guide to Out-of-Body Experience."

Don-

I read her book some time ago.  Thanks for the reminder.  But something tells me there was a controversy about her book?  Maybe to the effect that it wasn't quite legit??  I dunno, I could be wrong.

She is consistent with Seth re choosing to come to earth and choosing our parents and our life experiences ahead of time.  Consistent also with Michael Newton.

Re preexistence of the soul, ACIM says that also.  But it also says at one time we and God were One, and then for some inexplicable reason we chose to separate from God.  We, not God, created this world and our bodies.  After all, ACIM's logic goes, God is incapable of creating anything less than Perfect and less than Eternal.  And since our bodies age and decay, and since nothing on the earth lasts forever (including the earth itself), they could not have been created by Him.  I find that logic pretty compelling.

There are, however, several big problems with ACIM.  First, it never explains why we chose to separate from God apart from a reference to a "mad" idea to do so.  Second, if at some point we and God were One, it would seem impossible for such a mad (or insane as sometimes it's called) idea to even arise.  Third, it never explains what happens in the interim between our lives in physical bodies and the time when we re-join God.  It sidesteps the issue of reincarnation and never explains what happens when we die.  Do we assume a sort of intermediate existence as a spirit?  

Finally it is 100% different from Seth in that the latter describes earth as a school.  We are here to learn.  Newton's hypnotized clients agree with this view.  But ACIM disparages the earth....in fact pretty much trashes it.  It is a place full of illusions, delusions, and a snare and a trap.  It is nothing more than an empty facade which we ourselves created.  

We might think the earth is a place of beauty, but that's because we've forgotten the ecstacy of full union with God.  The only way back to God is when we are able to view all people as our brother, totally without sin or guilt.  We need to look upon a serial killer with love and forgiveness.  But ACIM says sin doesn't exist, so how can we forgive something that was never a sin in the first place?  Seems to me we have to first see something to forgive it, but in the very act of seeing what we think of as a sin, we are only experiencing an illusion.  Cute huh?  A catch-22 if I ever heard it.

Since even a full lifetime won't enable 99.9% of us to be able to do what ACIM says we must do, what happens when we die?  ACIM never says.  At least Seth and Newton and others say we continue to evolve either here on earth or someplace else.  

And this brings up yet another dilemma- if our souls were created Perfect to begin with, what exactly is it that needs learning or improving??  

Best of luck in achieving a genuine OBE.  I presume you've read  Wm Buhlman, he also gives specific steps in accomplishing this.

Hi Roger,

 There is a beautiful sentiment that i read in a great little fictional book called "Illusions" written by Richard Bach.   There is a part where Donald, the narraters friend who happens to be a fully "enlightened Master" type talks about how everything is an illusion.   So, Richard says something along the lines of whats the point....so that beautiful sunset is not real and means nothing....etc.    Donald replies something to the effect that the form of all he described is an illusion, but the beauty of it or within it is very real and that there is a very important difference.  

Well, its a great little read and even my super skeptical friend loved it.  

Take care and all the best

Roger,

No, Roger, Betty Eadie's NDE has been no more discredited than any other NDE.  Because hers is the most famous NDE, she has been targeted as a New Age heretic by conservative Christian groups.  For example, her claim to discover that the soul preexists prior to birth is dismissed as non-biblical.  Precisely for that reason, my post about her defends her claim as very biblical.  Like many NDErs, Betty blends her NDE account with her own theological perspectives, but it is usually easy to separate the two.  

Atheist types try to discredit her NDE by alluding to her affinities with New Agers and Mormonism.  But Mormonism does not teach reincarnation and Betty was an avowed reincarnationist prior to her NDE.  With its impressive verification, her NDE is a powerful example of how an OBE gains veracity by inducing a belief system crash.  In Betty's case, she learns  that her pro-reincarnation stance is incorrect.

Like Betty, I myself am impaled on the horns of a dilemma.  On the one hand, My anti-reincarnation stance makes my posts threatening to many of this site's New Agers.  On the other hand, my respect for OBEs, NDEs, and astral exploration makes me appear as a dangerous New Ager to some of my Christian brethren.  I can only respond: "To thine own self be true."  

Well Don, I wish you well in your quest but are you prepared for what might happen assuming you don't succeed?  

I presume your own belief in the afterlife will be unchanged, but maybe not.  

I continue to be baffled as to why these OBE adepts simply do not arrange for a conclusive demonstration of their abilities.  Per their books, they can do them almost at will and they presume to tell us how we can do them also.

And certainly the media these days would love to follow such a story.  In the old days with just the 3 networks, forget it.  But today with the highly competitive atmosphere of cable TV not to mention online journalists and bloggers, this story would easily pop up on any number of outlets, not just in obscure books or journals.

I can accept the probability that scientists would not pursue it at least initially, but the media these days pursues virtually anything and everything.  

The fact that this doesn't happen makes me wonder what's going on.  Either there is a lot of exaggeration in what the adepts say, or the world they enter while OB is so different from our waking world that verification is at best a dicey proposition.

Well said, Roger!

In my response to you, I want to make it clear that I am not presuming to pass judgment on Bruce.  I am just curious why Bruce or other astral adepts on this site haven't established the astral priorities that I would establish.  To explain my wannabe priorities, I will comment on 2 of Bruce's claims about Focus 27 in the FAQ section of this site.

(1) "Want to meet Jesus Christ, Buddha, Mohammed or any other religious figure?  Just express the desire and they'll appear before you to answer any question you can think to ask."

COMMENT: During his astral projections, Bruce learns of visits by Jesus to various dimensions.  Yet despite his Lutheran background, Bruce offers no report of his conversations with Jesus.  Whether one is a Christian or not, one must recognize that Jesus is a very high being in the astral realm.  During NDEs, Jesus is commonly identified as the Being of Light.  Surely, He's worth contacting to see what light He can shed on the astral realm.   For that matter, so are Buddha and Mohammed.

Perhaps Jesus would decline a visit with Bruce or any of the rest of us.  If so, that too would be most instructive and would contradict Bruce's FAQ assertion.  But Bruce doesn't even report making the effort or why he chose not to make the effort to contact Jesus.  I just wonder why.

(2) "Would you like to know every detail about any event in human history?  Go to the Education Center and Helpers there will show you how to access the information."  

COMMENT: Occasionally, posters recount their alleged visits to the Education Center.  When they do, they usually just find confirmation of their New Age orthodoxy.  [Please advise if any of you know of exceptions.]  If asked why they didn't ask for something decisively verifiable, they typically answer: "That's your agenda, not mine."  I find this brush-off hard to accept.  Suppose their research in the Center uncovered the cure for Cancer or even the location of Jimmy Hoffa's remains.   Suppose further that they could replicate similar impressive discoveries.  Then their astral visits could potentially change human destiny and spark a worldwide interest in astral travel and retrievals.  Why wouldn't every astral explorer want that?

Roger, your last post implicitly raises the issue of why well-published astral adepts don't regularly join in partnered astral exploration and attend conventions where they read papers and critique each other's work from their own experience and insights.  Though I am currently an astral inept (sigh!), I will soon compose a post that illustrates how such a comparative approach might bear fruit.  IMHO, The lack of such an ongoing dialogue among the experts is a major reason why astral exploration seems more like a cult phenomenon than a respectable academic discipline.

Don  

Don, just for the record, anyone can talk to Yeshua. I do regularly. ;-)

Love and Light,
Mairlyn  ;-)

 Hi Don, you make people think and you bring up some good questions, thank you.  LOL with that said, i do disagree with you on a lot of points, but that's beside the "point".  

I just wanted to mention that the way that Edgar Cayce operated, people would write him from all over the country of U.S. and sometimes from other countries.  He just needed a name and address, and there are examples where he describes the conditions of the person's house, people there, what they were specifically doing etc...  Some of this was further looked into by the A.R.E and they have on record signed affidavits, not to mention his high success rate in helping people with medical conditions that none of the medical people could treat, let alone "cure".
  The reason why his percentage of curing others wasn't even higher was for the simple reason that many, many doctors of that day would not go through with often very specific treatments Cayce outlined, or in many cases it involved so much self-discipline with diet and ways of life that many people did not follow through a 100 percent.  
 There is a book called "Healing Psoriasis" written by a Chiropractic doctor (temp. forgot his name, but if you want it i will look for it).   In it he outlines various cases of really bad psoriasis which he cures by following all the treatments as outlined in the Cayce readings, he fully gives Cayce and his readings most of the cudos for his success in treating this condition which by medical doctor standards is considered "incurable".
 Now, many people who haven't studied Cayce in-depth, fault Cayce for his prophetic readings on Earth changes.   Cayce was never a 100 percent accurate, but as far as outlining trends he seems to be quite on.   During my research of the Readings, i realized early on that many Cayce authors had mis-quoted and mis-interpreted the Earth Change readings to an unbelievable exent, so over the long years of the hundreds of Cayce books, this has given Cayce a "bad-rap".

 Many new-agers don't like Cayce because of lot of his metaphysical concepts were outlined in Biblical history and verbage.  This gives the false sense that Cayce was promoting Christian religion, but he wasn't.  He was equally at home talking about the Buddha, Mohummed, and earlier Christ like figures.  He goes quite in-depth about the past lives of Yeshua and says that this particular Soul-Spirit has influenced either directly or indirectly every major belief system which espouses the Oneness of the God-Force.  
  What Cayce really promoted was not Christian religion but Christ like living, and he constantly said no greater example could be found than in the humble, loving example of Yeshua who became the Christ.   Rosiland McKnight, a former co-worker of Robert Monroe wrote in her first book which outlines her recorded sessions with Robert, relates how one of her guides refers to Jesus as the highest vibrating personality to ever come into the Earth realm as a physical being.  With everything that Cayce relates about Yeshua and his very interesting "past", i'm inclined to believe so.  

I don't believe anyone needs to profess a faith in him, in fact i feel that he doesn't want that at all.  But i do believe that his example and pattern is perhaps the highest one in this last great cycle (182,000 years).  

The old mystery teachings relate that at the first of every new astrological age, a person arises out of the mass of humanity to become the World Teacher, and demonstrates by their life of pure service, love, and mastery over the physical plane their full Oneness with Christ, or Universal Love.  Well, we're coming up to the new age, but seeing as it is Aquarius, the emphasis is not so much on the World Teacher, but on a group and mass awakening.   The entrance of the Christ as Cayce talked about where he said this extremely fast vibrating consciousness would become increasingly prevalent after 1998.    

Perhaps i'm looking at it subjectively, but i do see this happening (thank God), there is so much searching, searching after the meaning of life, death, and the ultimate questions.   Tis a great and wonderful time to be alive, even if there are madmen controlling certain countries.

E. HOW SHOULD WE ASSESS THE CONTRADICTIONS
   BETWEEN OBE (AND "PHASING") ADEPTS AND THE
   HIGHLY VARIED CREDIBILITY OF THE EVIDENCE
   THEY PROVIDE?

This question is the last of my 5 questions designed
to clarify the uneven but, overall, impressive case for an afterlife that can be pieced together from various approaches to astral projection.  I intend to tackle the 5th question in 2 phases.  Today, I will continue to address Roger's complaint that astral adepts don't join forces to demonstrate postmortem survival to a skeptical public.  My response will illustrate the promise of a synthetic approach combining the insights from astral adepts and the classical channeling consensus.    

Then, next Wednesday, I will post my assessment of the uneven contribution of Robert Monroe's trilogy of books.  My analysis will expose the patterns of both his convincing OBEs and his obviously delusory OBEs.  I will pay particular attention to the OBEs that gain merit from their apparent clash with Monroe's preconceptions and the New Age belief system to which he is anchored.

1. ASTRAL STRUCTURE AND "GEOGRAPHY"

First a word on terminology.  By Focus 24-27 I of course refer to the Monroe/Moen categories used to describe various alternative states of consciousness.  By "Classical Channeling", I mean the many representative mediums whose insights form the basis of Paul Beard's synthetic portrait of the afterlife in his book, "Living On: How Consciousness Continues and Evolves after Death." Beard's synthetic portrait of the astral realms includes the illusion-filled "Winterland" and "Summerland", above which loom the 3 heavens.  Swedenborg's astral travels have taught him this structure of the astral realms: 3 heavens populated by "angels" (= advanced discarnate humans), "below" which is "the World of Spirits" populated by "spirits" of discarnate humans who may yet graduate to a heaven or regress to a hell, "below" which are the hells.

Here is an oversimplified sketch of the common denominators implicit in the "geography" of the astral realms embraced by very different and at times contradictory sources of astral exploration:

(1) Focus 24 is a region for trapped, confused, and often semi-conscious deceased souls in need of retrieval.  This astral plane corresponds with the biblical Sheol or Hades and is universally acknowledged by mediums and astral adepts.

(2) Focus 25 seems to be the equivalent of both the "Winterland" of Classical Channeling and perhaps the biblical and Swedenborgian hells.  This astral level is governed by the principle like attracts like.

(3) Fovus 26 is apparently subsumed under Swedenborg's "World of Spirits", the Summerland of Classical Channeling, and the first 2 heavens in St. Paul's schematization.

(4) Focus 27 seems to be the equivalent of the Judaeo-Christian Paradise which is the preferred initial locale for Christians and the launching pad for progression to the next heaven (see Luke 23:42-43).  Focus 27 seems to be the equivalent of the first heaven of Classical Channeling.  Swedenborg insists that no one enters heaven by direct mercy.  So he would probably locate Focus 27 in the higher reaches of the World of Spirits just "below" the first heaven.  

(5) There seems to be a consensus among Swedenborg, Classical Channeling, and perhaps the New Testament that there are 3 heavens.  Some reservation must be expressed about including the New Testament within this consensus.  Paul locates Paradise in the 3rd heaven (2 Corinthians 12:2-4).  Below the 3rd heaven are 2 purgative heavens (see 1 Corinthians 3:12-15; cp. 2 Enoch 7) from which one can eventually graduate to Paradise. The implied 2 lower heavens seem to be the purgative equivalent of Focus 26, Swedenborg's World of Spirits, and "the Summerland" of Classical Channeling.  From that perspective, Paradise would qualify as the first heaven, not the 3rd.  Ancient Jewish theology sometimes identifies 7 heavens, apparently because 7 is widely viewed as the most spiritual number.  But Paul's apocalypticism may suggest that he agrees with the Jewish apocalyptic view that there are only 5 heavens.  If so and if we count Paradise as the First Heaven (not the 3rd),  then Paul can be reinterpreted to agree with the 3-heaven consensus.  

From my reading, I tentatively conclude that Robert Monroe's OBEs have never taken him to the highest 2 heavens.  Robert Bruce has briefly glimpsed it "from below" only once ("Astral Dynamics 476-477) and confuses matters by designating this unvisited realm "Summerland", the term Beard uses for the transitional planes below the heavens.  Bruce Moen once visited a realm he labels "the city of angels", perhaps the 2nd heaven.  In his FAQ section, he refers to others who have been permitted "a tour of the real heaven" and observes, "Graduates of Focus 27 are the most brilliant lights I've ever seen."  

2. THE GROUP SOUL OR ITS EQUIVALENT

Swedenborg's astral travels prompt him to adamantly (and I think convincingly) oppose reincarnation. yet he experiences what is apparently the equivalent of a group soul.  Consider these 2 sets of provocative quotations from his book 'Heaven and Holl:"  

"People are borne by their own natures...towards those who are like them (43)...There was a face like an angel's that appeared to me.  This face varied according to affections...[that] occur within a single community.  These variations lasted quite a while; and I noticed that the same general face stayed all the way through like a background, and that the other appearances were simply offshoots or projections from it.  So there was shown through this face the affections of the whole community, the sources of the differences in looks of the people there (47)...For leaving a community is like leaving oneself and one's life (49)."  

"From time to time, therefore, a whole angelic community may appear as a unit in the form of an angel, a sight which the Lord has in fact let me see
...Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel are nothing but angelic communities, given their names by reason of their angelic functions (52)."

Similarly, in Classical Channeling, the group soul is not like the Monroe/Moen Soul Disk composed of multiple selves of the same soul unit.  Rather, the group soul is composed of originally distinct individuals with a common purpose.  Yet this channeled conception might easily be confused with the Soul Disk conception.  For example, consider this quote from Paul Beard's book:

"The group as a whole is in a real sense itself a soul also, a group soul, and [the discarnate person] is in very truth part of this soul.  The bond, the common purpose, will not all be seen in a flash.  This review...will be carried out gradually, until the various parts are gathered together and make a whole (135)."

This alternative understanding may be the key to solving a significant contradiction between Bruce Moen and Robert Monroe.  Bruce claims to be a parallel incarnation frm the same Disk Self as Monroe.  But Monroe is astrally informed that he has only one parallel incarnation--a female one.  He is also told that "she would seem like a long-lost sister (UJ 174)."  Bruce reports no such sense of intimacy in his earthly meeting with Monroe.  Perhaps, Bruce, Monroe, and this unknown female are totqlly separate souls destined to participate in a group soul in this new consensual sense.

This consensual notion of distinct souls comprising a group soul gets rid of the implausibilities posed by the troubling notion of parallel incarnations from a timeless astral realm.  Consider the contradictory nature of Seth's perspective on the timeless interval between lives.  In "Eternal Validity of the Soul" (151-152), Seth says, "There is no time schedule, and yet it is very unusual for an individual to wait for anything over three centuries between lives, for this makes the orientation very difficult, and the emotional ties with the earth have become weak."  But Seth also assumes that time is irrelevant for entities between lives.  The earth ties can only become gradually weakened if there is in fact a passage of time!

Both Classical Channeling (Paul Beard, 80) and Robert Bruce report that time, though still operational, can be greatly compressed in the astral realms.  Swedenborg adds: "Angels [=discarnate humans in heaven] have no idea of the concepts of time and space...The reason...is the absence of years and days in heaven ("Heaven and Hell" 162-63)."  

Beard explains the momentous implications of the channeled notion of group souls: "[The deceased soul] sees that others in the group are dependent for the fufilment of the common task...on his efforts, as he is upon theirs.  Success and failure occur individually, but their real meaning lies within a group context...In various ways members of the group have let one another down, hampered each others' purposes, just just as at other times they have enriched...one another (137)."

3. ASTRAL MEMORY AND THE ILLUSION OF
   REINCARNATION

a. The Nature of Hidden Astral Memory Fusion:

Through years of astral exploration, Swedenborg discovered that the spirits who are with us can access everything in our memories.  This is not something they do consciously.  It comes them automatically whenever they are with us.  They may even think that the memories are their own:

"Angels who talk with us do not talk in their own language...but in our own language, or in some other language with which we are acquainted.  This is so because when angels speak with us, they turn themselves to us and connect themselves with us.  This connection...causes the two to be in like thought since our thought stays with our memory, and this is the source of our speech...;  The angel enters the person's entire memory, so that the angel is scarcely conscious that he does not himself know whatever that person knows, including his languages ("Heaven and Hell" 246)."

Discarnate humans in the heavens (= angels) understood and agreed with Swedenborg about this process, but "spirits" or humans confined to "the World of Spirits" (= Focus 25-26) were unwilling to believe this because it would precipitate a belief system crash causing them to reject reincarnation.  Quoting "Heaven and Hell",

"When I also talked about this with spirits, they were unwilling to believe that it is the [other] person that speaks, insisting that they spoke in that person, also that his knowledge is their knowledge and not the person's knowledge, consequently that everything that person knows is from them.  I tried to convince them by many proofs that this is not true, but in vain (246)."

Why haven't R. Monroe, B. Moen, and R. Bruce been able to confirm Swedenborg's repudiation of the reincarnational perspective to which he was exposed in the World of Spirits?  In my view the answer probably lies in this simple fact: Unlike Swedenborg, Monroe, B. Moen, and R. Bruce have very limited experience in the 2 higher heavens.

b. The Elusive Law against Hidden Memory Fusion:

Under normal conditions, spirits and angels who are astrally connected with us can access our memories, but we cannot access theirs.  If we do, then we have memories of things we have never seen or heard and create the illusion of past reincarnations.  So it violates a spiritual law for a spirit or angel to speak to us from his own memory.
Swedenborg warns" I've been allowed to learn this from direct experience ("Heaven and Hell" 256)."

Swedenborg then explains that the false doctrine of reincarnation is prompted by spirits who violate this law during their hidden bonding with incarnate and discarnate humans.  Since these connecting spirits typically have a character and values similar to our own, it is likely that people who have false past life memories would see their own personality mirrored in these past lives.

The problem of enforcing this law against stealthy memory fusion needs further clarification.  But the operation of this law may explain the communication problems experienced by Robert Bruce during his attempts to converse with visitors to an astral Healing Center.  Let me illustrate this with 2 quotes from his Astralpulse website article entitled "Astral Rest and Recovery Areas":  

"Spirits I have spoken with in this situation do not seem to be aware of the length of time that has elapsed since they passed over, or of many details concerning their afterlife since that time.  Memories of their earthly life also seem vague, much like how a half-forgotten dream is remembered by a living person"

"Many spirits seem to be aware only of their present reality, that of being in the hospital scenario for an indeterminate length of time.  Some spirits, however, do have vague memories of their earthly life, and of coming from other dimensional areas, but have so far given me only very sketchy details.  Often they will speak of a warm, brightly-lit, interesting place where they have many friends and loved ones, but with little more detail than this.  The most common response I get from asking spirits what it's like where they come from is: `It's really lovely there and everyone is so nice.  I don't understand this,  I'm very sorry.  I know it well and can picture it in my head, but I just can't describe it to you."

The confusion and apology of these visiting spirits is probably due to the hidden operation of the law against memory fusion rather than to problems of differential vibration density caused by traveling among various astral planes.  Robert Bruce's belief system is very different from Swedenborg's.  So the coherence of RB's observations with Swedenborg's lends independent support to the truth of these Swedenborgian revelations.

Classic Channeling reveals one way discarnate spirits can circumvent the law against memory fusion.  The deceased F. W. H. Myers offers his solution: "I can build up a likeness of myself [and] send that likeness speeding...to a friend...in tune with me.  Instantly, I appear before that friend, though I am remote from him, and my likeness holds speech...with this friend (Paul Beard, 69)."

This sort of image projection via remote viewing may account for Robert Bruce's frustratingly superficial encounters with astral doctors and nurses: "The doctors and nurses that staff and run these astral hospitals do not seem to be real spirit beings... So far I have not been able to strike up anything resembling a meaningful conversation with any of them.  They seem to be very two-dimensional in nature."  

I suspect that there are other ways for advanced discarnates to conceal their memories during astral encounters with us.   Perhaps, there are various degrees of soul bonding that can only be mastered with advanced training.  Astral travelers sometimes come across their deceased loved ones with their backs turned.   Perhaps, this is one means of avoiding the outlawed memory fusion caused by fully "turning to us."  More research is needed to solve this question.







 

MY CONTROVERSIAL THEORY: The relative credibility of Robert A. Monroe's OBEs illustrates an important criterion for distinguishing the genuine from the spurious.  When and only when the percipient unwittingly places his intent to experience falsehoods (eg. reincarnation), his consciousness will become the equivalent of a lucid dream state and his experiences will conform to his expectations.  But upon closer scrutiny, the spurious nature of those experiences will often be obvious.  His experiences will resemble those already described by an astral explorer who enters the fictional world of novelists, including episodes not yet known to him, but on the novelist's drawing board.   His experiences will thus resemble my own lucid dream experience of traveling to Boston at high noon, while fully aware that I was in fact sleeping in Buffalo in the small hours of the morning.  Remember, my senses were fully engaged and the woman I forced to defend her reality seemed totally real and independent of my will.  This thesis will be elaborated in 2 phases.

1. ROBERT MONROE'S APPARENTLY GENUINE OBEs

RAM'S astral encounters with living and deceased acquaintances are his most impressive OBEs.   Without advance warning, RAM travels some distance via OBE to R. W., a female friend, and pinches her in a particular place.  She later confirms the sensation of feeling pinched in that exact spot at that time ("Journeys Out of the Body," 56-57).  Also impressive is RAM'S initial astral failure to recognize his friend, the deceased Dr. Gordon.  Gordon was in his 70s when RAM knew him.  But RAM later sees a youthful picture of a 22-year-
old Dr. Gordon in his widow's home and recognizes this as the young man he encountered in his astral quest (106-108).   RAM claims that just occasionally TMI's Lifeline program produces cases that provide "secure verification", by which he means that "a person of that name, age, and place died in that manner at that time (UJ 252)."  Intrigued by these claims, I will cease posting on this site next Monday and begin a disciplined use of TMI's Gateway tapes.   I'll post again this summer.

2. ROBERT MONROE'S APPARENTLY BOGUS OBEs

In an experiment conducted by Charles Tart, RAM's gift did not bear up very well under close scrutiny.  "His [RAM's] continuing description of what our home looked like and what my wife and I were doing was not good at all; he `perceived' too many people in the room, he `perceived' me doing things I did not do, and his description of the room itself was quite vague."  [See Tart's Introduction to "Journeys Out of the Body."]

In  his college days, RAM gained acclaim for a play he wrote.  It is his creativity as a playwrite that is on display in 3 of his obviously delusory past life experiences during supposed OBEs:

(a) a prior incarnation as a cave man pilot of a mentally controlled aircraft that is forced to dodge the spears of primitive hostile natives (UJ 157): The combination of prehistoric and modern technological motifs exposes the delusion here.

(b) an incarnation as a "vibrationist" from a "probably" non-human race whose members "have and use the ability to manipulate matter to suit whatever need through mental vibrational energy (UJ 158f.)  Sure!

(c) a prior incarnation as a novice Christian priest invited by his fellow priests to rape " a frightened young girl" who is tied down and spread-eagled for a kind of spiritual test for RAM: RAM asks us to believe that the girl is a prior incarnation of his wife, Nancy (UJ 154-56).  As corrupt as some in holy orders sometimes are, no Catholic order would formally invite a novitiate to rape a young girl!

RAM offers an earlier version of this memory in "Far Journeys," 115-16.  The 2 versions contradict each other in enough absurd ways to discredit this whole past life memory.  In both versions, a young girl is tied down on a church altar, but RAM is dissuaded from performing the nasty ritual by the deep expression in her eyes.  In the earlier version, his assigment is to kill her with several stabbings from a sword.  Supposedly, these stabbings will cause her "exquisite ecstasy."  In the later version, he must simply rape her.  In the earlier version, RAM is already a priest and is well aware of the deadly ritual he must perform.  In the later version, he is only a novice and has no advance inkling about the nature of the ritual.  In the earlier version, a mob will stone him to death if he backs out of the ritual.  In the later version, the ritual is just a test.  The other priests would stop him if he proceeded.  The earlier version has a fairy tale ending: a bright white ray melts the sword and severs the ropes that bind the girl.  In the later version, the white light simply signals the end of the vision of RAM'S past life.  Need I say more?

Equally absurd is RAM's alleged OBE encounter with an alien who emerges from a flying saucer looking like comedian, W. C. Fields.  this alien confesses that his species has come to earth not to do DNA experiments, but to collect jokes (UJ 48-50).  

But some of RAM's "Alice in Wonderland" story lines are not so transparently fictional.  RAM claims to have travelled back in time a million years to encounter an earth society more advanced than our own.  True, hominids back then were just beginning to use primitive tools.  True, modern physical anthropology cannot be so easily ignored!
But perhaps he just got the time frame wrong.  He shares a rather similar encounter with a future society from after 3,000 AD ("Far Journeys" 206-15).
There are impressive parallels with both accounts in Howard Storm's NDE in which Jesus describes life on earth 200 years from now.  Howard shares Jesus' description of the future on pp. 44-48 of his new book, "My Descent into Death."  


(1) There was only one parallel unique to human life 200 years from now (Storm) and beyond 3,000 AD (RAM): Every human could tune in to the sensations and vibrations of every part of creation.  For example, RAM could experience the life of a fish, panther, and a condor.

There are 2 parallels shared by all 3 accounts: human life 2OO years from now (Storm's Jesus), in 1 million BC (RAM), and beyond 3,000 AD (RAM):
(2) no evidence of man-made physical devices
(3) the ability to grow ready-to-eat food almost
instantaneously by mindpower

There are 4 parallels just between human life 200 years from now and life in one million BC:
(4) a univeral human capacity for telepathic communication with each other
(5) a universal human ability to travel anywhere in space via astral projection
(6) the ability of humans to regulate weather and climate by mindpower
(7) the abolition of involuntary death and its replacement with a voluntary passage to the astral

There are just enough intriguing parallels here to make me wonder whether Howard Storm and RAM received independent glimpses of our distant future during their OBEs.  Of course, the assigned dates are contradictory and unreliable.

What remains to be considered in my critical evaluation of RAM's OBEs are the experiences that seem to clash with his preconceptions as a nonreligious man.  I'm specifically referring to 2 astral encounters with Christ and one with the Christian God.  That topic will occupy me on my next post.

Hi Don and all,

I seem to recall that some christian teachers acknowledge that spirit-travel may be initiated by God but that it is more dangerous when one wills to do it on their own - here we enter into the more arcane occult knowledge, which some deem forbidden.

Rebecca Brown who wrote 'He came to set the captives free' and other books on spiritual  warfare talks about wizards and witches using astral travel - she shares her battles with human spirits as well as demon spirits.

Anyway,....I'm sure we spirit-travel in dreams. I often visit or meet with my little sister in dreams - but shes often a little girl (3-5 yrs. old). She crossed over a few years ago at age 18 (police ruled it a suicide after many months of it being treated as a homicide.) We got some help from a medium who relayed some messages from Michele to us via automatic writing and other impressions which have helped us get thru it. She shared with us what was going on emotionally at the time. It was a strange case and tragedy for all.......but she wants us to go in life and quit dwelling in the past and about that dreadful day. Her passing inspired my recent research/studies in the Afterlife; spiritualism/spiritism and related fields. Her name is Michele Angeline Purcell. Prayers and healing love for her are so appreciated. She was/is an angel - the youngest in our family of 8 sibs. But I digress.

I havent read any of Bruce Moens books or any books for that matter on the specific practice of astral travel...and would like to know the best most comprehensive book or resource to begin my research. The Spirit-realm/dimensions are very wonderful indeed. At this point its more about looking at how astral travel suggests the reality of continuity of consciousness apart from the physical body. Not so sure I'm ready to jump into actual projecting too soon - although I could get back into prayer-forms where one uses their imagination and spirit to envision desired/willed states and ministries in Mind.....and such are experienced as actually transpiring. Such takes into the dimensions of mind and spirit relative to consciousness in all realms.

Thanks for recommendations on what to start out with - authors, teachers, etc.


paul

Dear Paul,

From the perspective of the early church, OBEs qualify as a manifestation of the gift of prophecy.   You raise the crucial question about this: Is it wrong to travel UNBIDDEN to the heavenly realms?  Or do we need an invitation from God?  In favor of willed or induced OBEs is Paul's injunction: "Zealously pursue spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy (1 Corinthians 14:1)."  The issue is what legitimately falls within the scope of this zealous pursuit--prayer, meditation, my TMI CDs?  I guess I'm willing risk trying to find out because of the potential benefits of exploring astral realms from the motive of promoting God's will and encouraging people's faith.

As for an initial survey book by an OBE adept, I am impressed by the scope, rigor, and intelligence of Robert Bruce's book, "Astral Dynamics."   As for how-to books, I am most impressed by "Mastering Astral Projection: 90-Day Guide to Out-of-Body Experience."  This book is the most recent one on the subject and is co-authored by Robert Bruce and Brian Mercer.  I intend to use it in tandem with my expensive Gateway CDs to see which is more effective.  I'll let you know what I discover.  

Blessings,
Don

ROBERT MONROE'S APPARENT ENCOUNTERS
WITH JESUS CHRIST AND GOD

TMI's Explorer program includes a monitor in the control room who records what astral entities tell Explorers during their OBEs.  Sometimes, "friendly entities take over their physical bodies and speak using the Explorer's vocal cords." Alternatively, "the explorer converses with the nonphysical 3rd party and reports the conversation ("Far Journeys, 50)."

What Robert Monroe [RAM] overlooks is that one such entity is either Jesus Christ Himself or an impersonator.  The speech selectively quoted below contains 10 quotes and allusions from Jesus' words and 3 other New Testament quotes:

"Blessed are they who seek me...You have forgotten to seek me, much less gaze on my countenance, O ye of little faith (Matthew 6:30)!  There are countless numbers who live in the expectancy of my coming.  In truth, I never left.  Let him who has ears to hear, let him hear (Mark 4:9).  You seek me amidst your blindness.  You look upon me without recognition (John 14:9)...I am the peace beyond all understanding (Philippians 4:7).
...I am the light (John 8:12) that illumines the minds of men...I am your life (John 11:25) and you are my own....We are one in the Father (John 17:21-23).   Do not despair.   I will never leave thee nor forsake thee (Hebrews 13:5)....The time is not yet (John 2:6, 8)...  I defy logic and am beyond your conceptual imaginings.  I live and move and have my being in all there is (Acts 17:28).  You have sought me amiss (John 7:34).  My countenance is seen in each face of my Father's creation.  Look upon your brother and see my face (Matthew 25:40)...Learn of me (Matthew 11:29)...My children, abide in me (John 15:4) ["Far Journeys," 60-61)."  

Here RAM does not pick up on the many parallels with Jesus' words.  His apparent astral encounters with Christ and God seem to conflict with his belief system and are for this very reason evidentially significant.  In earlier OBEs, even RAM regularly displays reverent submission to an awesome figure that he recognizes just might be God's Son.  In "Journeys Out of the Body" we learn of RAM's frequent encounters with what again appears to be Christ Himself:

"It makes no difference where in Locale II, the event is the same.  In the midst of normal activity, whatever it may be, there is a  distant Signal, almost like heraldic trumpets.  Everyone takes the Signal calmly, and with it, everyone stops speaking or whatever he may be doing.  It is the Signal that He is coming through His kingdom.  It is an occurrence to which all are accustomed and to comply takes absolute precedence over everything.  There are no exceptions.  At the Signal, each living thing lies down--my impression is on their backs...with head turned to one side so that one does not see Him as He passes by.  The purpose seems to be to form a living road over which He can travel.  I have gleaned the idea that occasionally He will select someone from this living bridge, and that person is never seen or heard from again.  The purpose of the abdominal exposure is an expression of complete submissiveness."

"In the several times I have experienced this, I lay down with the others.  At the time, the thought of doing otherwise was inconceivable.  As He passes, there is a roaring musical sound and a feeling of radiant, irresistible living force of ultimate power that peaks overhead and fades in the distance ...After His passing, everyone gets up again and resumes their activities.  There is a complete acceptance of the incident as an ordinary part of their lives...Is this God?  Or God's Son?  or His representative (222-223)."

With His signature trumpets and aura of omnipotence, this figure truly does sound like God's Son, Jesus.  More importantly, His routine practice of performing retrievals everywhere in the presence of the awestruck denizens of many spirit planes should have made His will and identity a top priority for future Monroe exploration, especially in view of RAM's professed long-standing wish to meet the Creator ["Ultimate Journey," 222].  But RAM's disdain for the traditional God causes him to close his mind and ignore this obvious priority.  Perhaps, his reluctance is based on his "percept" that he couldn't tour the real Heaven if he wanted to ("Far Journeys," 201).  

RAM's professed wish may explain his later unpleasant encounter with "God".  A couple of years ago, I read an internet announcement that Robert A. Monroe had died of pneumonia in 1995.  I didn't think much of this at first.  But that changed when I stumbled on to pp. 208-09 of his last book, "Ultimate Journey".  In the context, Monroe has just resolved to seek out his "source".  Then he is accosted by "God" [?] in the same OBE:

"What blinding energy--I cannot move!
A  voice in my head--a cold, admonitory voice...
`I AM THE LORD YOUR GOD WHOM YOU SERVE.'
A feeling of immense pressure, as if I am dissolving...Now I am in water.  
MY LUNGS ARE FULL OF WATER...no, it can't be...there is no water...I have no lungs.  
I am being made to think that is where I am...
But what is this?  What God can this be?"

"`DO YOU NOT ACCEPT ME AS YOUR GOD?'
The idea of a God who threatens me amuses me...
I let this idea flow out.  `DO YOU NOT FEAR ME?...' YOU ARE DAMNED!  YOU ARE NO MORE THAN WASTED ENERGY OF ME, WHO IS YOUR LORD!'"

"Ultimate Journey" was published in 1994 and RAM died of pneumonia within a year of its publication.  One of the symptoms of pneumonia is a troubling cough caused by fluid in the lungs.  RAM'S exclamation, "My lungs are full of water!" sounds like "God" is angered by RAM's disdainful attitude and therefore allows him to experience a key symptom of the agent of his imminent death.  So what is the significance of all this?

Let's consider 3 alternatives.  (a) Can all this be explained as mere coincidence?  I think not.  True, OBE beginners sometimes experience breathing problems.  But by this time RAM is an astral adept and, in any case, he reports no prior OBE drowning sesnations.  Admittedly, pneumonia is the fifth leading cause of death in the elderly.  But the issue here is not the frequency of pneumonia deaths, but the timing of RAM's drowning sensation and the role of "God" as the messenger of doom.  RAM experiences this premonition a few months prior to his death!   His apparent ignorance of the validity of the  warning seems to contradict his claim to foreknow his "final departure schedule" [16].  

(b) Perhaps RAM is not experiencing a genuine OBE here.  In favor of a purely psychological interpretation are symbolic dreams like this: in her dream a woman descends to her basement and pulls out a diseased fruit from her purse.  Shortly thereafter, she is diagnosed with ovarian cancer.   The dream basement symbolized the lower part of her body, the purse her femininity, and the fruit her reproductive capabiilities.  i doubt the validity of this interpretation because, in my understanding, pneumonia lacks a long incubation period.

(c) So what might "God" mean by forcing RAM to simulate his future fatal pneumonia?  Is this really God or merely an impersonator?  When atheists unexpectedly encounter Christ during their NDEs, they often exclaim, "But I don't even believe in you," and Jesus typically replies, But I DO believe in you."  So God's reaction to Monroe's smirky disdain is uncharacteristically severe.  But according to the Bible, God's wrath is the other side of His love.  RAM disdains words like "God" and "spiritual".  He identifies as "knowns" these 3 divine traits: God "does not demand worship, adoration, or recognition, does not punish for `evil' and `misdeed', does not intercede or interdict in our life activity (UJ 224-25)."   The futility of RAM's astral attempts at prayer is not unexpected, given his contempt for the notion of a personal God.  Other asrral adepts view prayer as a vital tool for extricating astral travelers from threatening predicaments.  RAM"s claim that God does not hold people accountable for evil is an extension of his misguided principle, "There is no good, there is no evil.  There is only expression (UJ 217)."  Astral adepts like Swedenborg and Robert Bruce have great respect for the power of evil exercised from astral dimensions.  

The reader might counter that Bruce Moen and some of his followers have had some astral encounters with the deceased RAM and that he seems to be faring quite well.  Perhaps he is.  But in my view, there are at least 3 reasons why such claims must be taken with a grain of salt:

(1) The astral insights of RAM and Bruce Moen are contradictory in an important matter.  BM caims to be a parallel incarnation of the same Disk Self as RAM.  But RAM is informed in the astral that he has only one parallel incarnation--a female one.  He is also told that "she would seem like a long-lost sister (UJ 174)."  BM reports no such sense of intimacy in his earthly meeting with RAM.

(2) RAM's daughter, Laurie, is the President of the Monroe Institute.  She told Roger that her father was in fact no longer making appearances to astral travelers.  She directed this comment to claims of ongoing astral contacts with her father.  She and her TMI colleagues are the most likely to know the truth in this regard but as Roger has said, it would be great to get her to clarify her assertion.

(3) Even if these encounters with a discarnate RAM are genuine, they fail to address the question of RAM's present locale and spiritual predicament.  Swedenborg's astral explorations have uncovered a chilling insight: even the postmortem experiences of those who ultimately gravitate towards a Hell initially have very positive experiences: "Most are taken to splendid places because this sort of place delights the outer senses they are involved in ("Heaven and Hell" 495)."  I am not implying that RAM is presently in a Hell.  "God" might have threatened RAM in a final effort to get his attention and inspire his conversion prior to his immiment death.  In any case, the Bible implies that God's love never permanently abandons anyone after death.  

Psychologist William Van Dusen claims that modern astral adepts have in fact not explored much beyond the lower astral planes, ie. not beyond what Swedenborg labels "the world of spirits."  As a result, their insights are contaminated by the deceptive spirits that inhabit that lower plane.  
Swedenborg's verifications are so much more impressive than modern astral adepts.  So I'm inclined to agree with Van Dusen.  On p. 2, reply 17 of this thread I detail my agreement with Van Dusen's insight.  

But I'm also reactivating this thread to illustrate my struggle to integrate Swedenborg's insights with those of modern NDEs and astral adepts.   My post on "phasing"provides a perspective for sharpening the issues raised by Swedenborg's discoveries.  To me it is absolutely appalling that few modern astral adepts even engage "the father of astral projection" in formulating and integrating their insights into a new worldview.

Don

wrote on Aug 25^th, 2005 at 6:44pm:

Psychologist William Van Dusen claims that modern astral adepts have in fact not explored much beyond the lower astral planes, ie. not beyond what Swedenborg labels "the world of spirits."  As a result, their insights are contaminated by the deceptive spirits that inhabit that lower plane.   Swedenborg's verifications are so much more impressive than modern astral adepts.  So I'm inclined to agree with Van Dusen.  On p. 2, reply 17 of this thread I detail my agreement with Van Dusen's insight.   But I'm also reactivating this thread to illustrate my struggle to integrate Swedenborg's insights with those of modern NDEs and astral adepts.   My post on "phasing"provides a perspective for sharpening the issues raised by Swedenborg's discoveries.  To me it is absolutely appalling that few modern astral adepts even engage "the father of astral projection" in formulating and integrating their insights into a new worldview. Don

Hi Don,............it does seem odd that these so called modern adepts do not consider and hold the older pioneers (swedenborg, etc.) and their records at least as a comparitive medium to judge their own experiences or include older data into the whole collection of OBE/Afterlife sciences.

A friend of mine sent me a host of Swedenborg books and he was indeed a man ahead of his times in many fields.  I would like to see a thorough progressive thesis/treatise upon OBE's and the afterlife from the earliest records to the present. I still have to check out at least the beginners book on astral travel, etc. that you recommended from the modern adepts...as I am more acquainted with older pioneers and spiritual records upon this subject. (have nothing from the author/moderator of this site and the other adept often mentioned here).

With that,....I find your interest and favor of Swedenborgs writings of peculiar interest. Judy who has posted here in the past is the one who is a student of Swedenborg - you may have collaborated with her on certain of his themes.

Other schools that I have shared here in the past include James E Padgetts writings and the Urantia Book - both discredit the idea of reincarnation. But the reincarnation issue is an asides really, - cosmetics. I go with the eternal progress of the soul program as most logical, at least in the relative realm of mortals ascending in spiritual perfection thru the medium of time & space (however these dimensions fare in the greater body of infinity). Will check out ur other posts.


paul

Hi.....I just have a quick question here......as mentioned earlier in this thread about humans chosing a set of parents and a life pattern prior to returning to a body (as in: reincarnation).....just how does this process happen? How is it that this choice is made? I don't quite understand this and I don't want to look stupid!! But, we are a 'soul' at that point when the choice is being made, right? And how is it that the soul goes looking for life pattern, set of parents to come back too? It's not like looking in a book or something for a listing? Do we just 'get' this information from a soul of higher authority? I really don't suspect that we sit in a classroom type of scenario and go thru 'lessons' and then attempt a process of 'pick and chose'.....?
This often baffles me....I just can't figure this one out on my own....
I don't think 'a book of life' applies with this, does it?  8)

MD, a soul has a group of guides/higher beings who help the soul to decide what their life purpose will be. The soul sees for itself all that it has learned from past lives and makes the decision for him/herself with the help from the guides and higher beings. The soul also chooses those he/she knows from past lives to help with the life purpose. ;-)

With Love, Mairtreya ;-)

Don said: But I am a  great believer in the importance of replication and the need to reassess my current skepticism.
____

you bet Don. they call me the persistent one out there, and I had to laugh at that because here's what used to happen a lot with my explorations http://images.bravenet.com/common/images/smilies/banghead.gif

ok, that aside, I call it persistence, you call it replication, whatever works, eh? I think though, and hope that I am wrong, that your skepticism is so entrenched that you will not have success until you are willing to trust what you are given. perhaps in that case, the best thing to do is simply give up trying to gain the "real" obe. the irony of giving up truely something that we want badly is that the need to hold skepticism vanishes and the mind becomes more aware of that which was formerly blocked by the skepticism values/beliefs. let me of course, come from that place of owning what I say, that that is how it has gone down the pike for me, and I only mention this surrender thing of cherished beliefs because it causes a freedom feeling from conflict and subsequent peace of mind is found in the non/conflicted area. that said, just one genuine obe experienced is sufficient to cause a person to pursue it no longer. if it happens, well, fine, if not, fine.
I am in the midst of studying two realities, two worlds, the afterlife and the now life of C1 are consistently one and the same, the one an extention of the other in a holographic sense of extention, so then I wish us all the best and peace of mind and joy that you can discover here within both worlds that are one
for always I have become aware intensely so that these individual lives we live are so very temporary, that we must gather to us all that we can imagine is lacking here in C1 and to be sure to take care of one another along the way so as to not create karma, should there then have to occur a clearing of it later. so with that I salute your efforts to understand yourself, that you are more than you thought you were, and there is joy in that premise as we go forward. love, alysia

Thanks Mair!! Your explanation makes things easier to understand! Gee, I should have thought of the guides......duh!!!  ;)
Love, Mystic

MD,

Perhaps I should make myself more clear on the reincarnation question.  I don't believe in the  reincarination of this "I".  IMHO this ego-centered perspective is fueled by an earthbound mentality both in this life and the lower astral planes.  My rejection of this form of reincarnation is influenced (1) by Swedenborg's disillusionment as explained on  2, reply #17 of this thread and (2) by flaws on Dr. Ian Stevenson's research on past life memories of young children.  For example, the alleged prior personality was sometimes still alive AFTER the birth of the child who claims to be the reincarnation of that person.   It is known that possessed children and adults mistake the memories of the possessing spirit for their own.  But I am open to the "nonegoic" eastern version outlined in Van Dusen's quote on p. 1, reply #13 of the "Thought/ Intent-Reality" thread.   I am also struck by the neglected biblical teaching that the soul pre-exists prior to birth.  In her celebrated book "Embraced by the Light", Betty Eadie is told during her NDE that souls pre-exist but do not reincarnate.  For me, that's where your question becomes relevant.  Is there some foreordained parental selection process for pre-existing souls?  I suspect there is, though I'm reluctant to assign guides a role instead of simple divine providence.

Don

wrote on Aug 26^th, 2005 at 12:40pm:

MD, Perhaps I should make myself more clear on the reincarnation question.  I don't believe in the  reincarination of this "I".  IMHO this ego-centered perspective is fueled by an earthbound mentality both in this life and the lower astral planes.  My rejection of this form of reincarnation is influenced (1) by Swedenborg's disillusionment as explained on  2, reply #17 of this thread and (2) by flaws on Dr. Ian Stevenson's research on past life memories of young children.  For example, the alleged prior personality was sometimes still alive AFTER the birth of the child who claims to be the reincarnation of that person.   It is known that possessed children and adults mistake the memories of the possessing spirit for their own.  But I am open to the "nonegoic" eastern version outlined in Van Dusen's quote on p. 1, reply #13 of the "Thought/ Intent-Reality" thread.   I am also struck by the neglected biblical teaching that the soul pre-exists prior to birth.

Hi Don,.....It would be cool to explore the nonegoic form of reincarnation and its possibilities/implications. - as far as the reincarnation/resurrection dilemma goes...are you familiar with Peter Novak's theory? - I just recall it but havent studied it deeply - maybe you can survey if it has any potential. -

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/origen09.html




wrote on Aug 26^th, 2005 at 12:40pm:

In her celebrated book "Embraced by the Light", Betty Eadie is told during her NDE that souls pre-exist but do not reincarnate.  For me, that's where your question becomes relevant.  Is there some foreordained parental selection process for pre-existing souls?  I suspect there is, though I'm reluctant to assign guides a role instead of simple divine providence.

I also seem to lean towards the pre-existence of souls yet am still exploring the dynamics/intricacies within concepts of reincarnation and all its dimensions. I also recall evangelist Jesse Duplantis having an OBE and he does tell about souls or spirits flying around the throne of God wanting to come down to earth which implies that intelligences or souls do pre-exist in some form before incarnation. (I was raised LDS so know the controversies involved here with their view of the pre-existence and the Eadie account, etc.). But yes,...I tend to dig Origen in some of his leanings...although he was later finally anathemitized.  :-X  Perhaps we can explore 'pre-existence of souls' from a christian perspective apart from and along with eastern perspectives.

About souls having choice in the selection of parents, locations, planets, worlds, etc.  where they may reincarnate for their spiritual learning...it would indeed be logical that such decisions are oriented and ultimately decided thru the government of divine Providence. Our curiousity is in just how much free-will liberty, if you will the soul has in choosing from any number of options given that divine Providence allows for any number to be chosen from....each choice being coordinated to the divine Plan although perhaps within different dimensional settings.

Finally,...the controversy with Origen and the doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul naturally brought up 'soul-migration'(transmigration) and reincarnation(rebirth) in all its possible varieties...which challenged the settled dogma of the church and opened up too big a can of worms doctrinally for the church Magesterium.


paul

Hi,
on my journeys I've been told that the "traditional" reincarnation theory is true, including choosing, classroom, etc. But I was told too that another view is true also (in short): That there is a One, which is not totally uniform so that different parts could be extracted and mixed in a special way for a special purpose to become a person. And that linear time is not evident.

One outcome of this for me is, we will never know here in C1 all the details of those matters. Too complex. Some of the differences in the opinions about those topics may come from having different viewpoints, and all the opinions could be true, we are just unable to get it together in this C1 state of our existence.

bye, spooky

I agree Spooky, in a way, in another way, I don't. heres a thought of mine somewhat in  line with what u said: if we knew everything, absolutely everything we could possibly want to know, we would automatically desire to finish this life and be done with it. is good to continue with life then, because I seem to know how short it is in length. just a feeling, but think about it. all those people who did not know they were dead...the idea is to walk towards death with a better idea what is happening, so nobody has to come tweak your nose explaining your body is toast. ;D

Alysia was using the following idea as a point of discussion (she subsequently made it clear it wasn't her personal point of view) :


Quote:

if we knew everything, absolutely everything we could possibly want to know, we would automatically desire to finish this life and be done with it.

Quite the contrary, from our observation. The intraphysical human consciousness that's lucid or 'enlightened' (remember that there's no end to enlightenment, which literally means, "adding light to yourself", and yes light is infinite), will all the more cherish his/her existence in all levels and modalities that are helpful and appropriate, including the intraphysical (C1).

On the other hand, if by "if we knew everything, absolutely everything we could possibly want to know", you meant that the simple amoeba momentarily merged with the considerably more evolved consciousness and intellectual capacities of a human being, would it want to resume the body/mind/soul of an amoeba?

That idea is a moot or pointless one, because it is akin to the joke,

"Dude, I'm glad I don't like chilli..."

"Why is that?"

"Coz if I liked chilli, I would be eating them, and I HATE THE STUFF!!!"

-_-'


But indeed, the wise amoeba, having had a glimpse of the vast possibilities that await it, will now be all the more eager to get back into its amoeba body and cherish it's intraphysical incarnation, wisely understanding that such (intraphysical existences) serves its evolution, and living the most of each existence (whether intraphysical or extraphysical), will accelerate its own journey towards the more evolved human consciousness, and beyond that (evolution is endless, and all levels are God simultaneously).


Humans don't often cherish their considerable evolutionary status well. If they did, as higher evolved beings, angels, 'ascended masters' and Serenissmus did, they would

1) be a lot more compassionate, willing, and make the effort towards assistantiality to all other beings (eg. from the other kingdoms) around who look up to them, who seek their acceptance, understanding, assistance and love. In other words, never selfish nor uncaring (a pre-serenissimus human trait, all too common in human society today).

2) be aware of and open to even higher levels of evolution, beings of even greater vibration and advancement, and thus remain ever humble, ever vigilant and ever effortful, towards their own evolution. In other words, never complacent nor egotistical (a pre-serenissimus human trait, all too common in human society today).

Beautifully stated Kyo. ( 1 & 2 )

Love, Mairtreya

Paul,

I've only glimpsed Peter Novak's theory superficially.  I think he is wrong to read his theory into the Judaeo-Christian tradition, but his theory warrants closer scrutiny.  

You're right.  I'm sure it must seem odd that I am detailing Swedenborg's life and astral adventures when it is Judy from this site who specialist in Swedenborg.  I -E-mailed her to invite her participation in my thread, but so far, she hasn't responded.  Perhaps, she is on vacation.

Twice in the past few months, Judy sent me a box of Swedenborgian books free of charge.  I am grateful for her generosity.  It is her gifts that have rekindled my interest in Swedenborg.  

As for the Swedenborgian critique of New Age reincarnation, biologist Rupert Sheldrake's theory and experiments on "morphogenetic resonance" have potential.  You can easily fdind his website and see what he's about.  I will be addressing the issues of biological and spiritual evolution in future posts in my Swedenborg thread when I consider the role of "correspondences" in the universe.

Don

MORE ON THE DANGER OF CONFUSING LUCID DREAMS WITH OBES:

To grasp the difficult questions involved here, the reader is encouraged to read my post on lucid dream research on p. 1, reply #1 of this thread.  The problem of distinguishing lucid dreams from OBEs finds eloquent expression in this shared lucid dream discussed by David Fontana.  Oliver Fox enjoyed a vivid dream life and eventually learned to have and control lucid dreams.  

"Later, while an engineering student at ... what is now Southampton University, Fox discussed these lucid dreams with two of his friends, Elkington and Slade, and the 3 young men agreed, if possible, to meet that night in their dreams on Southampton Common.  Fox duly dreamt of being on the common with Elkington, though Slade did not appear.  The next morning, without first recounting his experience, he asked Elkington if he had had any dreams the previous night.  Elkington replied, `Yes, I met you on the Common last night and knew I was dreaming, but old Slade didn't turn up.'  Enquiries of Slade  revealed that he had no recollection of any dreams that night. The boundaries between lucid dreams and OBEs is unclear.  It is uncertain whether Fox and Elkington were dreaming or were actually out of their bodies (Fontana,  "IsThere an Afterlife?," p. 410)."  

Don

"

Hey Don, are you trying to say that you believe lucid dreams and OBE's are not the same?  Sorry, but I am not sure where you are going on this subject.  I believe they are not the same.  They may get easily confused but each experience is subjective.  

I am very familiar with Oliver Fox, and for many, many years have been intrigued by the passage of his you just shared.  That experience between Fox and Elkington was indeed a shared experience, whether one calls it a dream or not, and it was indeed a shared experience in an alternate reality.  So in those terms, I myself call the experience an OBE and not merely a lucid dream.

I believe there is a fine line between these kinds of experiences and lucid dreaming because when one is in this kind of OBE, your thoughts get created (which is the same kind of effect lucid dreaming has, where you are in control of what can happen in the dream).  Fox and Elkington's experience was very short and unfortunately was never repeated, but both men were certain of both of their consciousnesses in the experience.  

I have found that Stephen LaBerge doesn't believe that Fox's experience was a true OBE because LaBerge said that in order for him to believe that both men experienced a shared experience, that there would need to be proof that both men had been in the REM state at precisely the same time.  

This is false logic because what we are dealing with is the non-physical, and time does not apply to the non-physical realms the same way that we know it in the physical.  To compare REM states at exactly the same time says nothing as far as proof for the non-physical.  


This is what I understand and believe.  Your thoughts?

Vicky

Vicky,

We often dream about what transpired that day.  So the fact that Fox and Elkington each had a dream in which the other was present at the prearranged site on Southhampton Common is not significant in itself.  More interesting is the fact that both noted Slade's absence.  But dream research at Maimonides Hospital shows that the power of suggestion can routinely transform mere dreams into paranormal events.  So Slade's absence need not mean that Fox and Ellingtom were having a partnered OBE.  Astral adept Keith Harary claims to have experienced the phenomenon of shared dreams.   What we need to know is whether other details of Fox's and Elkington's dream were the same.   LaBerge found that two dreamers can experience identical dream plots with significantly different details that apparently cannot be explained in terms of different perspectives on the same encounter.   Still, OBEs and lucid dreams are probably different states of consciousness.  But I have experienced OBEs that seemed to fit the conventional stereotype, but which I reluctantly realized in retrospect were merely lucid dreams about having an OBE.  

I think the question of whether both dreamers were in REM state at the same time is both measurable and decisive to this issue.   Astral adepts as different in perspectives as Robert Bruce and Emanuel Swedenborg agree that time is trancended only in the highest spiritual planes.  ES's astounding predictions are gleaned from these higher realms.  He learns by experience that spirits below the heavens pretend to predict the future but cannot do so.  

I'm skeptical about the genuineness of many sleep-induced OBEs.   But waking OBEs are more intriguing.  I've never experienced this genre and may change my perspective if I'm ever able to have a waking OBE with adequate verification.  Vicky, thanks for raising these issues.  I will share more thoughts on this topic tomorrow.

Don

You must understand, Don, that Fox and Elkington both had the EXPECTATION of meeting Slade as well.  Yes, we do dream about the previous day's topics, which is why suggestion before sleep works very well; however, how do you explain that both men dreamed that Slade would be absent?  

My explanation is this:  The proof that this experience was a shared one is that the "information" is the same for both men, that information being that Slade was not present.  Obviously we cannot say for sure exactly how both men experienced that information because the transcript of the experience is very short and only from Fox's viewpoint.  

How we experience information is subjective.  But the information itself remains static.  
Information is your proof.  

Reality is subjective because how we experience reality is subjective, and we experience things differently because we can each only experience anything by use of our own conscious awareness.  

In any situation, no matter what kind of "reality" we are in at the moment, not everyone present is going to even be at the same level of awareness at all times.   Even parts of ourselves can be at different levels of consciousness at the same time.  We are not always going to be aware of every part of our conscious awareness even while awake.  What we do happen to remember is remarkable, but it still is only a portion of our total experience of awareness.


Now, as far as using any regular means to find "real" proof, I still maintain that when you are dealing with this shared reality, you cannot use physical means of measurement to measure a non-physical reality.  

In my opinion, Fox's experience did not happen in the physical world.  Yes, they agreed to meet on the Common, but it was a non-physical Common in their experience.  


Also, your adepts that you keep using to back you up are going by their OWN subjective experiences.  I have read all the same authors and "adepts" that you have.  But they still are speaking from their own viewpoints.  

For instance, the "higher realms" point of view of transcending time... it's really just fancy jargon they are using to make it sound like only certain folks of high experience and talent are able to achieve.  This is not so!  We all do this all the time, we just don't always remember them.  

Whether you call it the spiritual realm or whether you call it the non-physical realm, or even if you just call it the Astral realm, in my belief they are all just one place.  The reason why we want to lable them as separate levels or planes is because we are trained in the physical to use forms of measurement such as location to determine where we are.

In essence, what is really going on is the way we EXPERIENCE reality at any given moment.  If you experience being in a very high spiritual plane, well it's not because you are in a separate location from people in a lower spiritual plane.  It is simply because your consciousness is experiencing information in a different way than you would, say, in the physical realm.  
I will gladly share some of my own experiences as examples later, but for now I have to run.  

Thanks for making me think... I have been working on such topics in my own writing and research for quite some time.  It is good to have a conversation about it.   I would also like to share my viewpoints on the differences of OBE's, i.e. from sleep, from waking ,etc.  

Vicky

please let me extend an invitation to share whatever Vicky; I see u have been holding back a bit ;D from what I gather. I await to hear from u eagerly. :D

Bruce always said in his books in reference to something you are saying that we have this thing called an interpretor, which tries to offer us physical measurement tools, such as symbology, to explain what is not physical area; we are to nudge the thing aside to get additional info, the interpretor can take you down many byways and away from your intention within exploring. for instance, try not to image a pink elephant..what happens? right away you see pink elephants everywhere...it's mechanistic. to explore for non physical areas, I suspect you have to be very very speciific and focused or u become like a jack of all trades but master of none.

my point today was yours. that afterlife and C1 is a mirror thing. both the same, we do the divisions, we do the measurements of it, we have the clocks that tick.

I would often sit around and talk to my guide friends like this:
Me:  I don't like earth living.
Them: get over it.
Me: first if I want to go somewhere I have to find an address here, so I look in the phone book, I write down the address, I jump in that box on wheels out there, that gas hog, then I have to drive to the location experiencing road rage in myself or others to get somewhere. when I am out there, all I have to do is think about someone's signature, and that's like their address..then I just zip right up to them as in instant satisfaction to complete my task.
Them: well, bully for you miss star cruiser!
Me: very funny. so why earth life?
Them: because we can.
Me: is that all the wisdom I get from you today?
Them: did somebody promise u a rose garden?
Me: no, I think not.
Them: so go drive your gas hog and shut up.
Me: right. thanks a lot. http://images.bravenet.com/common/images/smilies/steeringwheel.gif

Hi Don-

As usual, an interesting topic. I'm curious, have you ever considered looking at the general nature of sipritual phenomena, OBEs and astral travel etc, from a multiply aspected perspective? (As opposed to the "ghost in the machine" or "mental telegrah" ideas.)

If we abandon the assumption of primacy for the physical experience, and adopt instead the notion that material existence is epiphenomenal to awareness, through projection based on interpretation of inner experiences, then the awkwardness of inquiry largely vanishes. What's left is a sense of extending awareness, looking in a new place, rather than trying to explain what gets processed and in what manner in order to produce a material outcome.

The other large benefit of starting with awareness as primitve, is that shared awareness through the collective hallucination of a material reality is a natural consequence. Individuation arises long after awareness of our world. prior to individuation, we sense everything as part of our own nature. Only after we find that some things are outside of our ability to cause change do we begin to view them as "other". In this sense, ESP and related phenomena are reaidly explained as  recovery of our oneness. OBE is a natural state, since the body is a projection, requiring only that we release our attachment to its materiality. Astral travel similarly is natural, since it amounts to little more than taking a different perspective and projecting a different "reality". The role of God is easily understood to be the central focus from which creativity emerges, bringing awareness in the same sense as we experience when we think about things.

This is such a simple explanation that I can almost hear Occam shapening his razor inthe background.

dave

Vicky, please understand that I am very impressed with Fox's shared dream, though I doubt that he and Elkington actually expected anything to happen, let alone that Slade would show up.

You raise a good question about the relativity of terms like "higher" and "lower" with respect to afterlife planes in a non-spatial context.  Let me outline six reasons why the terms 'higher' and 'lower' are appropriate despite the fact that they reflect a particular perspective.

(1) Planes can be designated 'higher' as a function of their conduciveness to an invigorating awareness of God's loving presence.  Heaven's energy vibrates at a higher frequency because, as ES discovers, the heavens are a realm focused on God and others rather than self, a realm where the joy of one is the joy of all.  A loving harmony is generated that facilitates this higher frequency.  Hell's energy vibrates at a lower frequency because, ES learns, the hells are realms characterized by a focus on self or self-fulfilment above God and others and are, therefore, realms where the energetics clash and slow down due to competing agendas.  

(2) There is a widespread consensus that these selfless godly realms can also be distinguished by their intense brightness.  Astral adepts like Robert Bruce and ES agree on this point.  RB labels the heavenly realm "Spirit Level":

"The background is purest, brightest, silver-white, much brighter than the sun could ever be.  Yet it is an extremely gentle light for all its incredible brightness, very soothing and healing.  It seems to me to be the pure light of divine love (AD 473)."  

ES agrees and adds this insight about Heaven:

"Light varies depending on the acceptance of divine truth from the Lord...or depending on the intelligence and wisdom angels [= discarnate souls in heaven] participate in.  This means that it is different [brighter] in the heavenly kingdom than in the [lower] spiritual kingdom and different in each community (HH 128)."

(3) Souls from the brighter planes can transcend time and flawlessly predict the future, while souls from hellish planes merely pretend to do so (ES).  

(4) Souls from the brighter planes are aware of souls on the lower planes, unless the eyes of the latter are opened to see beings from higher realms.    This Swedenborgian insight is reinforced by many NDEs.  
 
(5) ES verifies that "spiritually rich inner states reflect in surroundings that are gorgeous and rich.  Barren inner states reflect in wretched surroundings (Van Dusen, 89-90)."  

(6) ES allows for considerable relativity in astral perception, depending on one's development:

"Hellish spirits...look human to each other.  This is a gift of the Lord's mercy, so that they do not look as repulsive to each other as they do to angels.  However, their appearance is deceiving, since the moment a ray of light from heaven is let in, these human forms turn into the monstrous ones that they essentially are (HH 553)."

ES adds that the hellbound much prefer their negative existence to heaven.  Given (1)-(5), the terms "higher" and "lower" seem appropriate for the job they are intended to perform.  To dispute them is like disputing whether those left behind in hurricane- ravaged New Orleans are better off than those of us with food, water, and shelter.   Imagine a guy  arguing that they are better off because anarchy is the most exhilarating expression of freedom.  ES's awesome verifications confirm the appropriateness of the terms 'higher" and "lower" with respect to afterlife territories.

Don

One of the virtues of David Fontana's new book is that he uncovers fresh details that make a difference to how certain spectular paranormal results should be assessed.  Of all the lab tests on OBE adepts, the most renowned single result was Miss Z's alleged OBE reading of a five-digit number.
My reading had suggested that she might have cheated and that, in any case, she never replicated this feat.  I bought this dismissal until I read  Fontana's account of what really happened:

"Miss Z...agreed to spend four nights in [Prof. Charles] Tart's sleep laboratory..., wired up to an electroencephalograph to monitor her brain waves and to monitor whether or not she showed any abnormal rhythms during her OBEs.  In addition, Tart placed a different 5-figure random number every night high on a laboratory shelf and invisible to anyone on the bed.  His instructions to Miss Z were that if she could leave her body during the night, she was to locate and read the number, note the time on the wall clock, and wake up to tell him about the experience."
 
"On the first three nights Miss Z reported having a number of OBEs, but found herself unable to coordinate her movements sufficiently while out of body to find her way to the number.  On the fourth night, however, she was able to do so, saw the number[25132], and was able to recall it to Prof. Tart...The electroencephalograph to which Miss Z was attached had recorded that at the time of the OBE her alpha brain waves were slowed by one and a half cycles from normal.  This was a highly unusual brain phenomenon.  Tart had never seen it before...The number could only have been read by normal means by someone whose eye level was six and a half feet from the floor.  Thus, short of leaving her bed and finding something on which to stand, there was no way in which she could have read the number by normal means.  (The suggestion that it might have been reflected in the adjacent clock face was dismissed by Prof. Tart as untenable.)  And far from leaving the bed, had she even raised her shoulders by two feet from where she was lying, she would have dislodged the electrodes of the encephalograph, which would have...immediately allowed the machine to register her absence.  No disturbance of the electrodes had occurred ("Is There an Afterlife?." p. 413)."

Of course, it is possible that Miss Z simply used ESP to read the number from Tart's mind.  This problem might be corrected by using a computer to randomly select the number.  If Miss Z or another OBE adept could read a 5-digit number unknown to any human, ESP could be ruled out and the clarity and detail visible from an OBE state would be impressively confirmed.  We should also search for a subject capable of replicating this performance.

Don

Stephen LaBerge draws attention to the essential role of verification in distinguishing lucid dreams from sleep-induced OBEs.  Lab-tested astral adept, Keith Harary, experienced a duplicate of his bedroom's interior during an alleged OBE.  The duplicate came complete with the candle he had left burning by his bedside.  During his alleged OBE, he blew out the candle.  But when he awoke, the candle had burned itself down to the bottom.  Harary concluded that his OBE was genuine and that he had blown out an astral candle.  LaBerge rightly rejects this interpretation and insists that Harary merely had a lucid dream about his bedroom and a nonexistent candle.  The claim that physical objects are unaffected by the astral matter that envelops them is both false and, in any case, makes the distinction between OBEs and lucid dreams unfalsifiable even in principle and therefore meaningless.  

In "Journeys Out of the Body," Robert Monroe describes a fascinating, if cheeky,  experiment he conducted to demonstrate the impact of the OBE state on physical reality.  Without notifying her in advance, he visited a female friend, R. W., who was sitting at a kitchen table with 2 young ladies, one blond and the other dark-haired.  R.W. would later confirm the accuracy of this scene.  Monroe conversed with R.W. during his OBE.  He then pulled this prank: "I pinched her in the side, just above the hips and below the rib cage.  She let out a good loud 'ow,' and I backed up, because I was somewhat surprised (56)."  Later Monroe tracked R.W. down: "I asked her if she remembered the pinch.  A look of complete astonishment crossed her face.  `Was that you?'  She stared at me for a moment, then went into the privacy of my office, turned, and lifted (just slightly!) the edge of her sweater where it joined her skirt on her left side.  There were two brown and blue marks at exactly the spot where I had pinched her...R.W. said, `I thought my brother-in-law had come back and sneaked up behind me.  I turned around, but there was no one there.  I never had any idea it was you!  It hurt (57)!'"

At first sight, the pinch confirms LaBerge's claim that Harary merey blew out a dream candle.  But there is a serious problem.  Before pinching R.W., Monroe had an extended conversation with her:
"I asked if she knew I was there. `O yes, I know you are here,' she replied...I asked if she was sure that she would remember that I had been there.  `Oh, I will definitely remember,' the reply came.  `I will remember, I'm sure I will.'  I stated that I had to be sure she would remember, so I was going to pinch her.  `Oh, you don't need to do that, I'll remember,' R.W. said hastily (56)."  

Of course, R.W. did not remember.  It is too big a stretch to claim that her unconscious did remember.  This conversation is best dismissed as a figment of Monroe's imagination.  When we ask a question in our dreams, we will usually get some sort of answer manufactured by our own unconscious.  Nature abhors a vacuum.   But this imagined conversation calls the whole OBE into question, especially since paranormal feats can be performed in the dream state.  What further confuses the issue is that the spirit may not leave the body even in a genuine OBE.  Towards the end of his life, Monroe recognizes this and prefers the term "phasing" to "OBE."  But if Monroe's conversation with R.W. never occurred, the authenticity of all his OBE conversations is called into question, though I believe that he had some genuine OBEs.  

I like stories and experiences like this that raise profound questions that cannot be answered with confidence.  In my next planned post, I will share two other stories which pose profound questions that I cannot answer.  But if I knew the answers, I would break new ground in afterlife research.

Don    

Hi Don,

I can't find your post now to quote it but I believe somewhere in this thread you mentioned the NDEs of blind or deaf persons in that they experience sight and sound in the spiritual world.

You may be interested in reading Helen Keller's book, Light in My Darkness. There are a couple of passages in that book that sound like she is explaining that she experienced OBEs without using the jargon. I believe that I have already sent you her book; if not, let me know and I can send to you. I have an extra copy.

With Peace and Blessings to All,
Judy

[Judy, David Fontana ("Is There an Afterlife?") documents the impressive evidence for the blind seeing during NDEs.  But I've always been saddened by the lack of evidence for the deaf hearing during NDEs.  If Helen Keller is such an example, I'd be delighted.  So far I've only browsed her book, but will definitely read it.  It has a storied reputation as a classic.  Thanks, Don]

MORE PARANORMAL EXPERIENCES THAT ARE INCREDIBLY MEANINGFUL IN AN ELUSIVE WAY

I've related the stories in (A) and (B) below in earlier posts, but am reissuing them for the "newbies" and because  of my new clarity about the issues they raise.

(A) I was attending a wedding reception after
having just performed a wedding ceremony.  I sat next to Phyllis, a very bright gal with a PhD in medical research.  She shared these NDEs with me:

She was in a serious car accident that triggered an NDE.  She found herself in in "a mall that was not really a mall."  It was a mall composed of white light.  In the background a mall orchestra was performing beautiful music.  She jioned her recently deceased mother who was seated at a table.  It was not a joyful reunion.  Her mother scolded her: "You haven't yet come to terms with my death and your reluctance is holding back my development over here."  Being very cerebral, Phyllis's survival strategy was to detach from her emotions and ignore unpleasant events.  She couldn't deal with her Mom's passing; so she didn't.  She returned to her body, was nursed back to health, and ignored her Mom's admonition.

Months later, Phyllis got seriously ill and had to be hospitalized for surgery.  She never identified her illness to me.   Her illness triggered another NDE.  She returned to the same mall and was again confronted by her late mother seated at a table.  Her Mom again regaled her: "Why don't you listen?  You still haven't come to terms with my passing. I want to move on!"  Then her Mom did something interesting.  She pointed at the table that separated them and said, "You have to make this table disappear!"  Not even the mall orchestra's unearthly music could console Phyllis.  Defeated and depressed, she lamely offered: "Well, I guess I'll go back to my body now."  

At this her Mom unexpectedly snapped, "No, you're not ready to go back to your body.  You need to go with these gentlemen!"  Two men in medical attire appeared and escorted Phyllis to "an elevator that wasn't really an elevator.  It was an elevator of white light."   They ascended to some type of health care center and a prodecure was performed on Phyllis which she could not understand.  Then she returned to her body.  She was healed and no longer needed the surgery!

(1)  Two posts ago, I argued that the astral candle blown out by Keith Harary shows that his alleged OBE was just a lucid dream.  After all, the candle in his bedroom actually burned completely down.  Then I conceded that RAM's verified pinch of RW initially seems to confirm the genuineness of that particular OBE.  But on closer examination, the fact that his astral conversation with RW apparently never occured calls all of RAM's OBE conversations into question.  I confessed that I'm at a loss on how to resolve these issues.  But that is precisely why this RAM experiment is so fascinating to me.  Phyllis's NDE demonstrates even more dramatically the possibility of impacting the physical from the astral planes.  Did she stumble across a potentially new method of healing?  Can the living be trained to visit her healing center in Paradise?  I don't know.

(2) The Mom points to the table separating her from her daughter and insists: "You have to make this disappear!"  This gesture confirms ES's theory of correspondences.  In other words, it illustrates his discovery that in the heavens our environment is symbolically responsive to our level of spiritual development and our psychological situation.  

(3) ES and Robert Bruce agree that the newly dead quickly lose their bodily memory of the details of their earthly lives.  Their insights stand in tension with astral experiences like Phyllis's.  I don't know how to reconcile this conflict.  Perhaps, her Mom had not yet progressed to the state of progressive forgetfulness.  Or perhaps she had already progressed beyond this phase and her bodily memories had fully returned. It seems futile to speculate, but the issues are very important.

(4) I've heard of our grief holding back the advancement of our deceased loved ones, but I've never heard of our apathy holding back their progress.  Phyllis's experience suggests a very complex set of principles that link the newly dead with their surviving loved ones, principles that we hardly grasp at all.  

(B) E. Stanley Jones was a great Methodist missionary to India in the 20th century.  One time, he needed to fly from his location in India to a missionary conference in Dehli.  As he stood in line to buy his plane ticket, an inner voice urged him:"GET OUT OF LINE."  He dismissed the voice as personal paranoia, but as he approached the front of the line, the voice grew more insistent: "I SAID, GET OUT OF LINE NOW."  Reluctantly, he withdrew from the line.  He thought to himself, "How foolish I'm going to look when I don't show up and have to explain the reason why."  Well, the plane crashed killing hundreds of passengers.
When the media got wind of Jones's premonition, they hounded him.  One insolent reporter sneered: "So God loves you so much as a Christian, that He decided to spare you and kill hundreds of Hindus?"  E. Stanley Jones's reply is unforgettable: "Oh no, I'm sure that God loved all those Hindus at least as much as He loves me.  It's just that I'm the only one who was listening."

(1) I love this story because, although I can't grasp it's full meaning, I'm confident that if I could, I would have achieved a major breakthrough in the mysteries of spirituality.  Before reading about this escape, I'd have been tempted to speculate that God has nothing to do with disasters like this crash, the tsunami last December, and Hurricance Katrina.  What is most instructive is that God did not (could not?) stop the plane crash, but could warn someone to leave the ticket line.  What does this teach us about the nature of divine intervention and God's criteria for selective protection.  I'M NOT SURE.  And that is what makes this paranormal account one of the most fascinating of its kind.

I'm at least confident that 3 other claims are NOT true:
(2) Jones was not spared just because he was a devotee of Christ in line with pagans.
(3) Jones was not spared just because his was the only number that was not yet up.
(4) Those Hindus were not killed due to bad karma.

That said, let me speculate about what the truth might be.  E. Stanley Jones was no ordinary Christian missionary.  He is one of the greatest Methodist missionaries--a real man of prayer.  It may be that God's hands off policy may be designDodONd to motivated us the upgrade our spiritual development.  People who are uniquely attuned to divine guidance might have a big advantage in tuning in to divine warnings that are reserved for those with a more sharply honed spiritual intuition.

Don


 

Hi Don,

Thank you for all your great postings - very researched and detailed. I meant to comment on something about Phyllis, the medical researcher PhD.

You mentioned that you were surprised at her mother's reaction at the refusal of Phyllis to grieve. You wrote in Post #6 of this thread:

Quote:

I was shocked by her mother's claim because I had assumed that excessive grief--not detachment--inhibits the progress of our deceased loved ones.

 
I too had a very similar experience and reaction. I lost 9 loved ones in 6 years as a teenager: both parents, both sets of grandparents, my favorite cousin, a friend and my fiance who died in Vietnam. I never mourned until 23 years later. And when I did begin the grieving process, I was criticized by several "friends" that I should be "over it by now." I began to feel guilty over the grief and depression that I was now going through. I was experiencing ADCs - most of the experiences were with my fiance'. I told him that I had to let go - that was what all the grief books said to do. And he answered why not hold on? Why not fly smack against conventional wisdom and see what happens?

That answer totally shocked me as it sounds you were shocked about Phyllis' mother's response. Anyway, I decided to hold on and I thank God for that decision now because the spiritual treasures that I received and still receiving by holding on to my loved ones are precious to me.

With Peace and Blessings to All,
Judy

Dear Judy,

I was not surprised by Phyllis's inability to feel her grief.  Her cerebral demeanor almost made that reaction predictiable.  What surprised me was this: her inability to grieve prevented her mother's progress on the other side.  Previously, I had only heard about excessive or prolonged grieving holding our deceased loved ones back.  Phyllis's case makes me wonder about all the ways we might unwittingly block our deceased loved ones' progress.

Don

Many of you are understandably reluctant to devote many hours to experimentation with the OBE methodology of a particular astral adept.  But perhaps, you might enjoy creating your own methodology and using it to explore states of consciousness.   For example, though TMI's costly Gateway CDs have not worked for me so far, I had an apparent OBE on my first attempt with the use of a book on self-hynosis that had nothing to do with OBEs.  I put the book's self-hypnosis instructions on a tape recorder in my own voice.  When it came time to insert the hypnotic suggestion, I simply inserted my desire to experience an OBE.  When I fell asleep, I found myself bouncing off the ceiling and looking down on my own body.  It was very exhilarating, until I started wondering if I was dead.  That led to my attempts to lay down over my sleeping body and gain entrance.  But my dream finger, kept separating from my real hand!  Then I woke up.  OK, so in retrospect, I eventually realized that this experience was just a lucid dream.  But it gave me a bench mark for discerning the legitimacy of my future OBE experiences (all admittedly just more lucid dreams).  Still, I think it's important to demonstrate to yourself that you can experience unique states of consciousness.  

For those interested in creating their own OBE methodology, I will quote David Fontana's survey of techniques and principles alleged to be helpful:

(1) "One of the techniques for inducing OBEs frequently reported to them (Muldoon & Carrington)
is to start by imagining that one is looking at one's own body from a position outside it, as if viewing it objectively.  Then at some point the consciousness is transferred to the image, from where one can look back at a the real physical body."

(2) "Another technique...is to imagine oneself ascending in a lift, upwards through several floors, and that on reaching the roof to imagine stepping out of the lift and in doing so out of the body."

(3) "...Several times a day one visualizes oneself flying over valleys and seas."

(4) "Frequent instructions to the unconscious are also stressed, so that the unconscious gets the idea..that one wishes to remember dreams, to know during dreams that one is dreaming,...and to leave one's body and return safely."  [My first bogus OBE was triggered by an analogous self-hypnotic suggestion.]

(5) "Emphasis is also placed on positive thinking (the belief that one can have OBEs), upon the ability to relax mind and body, and upon remaining conscious for as long as possible during the hypnagogic state (the state just between waking and sleeping), and upon meditation."

Fontana thinks that a meditative discipline is particularly crucial to OBE success: "I can certainly vouch for the fact that practice in meditation appears to facilitate the OBE....Firstly, progress in meditation helps to still the distracting internal clutter of the conscious mind, thus allowing awareness of more subtle mental states... Secondly, progress in meditation helps one to become much more observant about the inner and outer worlds.  This awareness then persists even during dreaming sleep, so that one is better able to recognize the fact that one is dreaming and to experience the so-called lucid dreams that can act as triggers for OBEs ("Is There an Afterlife?"  417-418)."

Hi Don and all,
I often practice the (1) method (Reply 48 ). After imaginating looking at my body and looking around in my room I imaginate to fly high over my city and then further up so that I can see the entire earth. This induced not an OBE of the "it's so vivid, it's real"- type like in RAMs first book or what chilipepper wrote in his "weird experience", but I found that it is a technique which nevertheless leads me to an altered state in which I could access the different focus levels or consciousness- planes, even if it feels in the beginning like made up and the perception isn't clear or I see things which are different from the waking state consciousness. For instance, I see my body in different clothes than I "really" wear. It's worth to experiment with it I would recommend any "newbie" instead of insisting to have the "vivid and real" OBE type. This especially while listening to the HemiSync tapes of Focus 10 and 12; once in this imagined distance to the earth it's more easy to tune into F15 and F21.
The self-hypnosis method you mentioned is quite interesting. Maybe to hear the own voice is particular effective.
Bye, spooky

[Matthew:] These "jailbreaks "do not invalidate the moral code.  They deal with free will, and conscious beings changing their belief systems.  If there are "vibrational states," these may change with changes in belief systems."
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One of the most universally accepted astral claims is the principle of like attracts like.  If I am an unrepentant child molester with an othewise identical belief system to that of Mother Teresa, I doubt that I'd able to inhabit the same heavenly plane by virtue of a retrieval.  But if I could, then progress in PUL is of marginal relevance in the afterlife.  Monroe would then be correct in his claim that there is no good and evil.  

Say I am retrieved from a child molester's hell and brought to Focus 27.    I'm briefed by my retrievers on the need to respect everyone's freedom there.  So I decide to play along and not make waves until I can be reborn to molest and murder more children.
This site's retrieval reports create the impression that such a reincarnational journey is quite conceivable.  

But I believe that progress in PUL is a vital aspect of the application of the principle like attracts like.  I don't believe that gamblers get to share the same astral Los Vegas without regard to their current level of PUL or progress towards union with God.  But my beliefs in this regard must be tested by direct astral experience.   I must provisionally allow for the sad possibility that the astral realm is governed by the survival of the fittest just like the earthly animal kingdom.   Fortunately, I have ES's awesome verifications to counteract this depressing scenario.  

[Matthew:] "If I hear about Monroe's caveman episode, rape or meeting aliens collecting jokes again, I'll puke.  Those are obvious delusions or misinterpretations of astral events, but so what?"
_______________________________________

For an activity as weird as astral exploration, certain minimal guidelines must be established for the credibility of our sources.   If the source cannot validate his astral gift to respected researchers, then his more bizarre claims of insights gained from exotic beings must be viewed with skepticism.  Respected parapsychologist Charles Tart arranged for a test of Monroe's OBE ability which must be judged a failure despite some minor "hits."  Monroe offered a poor description of Tart's home and was mistaken in his description of the number of people present and the activities of Tart and his wife.  

This failure cannot be rationalized on the grounds that astral matter need not coincide with physical reality.   That desperate claim is merely an illicit  ploy to make a belief unfalsifiable in principle.   Besides, ES consistently retrieves verifiable data from the dead and accurately describes dramatic scenes at a distance (e.g. a strangling, a city-wide fire, a secret compartment concealing a lost receipt,
the details of the last communication of the deceased with his loved one, etc.).

Monroe's poor performance in Tart's experiment cannot be divorced from the lunacy of Monroe's reports of past life recall which betray his earlier career as a playwrite.   To advance our knowledge of the afterlife, astral explorers must demonstrate a firm grasp of the line between fantasy and verifiable astral encounters.   Monroe's disregard for this thin line puts him on a par with the flat earthers who claim that the Apollo moon landing was faked in a New Mexico hangar.   Monroe's encounter with an alien W. C. Fields lookalike is no more plausible than a scene in Woody Allen's movie, "Stardust Memories."   As Allen encounters aliens near their saucer, he plaintively asks, "What is the meaning of life?"  They reply, "Tell funnier jokes like in your early movies!"      

Monroe's ignorance of the line between mere imagination and genuine astral perception is particulary devastating to his case because of the demonstrated possibility of shared lucid dreams and because of the ease with which lucid dreams of OBEs (like my own) can be confused with genuine OBEs.  For many on this site, it seems that just about any dream of a contact with a deceased loved one is naively taken as a genuine contact with that loved one's spirit.    

[Matthew:] "...I am not sure why Swedenberg and Monroe/Moen's views of the afterlife is different.  I would say that our conscious mind interprets whatever information is gleaned either in the astral or in focusing our minds.  I don't know that one model is better than the other.  
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For those who are not "stuck" in the Monroe/Moen doctrine of astral "geography", it seems that there can be as many "structures" as there are astral adepts: e.g. one for ES, a different one for Robert Bruce, and still another for Classical Channeling.  I explore ways of integrating these views in reply #17.  On balance, though, the extent of these contradictions makes it hard to explain them in terms of honest differences in astral perception.  It seems more likely that some astral "geographies" are simply based on delusional astral perception.  I prefer ES's "geography" only because his verifications are so dramatically more impressive.

[Matthew:] "Swedenberg's verifications are a bit bizarre, such as telling a man he will die at 4:45 the next morning!!!   And it happened.  That smacks of the power of suggestion, foul play or a type of use of consciousness to a bad end."  
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Your sympathy for Monroe's insights despite his astounding gullibility makes it all the more stunning that you should challenge this impressive confirmation of verifiable information gleaned from the astral realm. The clock stoppage at exactly 4:45 AM finds many modern parallels, including 4 members of my friend Eleanor's family.  Astral sources not only disclose to ES the exact time of Olafsohn's imminent death, but also the date of ES's own death, which ES confirms months in advance in a letter to John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement.  Such prescience occurs more often than one might think.  The father of my Dad's friend Helmut correctly announced the exact date of his death many decades in advance.  

The Monroe-Moen crowd likes to champion the awesome potential of the Hall of Knowledge in Focus 27, and yet, they are stymied in their efforts to produce significant verifications that should be produced through research in this Hall.  They therefore cast doubt on whether their trips to Focus 27 are anything more than a foray into their imagination.  Yet when ES really does tap this unlimited knowledge and even uses it to facilitate scientific breakthroughs,  he arouses suspicion because his astral insights too closely approximate conventional Christianity.   Sigh! What else can you expect from the myopia of the New Age ghetto?

Matthew, you have miscaricatured my critique of Monroe a few times now.   I've always conceded that he has had SOME interesting paranormal experiences that have been verified.   I've reminded my critics several times that I tried to take the TMI Gateway course, but when shut out, I bought the expensive Gateway CDs and have been actively practicing with  them.  None of this conflicts with my considered judgment that Monroe himself was a New Age kook whose chief literary contribution is a demonstration of how easy it is to be deluded in astral exploration.   Of course, that caution falls on deaf ears on a site whose posters typically identify all dreams about the deceased as genuine contact with them.   If such sites cannot upgrade their level of analysis beyond that of the gullible herd, then astral exploration is doomed to be the prerogative of the socially marginal.  I post in this blunt manner because my critiques have convinced more than a few posters.  My E-mails and private messages confirm this.  I just want astral exploration to escape from its New Age ghetto and become a respected discipline open to the voice of common sense and interdisciplary critique.

Don  

Don,

Excellent post, but I'd like to address your points one at a time.  I think you make some valid points, but mix them in with more questionable ideas.

With regard to your first point about retrieving a child molester, and sending him/her directly to Focus 27, personally I think this is not a good example.  For the child molester, it is not a matter of a simple change of a single belief system.  That person would have a deep psychopathology, and with what we have heard of universal and divine laws, one would imagine that the chld molester would have a lot to make up for with prior karmic debt, and evil actions and tendencies.  If your point is that a Monroe/Moen follower would say they can retrieve anybody, then I'd agree with you (that they can't) that this is unlikely in the case of a child molester - at least from what I have read.

For your point about Monroe's failures in the astral plane, when challanged scientifically - again, I think you are correct.  If he failed, he was not in the physical plane out of his body.  However, I have heard and read from astral adepts that many times there are different levels of being out of body.  One phase, supposedly does correspond to the actual physical realm.  However, other travelers have seen what appears to be things present in the physical, and things that are not present.  How to explain this?  Simply that you are basing your evidence on one assumption that may be false:

You believe that while out of body, you should be able to experience our physical plane in a verifiable manner like we do while incarnate.  This assumption may be false.   You can read accounts on many astral websites of people seeing their home, their bedroom, with most of the same furniture, but not exactly the same is in our reality.  You also take it for granted that we all have an astral "double," that truly travels.  This is the theory behind projection, supported by near death experiences.  However if we truly are simply focusing our consciousness/awareness on different levels, it may be that we NEED the idea of an astral double as long as our belief system is that we are a discreet entity.  The truth may be that we have no astral double - that is a creation of the mind to allow our consciousness to explore in a familiar vehicle (this is my personal theory).

In that case, the idea of rational verification of OOBEs may not be possible.  There may be differing accounts because different interpreters are explaining how their conscious minds with all of their own "filters" see beyond the physcial plane.

With regard to Swedenberg.  I merely said that for a seemingly healthy man to jokingly ask ES when he would die, and for ES to say in several hours, and have it come to pass was too ironic to believe.  The power of suggestion, voodoo and the like can be related to situations like this.  Even poisoning.  You must admit, it was a bit odd, and not particularly likely.  

One thing which you should explore more, Don is that ES was tapping into the same universal field that people do who perform remote viewing.  By merging with the universal subconscious, they have access to other places, knowledge (vast knowledge), and events.  A known verified remote viewer,  named Ingo Swann exhibited phenomenal psychic abilities, and was employed by the government for secret remote viewing work.  He did not mention ES's angels, or other systems, yet had access to similar knowledge of events, people and things (I can get you the references for this).  For anyone interested in this, there are books about him at Amazon.com.

I do not believe that I mischaracterized your take on Monroe; certainly it was not my intention.  But TMI relied so much on his input, it is difficult to say their gateway series, hemisync technology, focus levels and the like may have some validity but that he was kooky.  Far more accurate to say that he had some strange astral experiences that don't quite make sense, but established a center for study and a sound system for expanding human consciousness that may contribute to an individual's searches for exploring conscious awareness.

Don, I don't think any of us here are absolutely certain of the afterlife, or other realms of consciousness.  I think many here, myself included enjoy reading your posts because we are constantly trying to put our ideas and beliefs through the grinder and come out with a more open outlook on life and beyond.  

Matthew

Mathew said: we all have an astral "double," that truly travels.  This is the theory behind projection, supported by near death experiences.  However if we truly are simply focusing our consciousness/awareness on different levels, it may be that we NEED the idea of an astral double as long as our belief system is that we are a discreet entity.  The truth may be that we have no astral double - that is a creation of the mind to allow our consciousness to explore in a familiar vehicle (this is my personal theory).
____

I study both out of body and the phase method as well, so don't think it has to be either/or, but can be both.
the truth is we identify with the body. if we were to be just a pin point of awareness, we would at once wish to take on form which is what we have done.
therefore it is also true we have a physical body, an emotional body, and can develop a mental body as we go along, then we might consider to have 7 bodies, insofar as forming around ourselves these bodies which are pure energy constructs..they can be understood as vaporous, electric, fluid like energy constructs. we all know electricity is in the air, although we cannot see it with the physical eye, does not mean electricity is not existant. the aura is also an energy field of color dimension, as there can be color within a thoughtform. we are simplified, a thought of god. our failures here, (self perceived only) would be to to fail to recognize our utter dependence upon relationship with one another to help us define ourselves further. to feel at One with each other than defines as close as possible, next to forgiveness, the action of the glue underlying the universe, PUL, or to say we live and move and have our being, as thought, within All That Is, or as it has been called, that God thing. as fragments of that being, we are that, when we say "I am that I am."
it is the nature of the intellect to divide and separate, while it is your divine nature to pull together within PUL.
in truth we are having an experience to be separate from All That Is, but it is an appearance only for the experience of being human and physical. We are One being and everything is our mind out there with the form it was given.
it's great to be alive!
molesters can be transformed thru grace, if they can see the light, if they can say, no, this what I have done, it is wrong and I will not do this thing anymore. they can allow themselves to take on honor. I have seen this happen, but it is a rare delight.

What if.....................what if the child molester IS paying off a karmic debt. What if the children he/she molests did something horrible to him/her in a past life.  I know this sounds crazy, but paying karmic debt is about BALANCE pure and simple.  (Spirit prompted me to ask this.)

I don't know. I'm just asking. ;-)

Love, Mairlyn

we could think about it that, well, the child appears to owe a debt, but then where does the buck stop? I have been molested, and if I had done this to a child I could not live with myself to think this way. I would rather kill myself if it turned out true.
I think we set ourselves up beforehand though for these experiences on a soul level, perhaps to learn control and also the powerful act of how forgiveness helps us evolve into better people and less of this acting out on the body as in abuse cases. perhaps we all have murdered and exploited each other since time began. perhaps the idea of karmic dept needs to be risen above as no one wants to feel like we are martryed. at least thats not my preference.
I was very happy that the man I talked about was in control now of himself..just like it was my own accomplishment because PUL had occurred which is no longer distorted by lust.
I feel that with children, they are for us to protect from predators or there are instances where the cycle is repeated on down the line. PUL has a way of erasing all dept and make fresh starts for both victim/perpetrator.
love, alysia

Alysia, I don't know where the buck stops. However, remember Neale Donald Walsch's book "Little Soul and The Sun"?  That is what karma is about.


There once was a little soul who knew itself to be the light. This was a new soul, and so, anxious for experience. "I am the light," it said. "I am the light." Yet all the knowing of it and all the saying of it could not substitute for the experience of it. And in the realm from which this soul emerged, there was nothing but the light. Every soul was grand, every soul was magnificent, and every soul shone with the brilliance of MY awesome light. And so the little soul in question was as a candle in the sun. In the midst of the grandest light- of which it was a part- it could not see itself, nor experience itself as Who and What it Really Is.

Now it came to pass, that the little soul yearned and yearned to know itself. And so great was its yearning that "I" one day said, "Do you know little one, what you must do to satisfy this yearning of yours?" "Oh what, God? what? I'll do anything!? The little soul said.

"You must separate yourself from the rest of us," I answered, "and then you must call upon yourself the darkness."

"You may choose to be any Part of God you wish to be," I said to the little soul.

"You are the Absolute Divinity, experiencing Itself. What Aspect of Divinity do you now wish to experience as you?"

"You mean I have a choice," ask the little soul.

And, I answered, "Yes." You may choose to experience any Aspect of Divinity in, as, and through you."

"Okay," said the little soul, then I choose forgiveness. I want to experience my Self as that Aspect of God called Complete Forgiveness."

Well, this created a little challenge, as you can imagine.

There was no one to forgive. All I have created is Perfection and Love

"No one to forgive?" asked the Little Soul, somewhat incredulously.

"No one," I repeated. "Look around you. Do you see any souls less perfect, less wonderful than you?"

As the Little soul twirled around, and was surprised to see himself surrounded by all the souls in heaven. They came from far and wide throughout the Kingdom, because they had heard the little soul was having an extraordinary conversation with God.

"I see none less perfect than I," the Little Soul exclaimed." Who then, shall I have to forgive?"

Just then another soul stepped forward from the crowd. "You may forgive me," said the Friendly Soul.

"For what?" the little soul asked.

"I will come onto your next physical lifetime and do something for you to forgive," replied the Friendly Soul.

"But what? What could you, a being of such Perfect Light, do to make me forgive you?" the Little Soul wanted to know.

"Oh," smiled the Friendly Soul, I'm sure we can think of something."

"But why would you want to do this?" The Little Soul could not figure out why a being of such perfection would want to slow down its vibration so much that it could actually do something "bad."

"Simple," the Friendly Soul explained," I would do it because I love you. You want to experience your Self as Forgiving, don't you? Besides, you have done the same for me."

"I have?" asked the Little Soul.

"Of course. Don't you remember? We've been All Of It, you and I. We've been the Up and the Down of it, and the Left and Right of it. We've been the Here and Now of it, and the Now and Then of it. We've been the Big and Small of it, the Male and Female of it, the Good and Bad of it. We've been the All of it.

"And we've done it by agreement, so that each of us might experience ourselves as The Grandest Part of God. For we have understood that.....

"In the absence of that which You Are Not, that Which You Are, is NOT.

"In the absence of 'cold,' you cannot be 'warm.' In the absence of'sad,' you cannot be 'happy,' without a thing called 'evil,' the experience you call 'good' cannot exist.

If you choose to be a thing, something or someone opposite to that has to show up somewhere in your universe to make that possible."

The Friendly Soul then explained that those people are God's Special Angels, and these conditions God's Gifts.

"I ask only one thing in return, " the Friendly Soul declared.

"Anything! Anything," the Little Soul cried. He was excited now to know that he could experience every DivineAspect of God. He understood, now The Plan.

"In the moment that I strike you and smite you," said the Friendly Soul, " in the moment that I do the worst to you that you could ever imagine---in that self-same moment....remember Who I Really Am."

"Oh, I won't forget!" promised the Little Soul. "I will see you in the perfection with which I hold you now, and I will remember Who You Are, always."

"What is this darkness, o Holy One?" the little soul asked.

"That which you are not," I replied, and the soul understood.

And so this the soul did, removing itself from the All, yea, going even onto another realm.

And in this realm the soul had the power to call onto its experience all sorts of darkness. And this it did.

Yet in the midst of all the darkness did it cry out, "Father, Father, why hast Thou forsaken me?" Even as have you in your blackest times. Yet I have never forsaken you, but stand by you always, ready to remind you of Who You Really Are; ready, always ready, to call you home.

Therefore, be a light unto the darkness, and curse it not.

And forget not Who You Are in the moment of your encirclement by that which you are not. But do you praise to the creation, even as you seek to change it.

And know that what you do in the time of your greatest trial can be your greatest triumph. For the experience you create is a statement of Who You Are-- and Who You Want To Be.

This is taken from Conversations With God....Books 1 & 3 Written by: Neale Donald Walsch

gosh Mairlyn, my post to you got wiped out!
I always feel so silly when that happens!
as if maybe I could just go dig up some other post I've already created, kind of like what Don does, rather than repeating the energy of writing it all down once more, the things we wish to express here...

why are humans so repetitive? gee whiz!!!
blow me down..I'm having so much fun somebody should put a cork on me soon!!!
we do this in conversation as well as when responding here..whatever happened to spontaneity of expression? these are questions perhaps best left unsaid...

what I really want to say to you which i thought I had already expressed and sure some spirit wiped it off cyberspace for a reason..is I'm so glad you posted Neale's piece up here...
its all clear and somehow lovely to read again and again and again and again.... ;D

and Don, human nature is contrary..the more you downgrade one explorer/contributor to consciousness in favor of another, the more it makes people want to look into the downgraded personage to see if you could possibly know what you're talking about.
it's called reverse phychology.
tell us to do something...we were born to do the opposite of what we are told.
of course it's all good...because then we get to come to our own conclusions about who said or did what..and compare our own adventures to those of another.

ooouuuuweeee...I love this board.... http://images.bravenet.com/common/images/smilies/typing.gif

[Matthew:] "For the child molester, it is not a matter of a simple change of a single belief system.  That person would have a deep psychopathology, and with what we have heard of universal and divine laws, one would imagine that the chld molester would have a lot to make up for with prior karmic debt, and evil actions and tendencies.  If your point is that a Monroe/Moen follower would say they can retrieve anybody, then I'd agree with you (that they can't)."
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My example reacts to quotes like this from BM:
"What happens in the Afterlife to people who... commit horrendous acts without remorse?"I'd answer, `Whatever they believe should happen to them... My guess is they'd go to a place...where they would be free to continue choosing to commit their horrendous acts...THEY ARE FREE TO MAKE A NEW CHOICE AND LEAVE THAT HELL AT ANY TIME."

This claim makes sense if one accepts the Moen/ Monroe claim: "There is no good, there is no evil.  There is only experience."  But it is refuted by ES, who has much more impressive verifications; and it is easily lampooned by my child- molester example.

Matthew, I agree with your response, except for the allusion to karma, which presupposes reincarnation.  The child molester has a complex psychopathology which cannot be reduced to a single desire that must be replaced.   The energetic make-up of his personality must be transformed before he can "ascend" to a "higher plane."   The process by which this transformation is achieved is no doubt subtle and profound--too much so to be spontaneously contrived by the astral explorer.   The failure of retrieval reports to shed light on this process is consistent with the fact that these tales are unwittingly invented by limited imaginations.  Our spontaneous creativity is rarely up the task of transcending cliche-infested story lines.

Classical Channeling has one possible explanation for such a transformation.  In the transition from "the illusion of summerland" to "the first heaven", the soul experiences "the Judgment."  This involves a past life review that includes the emotional impact of that soul's behavior upon his victims.  Of course, NDEs suggest the contrary view that the past life review takes place earlier in the dying process.  But surely the "summerland" resident must make some progress before he is ready for "the Judgment."   Upgraded retrieval mothods might help us solve this hopeless puzzle.

In any case, I think Bruce Moen is wrong: an untransformed child molester can't simply choose to relocate to a loving heaven.  If the principle like attracts like applies to astral planes, he could not tolerate the company of saints for long in a realm where communication is telepathic and no thoughts can be concealed.    He must first have made the requisite progress towards PUL.   The very notion of PUL progress implies spiritual laws that presuppose the concept of right and wrong.    

If we intrude karma into this discussion, then the payment of karmic debt is irrelevant to retrievals unless this "payment" is accompanied by an upgrade in the molester's energetic make-up.  Of course, I am using metaphorical New Age jargon here, which can no doubt be upgraded.  

[Matthew:] "One phase supposedly does correspond to the actual physical realm.  However, other travelers have seen what appears to be things present in the physical, and things that are not present.  How to explain this?"
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ES gains sufficient astral clarity to consistenty return with the requisite verifications.    The most rational explanation for "flawed duplicates" is lucid dream creation.  One of my lucid dreams was hysterical.  I woke up, took care of the 3 Ss, dressed and drove to the university.  When my car reached the 12th St. light, a pink elephant floated by my windshield.  It was then that I realized I was just dreaming.  But in the same dream, I again experienced the same sequence.  The third time, the pink elephant failed to show up at the 12th St. light.  It was only then that I realized that THIS TIME I was truly awake!    

[Matthew:] "I have heard and read from astral adepts that many times there are different levels of being out of body."
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The identification of such levels might shed light on the devastating contradictions that emerge from the claims of these adepts.  Perhaps, there are as yet unidentified intermediate levels between the lucid dream state and the OBE state.  

On TV afew years ago, a government official trashed the military's use of remote viewers for spying.  So I've neglected that form of astral exploration.  I'm familiar with Ingo Swann and would like to read his book some time.

As for Monroe, remember, I have no complaints about his inclusion of "kooky" experiences in his book.  My complaint is that he seems incapable or unwilling to assess the fine line between genuine astral contact and mere imagination.  So I trust very few of his claims about astral insights, especially since they are routinely rufuted by a far more credible ES.

Don

The distinction between lucid dreams and OBEs or phasing must address innocent questions: e.g.
(1) Suppose I seem to be out-of-my body in my house.  What criteria should I used to distinguish this OBE state from merely having a lucid dream about wandering around my house?
(2) If shared dreams are possible through lucid dreaming, how can we discern the difference between the resulting verifications of this fact and verifications achieved through Partnered OBE Exploration?

(3) Is there a difference between waking OBEs and sleeping OBEs with respect to lucidity, recall, and the possibility of high-quality verifications?  Is this difference a key to distinguishing the lucid dream state from the genuine OBE or phasing state?

Don

Don

(1)  I have found that during "standard" OBEs, my hands, arms, and body usually disintegrate upon observation of them.  This normally does not occur during lucid dreams.  This is common among other projectors as well.  Besides that, lucidity levels are really no different- one is capable of having extremely high lucidity in both types of experiences, far higher than that of C1 consciousness.  The feeling of my consciousness, my energy, is likewise very similar in both.  I believe there is not a huge difference between these two types of experiences.  Both are projections of consciousness into nonphysical realms, and both can take place in the astral realms and in more personal, subjective levels as well.

(2)  Perhaps the real question is, why does one need to discern?  If verifications occur, then obviously the experience is real, on whatever level that happens to be.  If we keep in mind that OBEs are not much different than lucid dreams, perhaps only differing in the type of projected energy body one's consciousness creates, then it becomes clear that both methods of exploring are equally valid.

(3) Not sure what you mean by waking and sleeping OBEs.  Perhaps OBEs induced from the awake state and OBEs where one awakens during it?  In my experience there is no difference.  I believe that many dreams actually occur in the astral realms- maybe all of them.  If this is the case, then a lucid dream is no different from an OBE, except in the method of acheiving one's nonphysical awareness.  Having had so many of each type of experience, it is clear to me that this is the case.  My inner self has given me this knowledge- verifications are not neccessary when one is nonphysically aware and in tune with the HS.

Personally I find NDE's OBE's completely inconclusive. Further, I feel that supposed OBE's are in fact just random thoughts popping in to the brain while it is active. I do not think we can trust and NDE unless the person is truely dead... for like... hours. If you can die for several hours / days and THEN come back to tell about it.... I may believe you.

NDE's cannot be used to prove the afterlife to anyone. It's gonna take vigorous spiritual medium testing to prove to oneself in the afterlife. 

That's very nice, Terethian.  Now why don't you actually read the thread and relate your skepticism to the arguments pro and con contained in it.  That way, you might actually contribute meaningfully to the discussion.

Don

Incredible summative post, Don.  I'm looking forward to hearing what you come up with, and are sorry (in a way) to hear that you will be gone for a while to adventure on your own.  Take care, and please continue posting if you so change your mind.

Given this site's newbies and the drift of the issues being raised, this assessment of OBEs or phasing might prove useful to some posters.  But let me add this caveat: Bruce's technique of Focused Imagination seeks out verifications, some of which Bruce documents in his books.  Here is my issue about his method: How can we know whether what starts in the imagination leaves the imagination and taps spiritual planes and realities?  If the answer involves verifications, I  then ask: how do such verifications differ from esp phenomena related to dreams (lucid or otherwise)?  Perhaps Bruce might reply: "Don, I have had many lucid dreams and the real thing has a different qualitative feel."  I can't rule that out, but must confess that I did not experience this unique qualitative feel during my own apparent OBEs and retrrieval.  But if verifications were routine rather than sporadic (unlike lucid dreams), then genuine contact with spirit beings and realms might be established.  I just keep hoping for a breakthrough, or at least, an adept as routinely gifted as Swedenborg.

Don

Don,

I see you bumped one of your old threads again.  Your self-proclaimed lack of a certain "feel" to your OBEs, retrievals, and lucid dreams might be due to the fact that you're not as open as you could and should be.  You do hold quite a high bar for evidence, proof, and verification, even giving up personal merit and pride in satisfying your own curiosity in exchange for constantly hailing and praising Swedenborg for his accomplishments. 

If you were to ask Swedenborg how happy he is for your praise of his life's work, what do you think he'd say?  What if his response was, "Well Don, I really appreciate it, but I'd be more happy if you were able to accomplish your own feats so that you can finally really feel satisfied."?

Every time I read you telling of your disappointment in your own experiences, it just makes me wish you'd keep trying and go that extra distance.  But you seem to have a blockage that you cannot break down.  Bruce has great outlines for working through blockages.  Have you actually tried those techniques to see what you can discover is keeping you from going further in your explorations?  Have you ever given Bruce's Guidebook and CD's a try? 

Here's a tip from me.  I don't need the kind of verification and proof and evidence that you and a certain group of others here on the board continually talk about over and over.  The reason being, I've gotten over that hangup long ago and it propelled my ability to have the most amazing spiritual experiences and explorations that I never used to think were even possible.  I'm also not out to prove anything to anyone else, which is another reason I'm not hung up, stuck, dissatisfied, and unable to accomplish a certain feeling that's solely unique to real OBEs, retrievals, and nonphysical explorations.  Yes, I've had genuine contact with enough proof to myself that allows me to continue to do so.  Just once I'd like to see you open yourself up to having the same and then see you happily share and brag about it.  I think it would change your attitude completely. 

The questions you pose about distinguishing OBE states and lucid dreams is on the wrong track.  If you want to really be scientific and find answers to your questions, then you should take the proper test to be in the right position to find those answers.  I think you'd be surprised that instead of finding the answers you're looking for, you'll discover that you were asking the wrong questions to begin with. 

You might not like what I'm saying here, but I assure you I'm being sincere.  I used to be where you are.  I found a way to get past my own ego and blockages.  I found out I was asking the wrong questions too.  I found out I had the wrong focus. 

Here's another pointer I can give you.  "Going out of body" isn't a matter of going from your body to some place outside of your body.  It isn't going from the physical to a spiritual realm or nonphysical place.  It isn't a matter of point A being physical reality and point B being some real level of reality that can only be proven real if there is a distinguishable measurable amount of proof. 

Try to look at it this way instead.  OBEs, lucid dreams, retrievals, afterlife contact and exploration....they are all forms of traveling within levels of consciousness.  You can have an OBE in which you're level of consciousness is "lower" than another or "higher" than another level of consciousness.  As you can guess, different levels of consciousness allow for different kinds of experiences. 

One cannot fathom a higher level of consciousness unless and until one actually achieves that level of consciousness.  That "unique qualitative feel" that you have said you did not experience in your own apparent OBEs and retrieval has to do with level of consciousness....not with reality, proof, or routine verifications. 

Simply put, it's a catch-22.  In order to achieve such a state, you have to be open to and able to imagine such a state.  And once you do so, you won't be looking for the kind of proof and verification that you're looking for now, on the level of consciousness you're focused on now.  Once your focus changes, everything else changes too.  Including the questions and proof you're asking and looking for right now.   

The catch-22 for you is that you want to "find" that state while remaning in the same level of consciousness you're in normally.  You want proof of it before experiencing it.  It doesn't work that way.   

[Vicky:] You do hold quite a high bar for evidence, proof, and verification, even giving up personal merit and pride in satisfying your own curiosity in exchange for constantly hailing and praising Swedenborg for his accomplishments. 

In many ways, I consider Swedenborg too arrogant and close-minded to serve as a source of spiritual truth.  His teaching about the meaning of Scripture is too absurd to merit discussion and is not taken seriously by modern bibilcal scholars.  But I still consider him the greatest astraL adept ever.  No modern adept can even remotely approach the quality and frequency of his verifications, despite the times he is duped.  For me, then, he sets the bar by which the legitimacy of astral claims can be measured.  And in many ways, he is willing, through further astral exploration, to challenge cherished truths that he astrally discovers (like past life memories).  And he has no axe to grind with competing New Agers.  They didn't exist in his era. 

[Vicky:] If you were to ask Swedenborg how happy he is for your praise of his life's work, what do you think he'd say?  What if his response was, "Well Don, I really appreciate it, but I'd be more happy if you were able to accomplish your own feats so that you can finally really feel satisfied."?

Swedenborg disciouraged others from exploring astral realms on their own.  He felt that the dangers of deceptive spirits were too great for safe exploration and discovery of metaphysical truths.  Even he was deceived by spirits into o believing that some of out planets were populated by intelligent life. 

Don

  Very well said Vicky.

wrote on Jan 14^th, 2013 at 7:32pm:

Very well said Vicky.

Thank you Justin.