Rondele,

I think your questions imply an excellent grasp of the issues.  Let me briefly respond to some of your points.   Consider the case of two of the most gifted mediums of the 20th century: Leonore Piper and Blanche Cooper.  Both had the ability to transmit stunning verifiable information about the drop-in communcators who claimed to speak through them.   Piper's performance was made possible by a French spirit control named Jean Scliville Phinuit.   Phinuit eventually provided enough details about his past earthly life as a doctor that his claims could be decisively tested.  It was proven that he was not who he claimed to be.  Blanche Cooper channeled Gordon Davis, a drop-in communicator who "proved" his identity by his characteristic jargon and by recounting amazingly accurate details well known to the sitter, Sam Soal.
Yet Soal later discovered that Davis was alive all the while and knew nothiing about the seance.  Significantly, Soal had been wrongly told that Davis was dead!  Cooper apparently tuned into this misperception in her recreation of Davis's persona.

I have posted these type of refutations of channeling before, but no one on this site seems willing or able to take this seriously.   Am I asking them to reject all channeling?  No, in fact, in rare instances, I suspect that channeling can provide genuine contact with the dead.   Of course, many posters here deem me a trouble-maker for posting such  refutations and imagine that I take sadistic delight in tweaking their belief system.   That reacton is all-too-human, but  they are mistaken.   In my past role as Theology professor and minister, many people have looked to me for spiritual guidance.  I hate playing God and often feel as if I'm not really up to the task.  I simply want with all my heart to know which paths to afterlife exploration are the most evidential, which are generally unreliable, and which are of unknown value, but may have potential.

Your concern that astral projection is too vulnerable to deceptive spirits to be advisable is very legitimate.   In my case, I feel like a soldier who must walk the streets of Ramadi to ensure that it is safe for those I presume to advise.   I know there is a risk, but I feel obligated to take that risk given the potential for a life-changing payoff for those I want to encourage.  Still, I realize that my skepticism hampers my progress.

I do believe in the gift of discernment.  But I also think that few people have this gift.  It must be honed in the school of hard knocks.  It can only be developed by those who are willing to press rhrough their own wishful thinking and deeply examine the merits of all potentially viable methods and truth claims.   One must regularly play Devil's Advocate with oneself.  In other words, one must often assume for the sake of argument that one is fundamentally deluded and then ask how one could possibly verify that insight.   This ruthless self-examination can be painful.  I complain about the ghetto mentality of many on this site.   But I don't blame them for this.  I could level the same criticism at many church people.   For the development of reliable spiritual discernment, it is crucial that we immerse ourselves in the case for alternative belief systems that most threaten us.  Otherwise, we risk getting "stuck" in a cultic mentality.  

Don

Blink,

i agree with your point about being willng to experience  "delusion after delusion."   Awareness of the counterfeit can refine one's discernment about real astral exploration.  For example, I don't mind that Robert Monroe includes experiences in his books which seem absurd to me.  What I object to is his failure to even address the credibility problems.  In fact, I wish that astral adepts would tell us more about their instructive failures in astral projection. This might help me understand why my own apparent OBEs were in fact bogus and how I might learn from this to experience the real thing.   

Let me give you an analogy.  If I selectively shared my experiences of miracles and answered prayer, I could make myself sound like Jesus.   But this would mask the fact that I'm often discouraged in my faith.  Sometimes, when I pray for people on the brink of death, they are healed of their condition, only to die of  something else a year later.  I can rationalize this by saying their time was simply up and God answered my prayer by giving them a year of grace to complete their relationships with their loved ones.  But I don't know if this is correct.   Some of my paranormal experiences make great sense as divine guidance, but others are highly ambiguous or confusing.   If I keep my disturbing experiences from those I wish to inspire, I run the risk of plunging them into the despair of similarly ambiguous experiences.  They might ask themselves, "Why can't I be like Don?  He never seems to have these problems."  If I at least share the vexing with the inspiring, those I influence might take comfort that the spiritual quest can be mined with all sorts of potholes.  This insight might help them bow before the many mysteries and press on undaunted.  Besides, in a worst case scenario, even if astral exploration or contact was totally bogus, it would still be worth exploring as an unknown state of consciouness.

Don

I absolutely agree with your reply, Don.

However, I try not to use the word "failure" when I think about exploration.  Exploration can be a long journey.  We may retrace our steps and choose new paths, and each small step may take us toward a new "extrasensory" perception and hone our skills in ways we don't even understand during our initial experiences.  I want to remain open to that kind of learning for my entire life. 

It is easy for me to "shut down" if I imagine failure.  Therefore, I cannot make it that important to myself.  It is best if I just consider myself lucky to be on the voyage, and take from it whatever it offers.

After all, they say that the best travelers are not so much concerned with the destination -- they just enjoy the journey.  This is so very true, even if we don't enjoy every second.  That's kind of unrealistic anyway. 

Through this kind of exploration I am beginning to be able to just throw some things in a bag and get in the car and go, rather than plan and detail every moment of a "journey," in the astral or otherwise.  This letting go is a good skill to have, and has repercussions in everyday life.

And of course, giving and receiving feedback here on the forum is always a complimentary method of study.

blink

Bob,
     You said,
"I would point out that the gift of Discerment is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and he gives it to whom He wishes. 1 Corinthians Chap 12, esp vs 10. It says nothing about it being having to be honed or the school of hard knocks, or how widespread that gift is.  That's from the Christian perspective from which you (and I) borrow heavily."

Speaking for myself, I can only assume that discernment is a gift available to all of us unless proven otherwise, and I would also assume that to attain reliable, consistent results anyone would be best served to practice it just like any other skill or "art." 

When walking along the street one person will see only a street and another will see all manner of interesting things.  We can train the eye to look and the ear to hear.  I think we can train our "inner" eye to look and our "inner" ear to hear, and that is what this site is all about, at least when we focus on that. 

blink

Well said, blink. You just gave a good description of the gift of wisdom, which, from Paul's  perspective, means "divine revelation gained from hard experience, and hence, by trial and error.  Paul never intended his list of spiritual gifts to be understood in a mutually exclusive way.  He tells us to "eagerly strive" for spiritual gifts, but doesn't tell us how.   Modern technologies like Hemi-Sync might be a legitimate application of his advice.

But let me share a test case for discernment and see how my readers react.  I strongly believe in retrievals from a biblical perspective.  But I'm skeptical of most of the examples posted on this site.   Let me share my process of discernment on this issue.  First, I performed a retrieval of an ex-girlfriend who committed suicide.  It was a vivid and powerful emotional experience.  But when I learned how to have lucid dreams, these were clearly fictional and yet just as real as my retrieval dream.  

With that in mind, I read the reports on this site and elsewhere.  I asked myself what a prudent discarnate person might do to make retrievals successful and to encourage astral projectors to perform them.  Of course, I must assume that this helper is as rational now as he was while alive on earth.   I then formulate a procedure that goes something like this:

The helper briefs the apprentice retriever on the target for retrieval.  The retriever is briefed on the type of hollow heaven or hell that currently holds the target.  Then the helper discusses the process by which the target's energetics have been changed to the point that he is ready to relocate to Focus 27 or elsewhere.   With that in mind, the retriever is better equipped to craft or follow a strategy.  At some point during the retrieval, the retriever is briefed on who the target is--i. e. when and where he died, his name and address, etc.  With that information the retriever is motivated to perform more retrievals and to promote this act of mercy among skeptical incarnate people.   After the retrieval, the retriever is shown or informed about the new situation in which the target will find himself.  

Of course, nothing like this ever seems to happen.  The question is why not.   Most of us are not as bright or lucid in our dreams as we are during waking consciousness.   The other characters in our dreams are similarly rather one-dimensional. If I try to deliver a speech to an audience in my dreams, it is much harder to keep it coherent and rational for an extended period of time.   I suspect that many retrievers would have asked the questions conducive to verification if they had been more lucid during the retrieval.  Their failure to do so suggests that, even when they performed a waking retrieval. their state of consciousness was not much more advanced than their normal dream state.  By contrast, when Swedenborg visited the astral planes, he often set the agenda for much of what happened.

Of course, I'm not saying that the course of a retrieval should precisely follow my agenda.  But my reading of online retrievals creates the impression that the guides could care less whether their pupils can verify their retrievals for themselves or for a skeptical public.  If for some reason, it were important not to provide such  verification, then I'd expect the guides to explain why this is so.  

At this point, Swedenborg seems crucial to me.   He could regularly bring back detailed verifications from the newly dead he contacted.   If he could do it, why not modern retrievers?  Two explanations seem most likely: either his astral visits were  genuine and modern visits usually are not OR explorers enter the astral realm with different levels of consciousness that ordinarily are not deep enough to allow the extended conversations that ES was able to conduct with spirits.  My own retrieval of Janet now seems bogus, but I could change my mind if future retrieval attempts were accompanied by modest verifications.   I'm very skeptical but remain open.

Don

If Emanuel Swedenborg [ES] can easily and routinely contact the recently deceased, then they should be able to routinely contact us.  In fact, this rarely happens. How can this be explained without unsubstantiated and implausible speculations?  Let me sum up 4 of the key possibilities raised in this thread and the questions I have about these issues.  I would appreciate any new reflections you have on (1)-(4).

(1) Very few deceased loved ones are spiritually evolved enough to navigate back and forth to us and to communicate in an unmistakable and verifiable way.
To this I reply, aren't there astral schools to train new arrivals in the art of after-death contact?  The evidence suggests that the longer the period since death, the harder contact is.  But why don't more spirits contact us in the first months after death?  And what evidence is there that deceased spirits who do contact us are unusally gifted spiritually?

(2) Their memory of us has been erased for their own good.  But even ES insists that the Lord restores their earth memories to help them further reflect on the life lessons.   

(3) Their priorities change in the afterlife.  They now realize that it is not in the best interest of their loved ones to receive contact from beyond the grave.  To this I ask, why not?  I have seen how comforting and life-changing such contacts can be. 

(4) Our loved ones don't contact us becuase they realize how vulnerable we are to spirit impersonators and they don't want to set us up for dangerous deception as we seek further contacts with loved ones.  To this I ask, couldn't they teach us how to protect ourselves and how to detect their genuine presence? 

Don

How do we know that our loved ones don't try and contact us, but for some reason or another we don't perceive them (e.g. blocked by grief emotion ) ?