Neil:

A lot of people have had bad results with Ouija boards.

One time I had an out of body experience.  I floated above a dark cloudy area (not really clouds) that was a lower realm. I felt perfectly safe because I understood that the spirits within couldn't make their way out of the realm without asking for help from light beings. This was an automatic knowing. As soon as the experience ended the thought came to me that sometimes spirits find their way out of this realm when people mess around with Ouija boards.

If you want to make contact with spirits, there has got to be a better way. I believe it isn't good to be so insistent about doing so, that one ends up messing around with an Ouija board. If contact with friendly spirit beings is meant to happen, it will happen.

Hi Neil, Interesting that you can get results with your improvised gadget.

As Rec mentions, you can get into all manner of interesting places that way. He drifts out there in samadhi and retains control because of his preparation. While Prat seems to still be fearful that something might come out and bite him. (That's not really all that funny - I've gotten a few nibbles myself from sticking my nose where it ought not be.)

One of the theories about OuiJa boards is that we all are subconsciously tapped into the great stream of spiritual Mind and its activities - and that we are actually just images of that Mind as it regards itself. So when you do the OuiJa thing you are reflecting your spiritual awareness, even if you are unaware of it.

Rec evidently uses a trance state (samadhi) which incorporates both spiritual preparation (some people use a white light, some use prayer, some do other stuff) and a sense of personal security as a valid person. That seems to be about all that's needed to be safe.

Whether you can get anything useful seems to be a matter of what you can tune into, and not so much about how you express it. Bruce is evidently working on a psychic telephone idea. I imagine that it will eventually turn out to be a similar gizmo, requiring our participation in forming messages, but providing a good focal point through which to reflect whatever it is that we respond to. At the the other extreme, there are a lot of people who just have intuitive hunches, as well as those who sense where the information  comes from more clearly, like Juditha.

I wonder how it might work if you were to start out wth a few moments of dedication and meditation, and then proceed blindfolded.

dave

Check out Bruce's writings on soul retrieval - aside from doing good for the souls, it's a direct contact approach. Once the door is opened you can manipulate what to do with the experience.

d

Hi Neil-
I think Don is making a valid point here, and one that I have had reason to appreciate in my own life. If we are not better grounded and regulated within ourselves than in our fear of the unknown, we let ourselves in for all manner of grief when we open door to other levels of reality. As one of my teachers used to put it, "You pry the window open, and can't really close it, so then flies can come in."

The first requirement for any kind of psychic investigation would appear to be grounding that will not be shaken when some horriffic event occurs. However, this is no different from the same need for grounding that we have in everyday life when we face new adventures. Over the years that I've been doing therapy I've noticed that a part of the problems I encounter are issues based on changes that occur to people who have no idea about how to reset their personal systems so that they can regain equilibrium.

Oneof the reasons to study metaphysics until we know who and what we are is that when our coping apparatus is threatened by unexpected events, we can stop, regroup, focus on the bases for our existence, recover our sense of personal validity, and then resume whatever life is demanding of us. This ability to refer to some absolute external fact and to derive our own nature from it is the essence of being gounded. The Egyptians had a term "justification"  by which they evidently means something of the same sort.

While few people are likely to be bothered by spooks and bizarre entities when they have cnfidence in the solidity of their own existence, that faith is easily eroded. The simplest way to erode faith in one's existence is to commit some hideous act upon our neighbors - like murdering a few people, although there are lots of other options. This leaves us with a basic awareness that whatever has been gained through the misdeed is unstable, resented by God, or hated by the Cosmic Consciousness, or whatever the details seem to be. This is what the demonic and wrathful entities in the Bardo Thodol are bringing us. And they follow up by hacking and chopping until those parts are gone. It's like pruning the dead wood off a tree - good if you want it, but painful if you don't.

A very simple basis for grounding ourselves, at least in my own opinion,  is to understand the basic sequence of events by which we have arrived at our present status. In the Beginning, there is nothing, formless and void, no size, no shapem no taste, no color. That is the state of Pure Potentiality, and is the essential nature of the universally valid Uncaused Cause from which everything has emerged. The emergence can be likened to the Big Bang, or any ther systematic production of people from this original state. And we can add in the messages of all the saints and avatars of all religions over all time, whose message is essentially a single one, that God is One, and we are It in a very realistic manner. Thus, if we are willing to accept the idea of nothingness, then we are led to God as the potentiality for everything else, and from that point, we exist regardless of conditions involving the spooks or whatever is escaping from our psychic trap.

For those misdeeds of which we become aware, the solution is quite simply to abandon the fruits of illicit actions, handle damage to the best of our ability, and to rededicate ourselves to service of God and the rest of the universe. The Catholic sacrament of Confession is essentially the same idea, as is a lot of psychotherapeutic strategy. The story of the Prodigal Son is a good reference in such cases.

Having said all that, and pointed out all the scary stuff that might come from being a neurotic sinner, once we find ourselves and can sense our own validity, there is nothing to fear. Like not putting fingers into a flame, we avoid inviting malicious beasties into our heads, but aside from that, even if they came through, none of them want to hang out in a world in which everything can be reduced to emptiness - that's what they're afraid of - existential dread of annihilation. (And it's the same fear we would feel if we were clanking around in the bardos facing the wrathful spirits there.) Ultimately, it's not much different from Plato's remark, "No harm comes to a good man," and for the rest of the universe - look out!

On that basis, I feel that if you want to protect yourself, grounding in your own existence and the ability to recognize whatever you discover as a manifestation of God should be quite enough. However, I'd also be interested in learning Juditha's feelings here, since she does this kind of thing routinely.

dave