DocM
|
In some NDEs, the person describes a quiet peaceful period following death where everything is extremely clear. The person often describes seeing "much better" than they did while alive, hearing with a broadened ability; all sensations seem improved along with a profound state of calm and joy. This is often the state in which people in operating or emergency rooms hear conversations next door, or while they are clinically dead, watching their bodies - they often report exact conversations or see things they simply couldn't have seen while dead.......This state is very much like what is described in the Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of the Dead) as the initial state of clarity where, if properly recognized can lead a person to nirvana. If not recognized, often the person is plagued with illusions which are desire based, and lead him/her back to rebirth - in the Tibetan system of thought.
Traveling out of body and phasing are sometimes described as being clear experiences like the above NDEs, and sometimes they are not. Monroe was tested by several people to visit them while OOB, and while he had several "hits," (verifications), there were many misses as well. This begs the question "why did he miss?" Monroe described one of the confounding issues and possibly an answer to the question, as being due to which locale he would go to OOB. Locale I, was much like real time earth and he could view people there.
Local II was an astral level of mind, which included Hells, and early heavens. As Blackmore describes it in her biography of RAM:
"Locale 2 is supposed to be a world of thought, and quite separate from the physical, but it has many of the features of the physical. Entities living there, who were once in the physical world, recreate some of their familiar environment, or create for themselves things they liked before. In addition, Monroe speculates, higher entities may create a more familiar environment for the benefit of 'new-comers' arriving after death. He describes some areas as 'closer' to the physical and unpleasant to pass through, while the 'further' places are better. In traditional occult lore these would be referred to as the lower and higher astral planes. By long experimentation Monroe learned how to navigate them, and on the way he fought hostile creatures, willingly and unwillingly indulged in sexual adventures, and was guided by the 'Helpers'. It is to this Locale that Monroe believes all people may go sometimes during sleep."
So if Monroe tried to test out his OOBE while trying to visit OOB with a friend or colleague and tried to visit someone while out of body, and then the reports didn't match up as to what the person was doing in the physical world, the answer could be that he was in Locale II, but not I. However, Monroe left his body on thousands of explorations. So it is unclear why the verifications in Locale One weren't more predictable or reproducible.
We also see this with other techniques such as phasing, and remote viewing. There are hits and misses. In remote viewing, one explanation is that when an object is viewed, it is being viewed independent of time. Thus, if things are seen at the location, that are not truly there, they may have been present a century before or after the time period of the remote viewer. At least that is one explanation put forward. Another explanation is that the remote viewer misinterprets the symbolic representation from the information that is coming in. Thus a curved structure meant to represent a bridge is seen instead as a mountain, etc.
So the question is, when is there crystal clarity and when are our visions pure fantasy? Much exploration is done in the hypnagogic state between sleep and wakefulness. This is a very shady/tricky area to begin with.
Monroe could induce OOBE almost at will, and probably did so many thousands of times. Cayce could do this as well. Robert Bruce must have had thousands of such journeys. Yet what percent of these journeys were contact with other minds and places, and what portion were lucid dreams or fantasies? If we can learn to access places like Focus 27 in a reproducible fashion, the coroborating data about deceased loved ones and future post mortem existence would be mind blowing.
What accounts for the episodes of crystal clear journeys with verifications experienced by some, and then, in similar settings the fantasies and bizarre information brought back by other voyages? Is it just "the interpretor" phenomenon? Is it the M band interference Bruce writes of, that muddles our interpretation of things? And why are our most experienced explorers prone to as many "misses" as "hits?"
Matthew
|