He claims to have traveled outside his body to bring back art… and much more |297|

Maybe folks can answer a couple of questions I have:

I've read the transcript of the interview and some of Jurgen's posts on facebook and I am not sure how he goes out of the body. Is it through meditation or via lucid dreaming while he is sleeping? I thought he wrote he goes out of the body in normal consciousness during meditation and that is why he believes his experiences are not fantasy, why he believes his experiences produce reliable information about the afterlife. So I am confused that now the experiences are being called lucid dreams.

I've had a few lucid dreams, but I am by no means an expert. In my experiences I realized I was dreaming and tried to "dream what I wanted to dream" and it worked to some extent. But I never felt it was anything other than fantasy like a daydream, a super-duper vivid realistic daydream, but fantasy nonetheless. I didn't think the lucid dreams were "real" in the same way I know a day dream is not real. It was something I created. So why do folks think lucid dreams are anything more than fantasy within one's skull. Why do folks think they produce reliable information about the afterlife? I understand that in the afterlife you create with the mind, and the line between subjective and objective is not like it is in the physical realm, but do you think the entire afterlife is 100% fantasy with each person having their own separate reality? As far as I know the frequency of veridical information is no different during lucid dreams than normal dreams - very low for most people, but not zero for many people, and high for a few individuals. Is there evidence contradicting that?
 
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Maybe folks can answer a couple of questions I have: I've read the transcript of the interview and some of Jurgen's posts on facebook and I am not sure how he goes out of the body. Is it through meditation or via lucid dreaming while he is sleeping?

I watched a video of him posted here by someone (probably K9) where he described his process. It went something like this... meditate before going to bed. Sleep for a few hours. Wake up at 4 AM and meditate for a while then gradually drift into lucid sleep for an hour or so before getting up and recording his dream memories.
 
As far as I know the frequency of veridical information is no different during lucid dreams than normal dreams - very low for most people, but not zero for many people, and high for a few individuals.

If anyone is interested here are some cases of dreamers who routinely produce veridical information:

NDE Implications from a Group of Spontaneous Long-Distance Veridical OBEs ANDREW PAQUETTE
http://www.newdualism.org/nde-papers/Paquette/Paquette-Journal of Scientific Exploration_2012-26-791-824-1.pdf

Exploratory Blinded Field Experiment Evaluating Purported Precognitive Dreams in a Highly Skilled Subject: Possible Spiritual Mediation?
Gary E. Schwartz, Ph.D.
http://www.drgaryschwartz.com/files...PS_12_23_10_with_journal_cover_pdf_backup.pdf

150. Dream Interpretation a Spiritual Journey Says Lucid Dream Expert Robert Waggoner
http://www.skeptiko.com/150-dream-i...rney-says-lucid-dream-expert-robert-waggoner/

An Experiment With Time by J. W. Dunne
https://archive.org/details/AnExperimentWithTime

How to have precognitive dreams:
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2012/04/keeping-dream-log-as-means-of-having.html
 
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Hi folks, I feel when Alex interviewed me I may have jumped in too quickly into the very deep end. Perhaps I should have explained briefly what an OBE state entails. Those, who have read my books won't need an explanation I hope, but to put it in a nutshell an Out-of-Body experience feels as real and as solid as an experience in physical waking reality. Imagine getting out of one room and entering another room in your house. Sometimes, on return from an OBE, there may not even be a break in consciousness, it can go from awake to awake. This doesn't work the same way when entering OBEs. There can be a great number of different ways of how this is accomplished. My most common experiences happened spontaneously, sometimes after posting an intend and then leaving it to deeper levels of consciousness to create the conditions in which I became aware.

I only really ever induced OBEs intentionally at the beginning of my journey in the seventies. Despite the fact that OBEs are probably the most fascinating thing in human consciousness, after the first year or so of deliberately pursuing OBEs my meditation practice took superiority, especially as I discovered, at least for myself, that surrendering to consciousness had much deeper transformative effects. I trusted consciousness in supplying OBEs spontaneously, but was hardly bothered if they didn't turn up. I sometimes went for months without even thinking about or experiencing them, but when they materialised they often started during the dream state in the morning, sometimes when going back to bed after one or two hours of early morning meditation. This process of WBTB (Wake-Back To Bed) is a common technique used by many lucid dreamers and often works because the induction of lucidity is left in the hands of deeper consciousness. The other way of spontaneous induction in my case happened during deep meditation, often preceded by a momentary loss of awareness or a deep trance state which suddenly jolted me into full awareness, but on another dimensional level. Other times by entering a hypnogicic state in which a scenery arose which became increasingly real until awareness flipped into the scenery and made it real. For example in a strange intermediate state of consciousness I could see myself walking down a country lane, when without warning the scene became 3D full waking reality as I kept marching along in full waking awareness.

My personal acquired skill consisted of hanging on to this state of awareness and not letting it go. The daily practice of deep meditation was of considerable value in this. This power of focus also allowed me to transform a lucid dream into an OBE, often simply by focusing on my hands or the ground in front of me. A lucid dream is basically a dream being fed with information from your personal subconscious field, which allows you to do anything you fancy. But I transformed the "dream" into a waking experience in an alternate reality which you then can no longer manipulate in the same way as you can a lucid dream. It is like waking up in bed in the morning, except in this case, waking from a lucid dream and entering an alternate non-physical reality, which is as solid and stable as physical reality.

Holding on to waking awareness is vital. People not practiced in maintaining focus brought about by the regular practice of meditation may easily slip back into a dream, wake up proper or be lured into a subconscious dream projection, which in my books I referred to as fantasy overlays. We no longer have full control over the experience and frequently wake up completely in physical reality as a result. Often OBEs are short because of this. In my case I was often able to make them last as long as I felt there was enough information to be harvested. My longest excursion lasted over six hours.

This can be likened to a higher state of deep meditation where you enter a state of Samadhi. Once entered into this state the feeling is that you can simply stay there indefinitely and I often found that several hours had passed when opening my eyes deciding to rejoin the world. In this state of Samadhi it is easy to understand why some Tibetan monks have little problem staying in it for days or even weeks at a time. I have only stayed a few hours at the most. These deep out of body states can feel the same and Tibetan monks may well use their states to travel the inner dimensions. You become so familiarised with this state that it is indistinguishable from waking reality. On some occasions I even seriously considered whether I may have died and was now a permanent member of the Dead.

The reason I paid little attention to achieving OBEs was because they only offered one aspect of the different modes of consciousness and meditation offered much greater rewards in term of the deep inner serenity, where consciousness resided in its own natural environment. On occasion it offered entry into really sublime new realities which I described in my latest book "Vistas of Infinity".

When consciousness decided to take my awareness into a different reality this way I tended to pay attention to find out what it was trying to communicate. When nothing in particular happened and I found myself out of body I simply used the OBE state to continue my meditation. Meditating during an Out-of-Body state is comparable to launching a rocket from space where it does not have to overcome earth gravity compared to meditation within the physical body and trying to enter the deeper states from scratch so to speak. This OBE meditation also allowed me to enter much more sublime states of consciousness, especially when there was no longer any kind of fascination, fixation or identification with personal concerns or issues, when identification was surrendered to consciousness itself.
 
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The other challenge, which I described in my latest book "Vistas of Infinity" is to bring all the information back into the waking memory during the transition from OBE to physical wakefulness. This is where people frequently lose the connection and the recall is disrupted. They may have had a powerful OBE but on return most of it may have been wiped out. This is also the case in people who claim they don't dream. They dream, but they lose the recall. That is why lucid dream teachers advocate keeping a dream journal, to establish pathways from one state of consciousness to the other.

There are other techniques you can practice. Before returning to the body even, hold back and run through the whole event just experienced, detail by detail. At this point recall is greatest. When entering the body lie still and don't open your eyes, run through the event again and finally, upon waking, write it all down. Some teachers advocate not to wake up at all but try to fall back into the dream state, but with the intend of awareness, even after an ordinary dream. The likelihood of becoming lucid is greatly increased. This is a technique advocated by a Russian teacher Michael Raduga.

Another way of sharpening recall is by training the physical brain, because the physical brain has a finer energetic counter part, so the training goes much deeper. For example imagine going to the market as normal on a Wednesday, but maintaining alertness and awareness and going about your business "being - mindfully - in the moment", avoiding thoughts as much as possible and instead sharpening your observational skills. Returning home lie comfortably on a couch or a comfy chair and recall your excursion step by step, from getting on the bus, browsing the market stalls until coming home and relaxing on the couch. This is also a good exercise for your brain anyway.

I do the same when in OBE, I remain in the moment and practice "mindfulness", focused on what is happening, maintaining awareness. This is so powerful that even now I can recall whole events during my OBE states as if they had happened yesterday. The other advantage is that you really learn to accept that the two experienced realities, physical and non-physical, have no qualitative distinction. We really are citizens of more than one dimension.
 
Links:

“Michael Raduga: The Phase, Lucid dreams and OBEs: http://obe4u.com/nature_of_obe_and_lucid_dreaming/free-ebook/
Ryan Tasker: www.unlimitedboundaries.ca”

Excerpt From: Ziewe, Jurgen. “Vistas of Infinity - How to Enjoy Life When You Are Dead.” Lulu.com, 2015-12-01. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.


I e-mailed Alex a few weeks ago suggesting that he interview you and he confirmed that he already did and would be posting the material shortly.I am wholly delighted that he did.Yours and Robert Monroe's material are the spiritual equivalent of popular science books like Brian Greene's Elegant Universe and Sagan's Cosmos.If it is not much trouble I would like to pose some questions that have troubled me since I began studying spiritual literature,specifically OBE,NDE and past life regression material.I know of expert meditators who can mantain a state of meditative absorption for several hours and failed to have experiences like yours.Why do you think that is so?OBErs have different accounts of what they encounter in the astral planes or other dimensions,although the core experience is almost identical.My theory is that the OBE observations are processed by the physical brain's conceptual system.Tom Campbell and Robert Monroe have physics and engineering degrees and frame their experiences in that light.Your expertise in graphic design and the creative arts enables a different interpretation.Is there any hope of understanding or experiencing the nonphysical dimensions as the Aristotelian thing in itself,
stripped of all reference points?My own pathetic attempts at triggering OBE's have resulted in two forced galantamine induced OBE's that lasted only seconds.Natural attempts have brought me into the hypnagogic state where I experienced floating sensations,insanely elevated heart and respiratory rate and 3 times electrical vibrations that enveloped my whole body.I never managed to go beyond this stage,even after using multiple separation techniques.It is like I have a mental block.Do you have any advice on this?I have many more questions but I don't want to monopolize the discussion.Your answers will be greatly appreciated.
 
I know of expert meditators who can maintain a state of meditative absorption for several hours and failed to have experiences like yours.Why do you think that is so? OBErs have different accounts of what they encounter in the astral planes or other dimensions,although the core experience is almost identical.My theory is that the OBE observations are processed by the physical brain's conceptual system.Tom Campbell and Robert Monroe have physics and engineering degrees and frame their experiences in that light.

This is a question of focus and intend. The essence of meditation practice is not having an OBE or finding new forms of entertainment but the very opposite, "being" instead of "becoming" or "achieving". My own attraction to meditation was, I wanted to know what it was that operated this body, the awareness behind all this. I wasn't even aware that OBEs existed and shocked when it first happened. They started to happen after I had a profound, spontaneous STE out of the blue while having my breakfast in 1972. In this episode I first lost my connection to my hand holding the sandwich and then to my body and everything unravelled from there. In the end I experienced there was nothing of me but a space of light. This made it impossible to see life as I had seen it before and soon after my OBEs started to materialise, as if the old paradigms had lost their substance. Intuitively I had learned that there was a more real aspect to myself than my physical body.

So meditators inevitably seek out the core self first, everything else is of secondary importance or not important at all and many would see it as a distraction. After all, a state of Samadhi, a dissolution of a sense of separate self, is beyond all words, experience and concepts. Even on the highest inner dimensions this is seen as the apex of human's potential. Everything else pales into insignificance. Its hard to believe because there doesn't seem to be anything there, at least not anything that can be described using language.

With regard to experience you will have to consider that no viewpoints are ever the same. Even if you sit in the same room with somebody for a chat you are each occupying and seeing a different world. You see the environment behind your partner and he sees the environment behind you. When you chat in your mind you call up completely different associations and images, apart from the fact that you are also feeling different things and so on. So basically, although you seemingly occupy the same space, you experience each a different reality. So it is more easy to see that each person will be drawn towards a different space of reality, once they no longer adhere to a physical space, the complexity of which increases exponentially once we leave the consensual space of the physical world. Everything from here on becomes infinite. Your inner program, temperament and makeup will attract you into a space which vibrationally most closely matches your personal energy. So if you and I decided to meet during an OBE and had no common energetic link we would end up in completely different parts of the multidimensional and infinite universe.

There are still consensus spaces and realities as they are here on earth, which are frequented and inhabited by people on similar wavelengths, but each person will view it slightly differently and may even carry around with them different projections and fantasy overlays which may or may not even be perceived by others. This is a really deep and complex subject and we haven't even began to scratch the surface. Until a few years ago I dared not even open my mouth about my experiences and I still have friends, I have known all my life, who simply take what I report as happening inside my brain cells or I am just "dreaming". When I ask in which part of my brain exactly I cover a thousand miles in as I fly over vast green pastures and big cities, all I get in return is a blank stare. No scientist on earth has figured out what actually these information with all their pixels are, how and where they are stored. They say it is all generated by they brain but don't forward any ideas.

We live in the dark ages. Until very recently we didn't even know psychology existed. Science is not helping us much at present. We will have to unravel these enormous mysteries of reality and consciousness a bit at a time. We will have to come up with a kind of science which goes beyond thought and the closest we have come to is using ancient meditation techniques.
 
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thx for pointing me Jurgen's way.


I agree that Jurgen give a great glimpse of the other side... but how do we square it with (she's using similar methods):

Alex's post reminded me of this film which I just watched in its entirety for the second time (first time was a few years ago). I think it is a really worthwhile film and puts its finger on many things which I have come to believe (through exposure to all these topics - partially through this podcast). Here's the link to the full film. The music is a bit dramatic but I think the message is pretty sound.

http://theroadtoarmageddon.com/
 
Alex's post reminded me of this film which I just watched in its entirety for the second time (first time was a few years ago). I think it is a really worthwhile film and puts its finger on many things which I have come to believe (through exposure to all these topics - partially through this podcast). Here's the link to the full film. The music is a bit dramatic but I think the message is pretty sound.

Thanks Alan.
As a result of what you said I went back and watched the rest of the film. It improves dramatically just about where I stopped watching it! :) I still feel uneasy about NDErs that meet Jesus then put everything in that basket. (Howard Storm &Marylynn Hughes for example) I say fooey to people who say 'just ask God, he'll answer', he never answers me, if I'm too dumb to interpret the message, why not shout it in plain English into my ear? :)

I don't see any real difficulty with the message in the film with what Jurgen reports. I don't know what Alex really means.
 
Maybe folks can answer a couple of questions I have:

I've read the transcript of the interview and some of Jurgen's posts on facebook and I am not sure how he goes out of the body. Is it through meditation or via lucid dreaming while he is sleeping? I thought he wrote he goes out of the body in normal consciousness during meditation and that is why he believes his experiences are not fantasy, why he believes his experiences produce reliable information about the afterlife. So I am confused that now the experiences are being called lucid dreams.

I've had a few lucid dreams, but I am by no means an expert. In my experiences I realized I was dreaming and tried to "dream what I wanted to dream" and it worked to some extent. But I never felt it was anything other than fantasy like a daydream, a super-duper vivid realistic daydream, but fantasy nonetheless. I didn't think the lucid dreams were "real" in the same way I know a day dream is not real. It was something I created. So why do folks think lucid dreams are anything more than fantasy within one's skull. Why do folks think they produce reliable information about the afterlife? I understand that in the afterlife you create with the mind, and the line between subjective and objective is not like it is in the physical realm, but do you think the entire afterlife is 100% fantasy with each person having their own separate reality? As far as I know the frequency of veridical information is no different during lucid dreams than normal dreams - very low for most people, but not zero for many people, and high for a few individuals. Is there evidence contradicting that?

I struggled with the same questions re: the "reality" of the lucid dream. But when I really looked at it, I was trying to eat the elephant all at once. I have since decided to trying eating it one bite at a time.

My first challenge was to come to grips with the fact that the experience was completely lifelike and that I was 100% lucid, just like in physical life. I was in a space that was just as real as the world, with the exception that the rules could be bent, and the others there had varying levels of lucidity.

This realization convinced me that some aspect of me had the ability to create an entire world while I was obliviously operating in it.

Which lead me to conclude that "real life" was in all probability being created in the same way.

Which demonstrated to me that everything is potentially based in consciousness.

So I was left with a belief that the experience I was having in a lucid dream was "real", as real as real life,,, however that didn't mean necessarily that all the entities I was interacting with were complete beings such as myself.

After much experimenting and reading books such as those from Jurgen, I concluded that lucid dreaming (really any personal experience) isn't binary. It is comprised of infinite nuance. Especially early-on, the experience is rife with fantasy and various aspects of one's own being. And that with work, one can access more "rarefied" spaces that are inhabited by completely sentient and aware beings with something to offer and (amazingly) with lives of their own. Yes, it's hard to swallow but that is what Jurgen is saying and this has been said countless times by others.

In terms of the obvious problem with "how do I know this is real"? For me it occurred a bite at a time.
 
I struggled with the same questions re: the "reality" of the lucid dream. But when I really looked at it, I was trying to eat the elephant all at once. I have since decided to trying eating it one bite at a time.

My first challenge was to come to grips with the fact that the experience was completely lifelike and that I was 100% lucid, just like in physical life. I was in a space that was just as real as the world, with the exception that the rules could be bent, and the others there had varying levels of lucidity.

This realization convinced me that some aspect of me had the ability to create an entire world while I was obliviously operating in it.
Yes, in lucid dreaming we can rule the world, but it is our world, nobody else can see it. In OBEs our powers are greatly curtailed. We can interact with other individuals who have a will of their own. We become subjected to different laws, to individual people outside our control and laws governing the reality in the same but different ways as nature here on the physical level subjects us to its own laws and yet at the same time we are still the creators of the world we are sucked into. In the same way as we are the creators of our physical world here. Nothing much changes.

I also watched most of the movie and it confirms what I said at the beginning of the interview. Our reality is coloured by our cultural background. I did not have a religious upbringing. My father was an atheist, and yet I could identify some of the same things reported in the movie. Instead of "demons" I found my "shadow" and in Multidimensional Man I had a real fight with it. In my latest book I helped a man across when he died who was battling with his demons. To me they were artificial entities of his own creation. I think differently about the concept of prayers too and see it more as a kind of surrender to higher consciousness. And instead of calling it Jesus, I referred to it as my "Silent Companion", an aspect of awareness that is with me always. Instead of calling on it or praying, I listen to its stillness and silence and often find answers via intuition, but that is not a given. All this shows that the underlying mechanics of reality are all in place and the same, but the way we perceive them are different and mostly coloured by what we learned.

Interestingly I also had a similar experience as the lady at the beginning of the video, of the city being choked with "demons" in her case, but in my case they were perceived as layers upon layers of thick electricity wires, criss crossed over the whole area, with sparks flying around menacingly. I simply could not get past. It needed all my strength and determination to break through. So you can see the perception with which we perceive reality really depends on our cultural conditioning.
 
Thanks Alan.
As a result of what you said I went back and watched the rest of the film. It improves dramatically just about where I stopped watching it! :) I still feel uneasy about NDErs that meet Jesus then put everything in that basket. (Howard Storm &Marylynn Hughes for example) I say fooey to people who say 'just ask God, he'll answer', he never answers me, if I'm too dumb to interpret the message, why not shout it in plain English into my ear? :)

I don't see any real difficulty with the message in the film with what Jurgen reports. I don't know what Alex really means.

I watched the film too. It seemed to have some good advice for people and could provide a lot of answers to people who are suffering and needing them. I think the main difference between the perspective provided by those in the video and others in the SBNR group is related to seriousness. How serious should we consider the story that we find ourselves involved in and the spiritual hierarchies or levels of achievement and development or evolution? Are we even evolving towards something higher? Or are we just here to see what it feels like to be here? How serious are the consequences for getting mixed up with a demon or failing to love someone when you should have? Religion (and the folks in the video) make it sound very serious... and for many people it IS very serious. Sometimes the only way to reform yourself and improve your circumstances is to harden up, get some discipline into your life, and take life seriously. But the message from many in the SBNR group seems to say just the opposite: don't take life so seriously... we've got nothing but time... and infinite incarnations to play around with... advance or don't advance... it doesn't matter... seeking is causing your suffering... you agreed to experience all this before you were born and that is the whole purpose of life: to experience diverse things... so don't worry... it's all going according to a plan or God's plan or your plan.

It seems to me that wisdom is always found in balancing the two opposing points of view and being able to adopt either one as the circumstances call for it. We have the serious point of view, and the not so serious point of view. The perspective of hierarchy and the imperative to ascend it or the perspective of dramatic play where all imperatives and hierarchies are designed by an aspect of you to give you something fun and interesting to do... even if that means being tortured. Religion primarily promotes the serious point of view because religion acts like a schoolmaster and has among its many objectives the goal of imputing discipline and discouraging destructive behavior. But there are also nuggets of the non-serious point of view in religions. The New Age doctrines take the non-serious or less serious approach and this is quite a relief to many folks who have been terrorized by the threat of hell their whole lives... but it has its downsides as well.
 
I'm curious about which city it was that she encountered demons. Myself, I can't live in cities....I've lived in a small rural town for the past 30 plus years, even though I grew up in Chicago. While watching the film (with Marilyn) I was very uncomfortable with everyone referencing 'God's will" and everyone referring to God as "he". I thought we have all been both male and female. Seems as though an enlightened view would acknowledge that fact.

The film Astral City does describe a sort of purgatory where people go to languish until they actually ask for help, so I have to give some credence to the idea. However, I am still uncomfortable withe label of "demon"...I believe these are all simply disowned parts of ourselves. At least, that's the belief that I choose for now. Michael Newton says he has never encountered the mention of demons in his research, but he does mention "disturbed souls" who can hang around and bother folks.
 
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Hi folks, I feel when Alex interviewed me I may have jumped in too quickly into the very deep end.
Perhaps you're right... glad you cleared things up by explaining intelligence and rigor you brought to this process.

At the end of the day, we're still faced with what to make of your account... are they idiosyncratic/universal/divine/demonic/all-of-the-above... the questions are endless? I was very pleased and impressed by your willingness to compare your very deep, profound series of experiences with others who have explored realms of extended consciousness.
 
Perhaps you're right... glad you cleared things up by explaining intelligence and rigor you brought to this process.

At the end of the day, we're still faced with what to make of your account... are they idiosyncratic/universal/divine/demonic/all-of-the-above... the questions are endless? I was very pleased and impressed by your willingness to compare your very deep, profound series of experiences with others who have explored realms of extended consciousness.
This is the big question Alex, only time will tell as more people share their experiences. We can already see pattern emerging and perhaps something which will begin to form a kind of consensus. It is already a big step forward simply distinguishing between Lucid Dream, OBE and NDE. Not so long ago these would all have been thrown into one great pot and perhaps not even been recognised as being related. You'll have to remember that these phenomena have only moved into the greater public awareness over the last forty years or so. Drawing a parallel to technology, we are only just at the stage of the steam engine or where Wilhelm Wundt was when the concept of psychology emerged.
 
This is the big question Alex, only time will tell as more people share their experiences. We can already see pattern emerging and perhaps something which will begin to form a kind of consensus. It is already a big step forward simply distinguishing between Lucid Dream, OBE and NDE. Not so long ago these would all have been thrown into one great pot and perhaps not even been recognised as being related. You'll have to remember that these phenomena have only moved into the greater public awareness over the last forty years or so. Drawing a parallel to technology, we are only just at the stage of the steam engine or where Wilhelm Wundt was when the concept of psychology emerged.
good point. then again, the realms described by spiritually transformative experiences may be beyond our ability to understand from a logical/rational/scientific perspective. This is my hunch... you may be able to understand the larger field of consciousness when you are in it, but there are human limitations to the reintegration process.

Of course, this doesn't mean that we shouldn't try our best... but I think we may wind up with a lot of "how many angels fit on the head of a pin" type answers.

I'm also interested in asking the bigger question of whether this is the best path to get where I want to go. I ran across this the other day and it seems related:

In the 8th century, the great saint, Adi Shankaracharya, wrote a beautiful hymn called “Bhaja Govindam.” It is a unique prayer as it unifies the path of Wisdom (Jnana Marg) and the path of Devotion (Bhakti Marg). Shankaracharya praises Devotion as a spiritual path that leads to liberation. The legend is that he was walking with his disciples when he saw an old scholar teaching his young students the rules of Sanskrit grammar. Shankaracharya told the old man that now that he was so old he should turn his mind toward God and stop wasting time. In every verse he described the ways that life is passing by and with it our opportunity to find freedom from suffering. Each verse was addressed to “my foolish mind/heart,” mudhamate in Sanskrit. I wrote a couple of verses in English with the same feeling.

I don't want to be that old man :)
 
good point. then again, the realms described by spiritually transformative experiences may be beyond our ability to understand from a logical/rational/scientific perspective. This is my hunch... you may be able to understand the larger field of consciousness when you are in it, but there are human limitations to the reintegration process.

Of course, this doesn't mean that we shouldn't try our best... but I think we may wind up with a lot of "how many angels fit on the head of a pin" type answers.

I'm also interested in asking the bigger question of whether this is the best path to get where I want to go.

We are quickly running out of space.

The peculiarity of our species is that we have developed a mind to control our environment, language to coordinate action and communicate which works so well that we continuously manifest miraculous achievements on an ongoing basis. So much so that we are finally posing the much bigger question, which you, Alex and people joining you, pose here on a weekly basis, "What is this consciousness driving all this that makes it all possible? What is the reality behind it?"

On the one hand we foolishly still believe that by smashing more and finer particles by building bigger machines we may at least find a mathematical answer, on the other hand we are just beginning to sense the futility of this path by realising that we are the very consciousness which in effect we are trying to explore and which is now more and more seen as underpinning all reality. A spearhead is beginning to emerge, conceeding that the process cannot be achieved mechanically or intellectually.

Some bring out old technologies like meditation with which we design new instruments such as lucid dreaming to unravel the mechanics underpinning our reality. To get inside we resort to self enquiry and meditation, which in turn expands our toolset, allowing us to confront our shadows and our limitations by learning how to become lucid, self aware and more conscious. We are already beginning to teach mindfulness in schools and businesses etc.

We are at the threshold of expanding our territories not into an outside world as we have done in the last few thousand years until we run out of space or conceding that outer space will largely remain beyond our grasp because of physical limitations.

Instead we are finding that our new tool sets, which require no big financial budgets at all other than time and attention, allow us to expand our inner territories. We are at the stage now where human probes go out to investigate the inner space and report back, testing the waters. Until now we have only confronted darkness full of demons. Lucidly is our new microscope which allows us to observe energies interacting, where before we only saw evil and demons.

This is my criticism of the movie that was posted here, we are still trapped in old paradigms of good and evil, we are still sending out prayers to a God which we consider to be separate from us. We still divide the world into good and evil, whilst modern sociology and psychology already reveal that beneath each demon and its crime lies a complex system of interacting largely unconscious energies, forces which are mostly judged by their effect.

Lucid dreaming is one of the toolset which will allow our species to penetrate the heart of consciousness and liberate ourselves from religious blind judgements and allow us to take a more detached, responsible and illuminated position. Perhaps our technologies are beginning to converge, we are beginning to merge the inner with the outer world and by doing so learn to understand that they are one and the same. In the process we are beginning to see new potentials.

The ones who are already using these low budget technologies are now spearheading forward, spreading out and are reporting back, loosely at first, but a consensus is bound to emerge. Experience is key, not religious belief with its outmoded symbols and closed systems. We are learning that reality opens wormholes within every present moment by being "mindful" and place attention where awareness lies. We are beginning to see the inner workings of reality. It becomes more apparent that the heart rather than the intellect is the means of transport to the hidden world and is used as a tool to navigate the uncertainties and pitfalls.

It's early days but these are exciting times.
 
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This is a question of focus and intend. The essence of meditation practice is not having an OBE or finding new forms of entertainment but the very opposite, "being" instead of "becoming" or "achieving". My own attraction to meditation was, I wanted to know what it was that operated this body, the awareness behind all this. I wasn't even aware that OBEs existed and shocked when it first happened. They started to happen after I had a profound, spontaneous STE out of the blue while having my breakfast in 1972. In this episode I first lost my connection to my hand holding the sandwich and then to my body and everything unravelled from there. In the end I experienced there was nothing of me but a space of light. This made it impossible to see life as I had seen it before and soon after my OBEs started to materialise, as if the old paradigms had lost their substance. Intuitively I had learned that there was a more real aspect to myself than my physical body.

So meditators inevitably seek out the core self first, everything else is of secondary importance or not important at all and many would see it as a distraction. After all, a state of Samadhi, a dissolution of a sense of separate self, is beyond all words, experience and concepts. Even on the highest inner dimensions this is seen as the apex of human's potential. Everything else pales into insignificance. Its hard to believe because there doesn't seem to be anything there, at least not anything that can be described using language.

With regard to experience you will have to consider that no viewpoints are ever the same. Even if you sit in the same room with somebody for a chat you are each occupying and seeing a different world. You see the environment behind your partner and he sees the environment behind you. When you chat in your mind you call up completely different associations and images, apart from the fact that you are also feeling different things and so on. So basically, although you seemingly occupy the same space, you experience each a different reality. So it is more easy to see that each person will be drawn towards a different space of reality, once they no longer adhere to a physical space, the complexity of which increases exponentially once we leave the consensual space of the physical world. Everything from here on becomes infinite. Your inner program, temperament and makeup will attract you into a space which vibrationally most closely matches your personal energy. So if you and I decided to meet during an OBE and had no common energetic link we would end up in completely different parts of the multidimensional and infinite universe.

There are still consensus spaces and realities as they are here on earth, which are frequented and inhabited by people on similar wavelengths, but each person will view it slightly differently and may even carry around with them different projections and fantasy overlays which may or may not even be perceived by others. This is a really deep and complex subject and we haven't even began to scratch the surface. Until a few years ago I dared not even open my mouth about my experiences and I still have friends, I have known all my life, who simply take what I report as happening inside my brain cells or I am just "dreaming". When I ask in which part of my brain exactly I cover a thousand miles in as I fly over vast green pastures and big cities, all I get in return is a blank stare. No scientist on earth has figured out what actually these information with all their pixels are, how and where they are stored. They say it is all generated by they brain but don't forward any ideas.

We live in the dark ages. Until very recently we didn't even know psychology existed. Science is not helping us much at present. We will have to unravel these enormous mysteries of reality and consciousness a bit at a time. We will have to come up with a kind of science which goes beyond thought and the closest we have come to is using ancient meditation techniques.

Your 1972 STE reminded me of Jill Bolte Taylor's TED talk recounting her experience of having a stroke.
 
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