If you made a 30-day program to ensure the best chance of success for having an OBE - and given that anyone who did it had the discipline and dedication - what would your program be?

Would your program include relaxation exercises?

Would you include energy-raising exercises?

Would you include trances as a cornerstone?

Would you recommend a certain diet?

Would you recommend certain times of the day?

Would you recommend mantras or affirmations?

Would you recommend prayer or rituals?

Would you recommend sexual abstinence?

How likely do you think the average person would be to have success if they tried your program?

People who study our cave ancestors tell us that there were several types of human-like races which sprung up on earth, very similar to us, and that modern humans engaged in primeval genocide wiping them out, so that we the "homo sapiens " alone were left standing.

This is true, and there are theories suggesting humanity evolved from different locations in a type of parallel evolution. There are all kinds of sapiens (like the "hobbit" types found recently) ... it was believed that Homo sapiens was responsible for the extinction of the neanderthals.

A new finding, however, disputes that the two species ever co-existed.

It's still fascinating to ponder what connections mythology might have for the origin of man. I wonder sometimes how involved outside forces might be in the sentience of Homo sapiens.

I've seen one. It was late at night, I was on the street waiting for some friends. I saw something overhead ... an enormous black triangle. It was maybe 20-30 feet overhead. It made no sound at all.

I've never been able to satisfactorily explain that one ...

My current process goes like this (it's changed many times in the past to get to one that I prefer): I get home, I exercise, then I do a standing Qi-Gong exercise, then I lay down and listen to entrainment (usually Hemi-Sync). I focus on relaxation.

Yesterday, though, while I was doing this I heard a voice say, "Sense, don't speak."

I took this to mean, instead of allowing inner dialog to ramble on, I should just sense images that pop up, see, hear, smell them. Still my mind so that it was actively sensing but not speaking.

Robert Peterson's book is an easy read ... I loved it when I was starting out. You can even read it online for free at:

http://www.robertpeterson.org/obebook.html

I wonder if you asked the Canadian Navy nicely, if they'd let you aboard during a degaussing ...  If you were a student saying it was for your science fair project, maybe ...

I think sooner or later there will be a conference + teleconference for the AP forums. Don't know when or where, but it's always good to check the waters and see if the time is right.

Interesting article, jub jub.

This also made me think about the earth's magnetic field and the polar shift. Here's an article I wrote a while ago about it:

The pole was located for the first time in 1831 by James Ross in the arctic (during which his ship was stuck in the ice for four years). No one returned until 1904 when Roald Amundsen found the pole again and also that it had moved at least 50 km since Ross's time. The pole kept moving throughout the 20th century, going north at an average speed of 10 km per year, but accelerating to 40 km per year. So far during the last century it has moved 1100 km. At this rate, it will reach Siberia in about 50 years. Compass needles in Africa are drifting about 1 degree per decade. Globally, the magnetic field has weakened 10 percent since the 19th century.

This leads to the issue of complete pole reversals.

According to the magnetism of ancient rocks, pole reversals are unpredictable. Their intervals of occurrence average about 700,000 years between them. The last reversal happened 780,000 years ago. There have been over 400 reversals in the last 300 million years. When the poles reverse, however, the magnetic field does not vanish. The magnetic lines of force will become more twisted and tangled, and magnetic poles might pop up in unusual places, but the field will still protect the earth from solar radiation.

Is the current activity unusual? No. The magnetic field is increasing or decreasing all the time. Even if the present trend continues, the poles will not be mid-way through a complete reversal (during which time the magnetic field will be reduced 10% - 25%) for about 1,500 years (with a possibility ranging between 8,000 and 1,000 years). Many researchers believe that the poles will not reverse at all, but re-stabilize (as it has many times in the past).

What about the strength of the magnetic field? Is it growing weaker? Yes. But also consider this: the present-day magnetic field is much stronger than normal (8 × 1022 amps × m2), which is twice the million-year average.

I wonder if the earth's field does a degaussing ... I remember when I was researching for this article a diagram showing how the magnetic field could theoretically go chaotic for a short period of time - it reminded me of degaussing when I saw it.

I would think a power source limited to about 1000 watts would be a good place to start.

I'm a little wary of 1000 watts ... how would this thing affect stuff around it, such as computers, electronics, credit cards, etc.? You'd probably have to have someplace to put it where it won't ruin everybody's TV reception ...

If we lived in the 50s, somebody would already be in their backyard putting stuff together (making sure to implement some shiny aluminum somewhere) ... it seems like the 50s were big on engineering. I wish I understood what you said, jub jub ... then I could start tinkering with an old stereo amp ...

I have often thought about building a large coil that I could lie inside of and induce a strong magnetic field at the Delta frequencies of 2-3 cycles per second, which is the frequency of our brain waves while we sleep. Perhaps an OBE such as yours could be reproduced.

I wonder how this could be safely done ... I mean an at-home experiment. I imagine a cot or pad and a length of insulated cable coiled around it (coiled high enough to lay in the center of), but how would you induce the right magnetic field? What would you need to safely power it and send pulses?

In Focus 10, you can still feel your body - but it feels remote, fuzzy, numb, inflated, etc.

For an excellent read on Focus 10, read Major Tom's article if you haven't already.

http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=13644

Call me a "wuss", but just hearing voices while in the hypnogogic state freaks me out! I don't what I'd do if something grabbed me or confronted me!

It's really not that bad. Emotions are, at least for me, greatly magnified during an OBE. I just remember, don't react to emotions or fear - if something is there, confront it, question its existence - if it persists, ask it what it wants. There was one experience where I wish the "neg" could have answered. Just as I got over my fear (which is easier than you might think, no matter how great the fear) and I began to see it in a neutral perspective, I popped back into-body. I've always wanted to see that ghost again, to have an other chance to talk to it ...

I think you can miss out on learning things if you react to your own fear. Get past it. There's a lot of exploring to do.

You sound like I did - where's the proof? As if authority somehow made reality (that's a logical fallacy listed in Carl Sagan's Baloney Detector as in Demon Haunted World). Why be so lazy and expect someone to prove something to you when you can experience it yourself?

It reminds me of a delightful snippet in the Life of Pi (by Yann Martel):

"I can well imagine an atheist's last words: 'White, white! L-L-Love! My God!'--and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, 'Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain,' and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story."

Considering myself an agnostic at the time, that paragraph struck me, as did the sentence: "To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."

I suggest taking a leap and experiencing an OBE for yourself.

A while back, cube did a lot of work with this. He used to post pretty regularly before he got his own site. He even made a program for this purpose that works quite well. His page is at:

http://www.saltcube.com/out-of-body/chat-forum/viewTopic.jsp?t=rhythm-napping

Like I said, he's put a lot of work into this particular method - and it probably is the most "fail-safe" method I can think of.

I've read a lot of AP experiences involving pets, living or deceased. It makes me think of ancient Egypt and their domestication and worship of cats ... from what I've read, though, dogs seem more likely to help the traveler along, or follow them around OBE.

It would be interesting to do studies with APing and animals. (Hmm ... maybe soon the_voice_of_silence will have a thread about it ... )