Learning Astral Phasing & Focus Levels

[Parmenion]

Hello Nick

Try http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2555&SearchTerms=phasing
or  http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=4049&SearchTerms=phasing

Youll find a lot of what you seek by using the advanced search option on these forums, something all newcomers - myself included seem to overlook.

Take care

Parmenion

[Nick]

Hi Parmenion,

Thanks, and you're right, I did overlook the advanced search option. Good advice. I'll look into those links you posted. Thanks again.

[Nick]

Follow-up- I have read over a number of postings in the Astral Consciousness forum and have learned some things re my query.

Next, I went to the Monroe website and read up on hemi-sync FAQ's. So I have a better appreciation of what I have been reading here.

Lastly, I'm going to go ahead and start out by buying the Wave I CD's and work with them for a while.

I truly appreciate all the insight that I pick up on this website. There is a great deal of knowledge here.

[Parmenion]

That there is Nick. And a lot of benevolant people willing to share their experiences. I truly appreciate the Astral Pulse forums.

Parmenion

P.S. Love the avatar!

[Adrian]

Greetings everyone,

In order to get a perspective on the original meaning and practice of phasing, I would suggest reading Robert Monroe's last book - Ultimate Journey:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385472080/qid=1049656090/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/002-5577412-8852822

With best regards,

Adrian.

[Nick]

Adrian,

Thank you for posting the link to amazon.com re Robert Monroe's book: "Ultimate Journey". I've purchased the book and look forward to reading it. You're advice is appreciated!

Take care,

[Frank]

In a nutshell: Phasing is a term which describes a process where you allow your physical body to fall asleep as normal, but as it does so you retain the realisation of Self. People who do this find they go through various stages in common. What Monroe did was to identify each of these successive stages with an arbitrary series of numbers.

Of course, Monroe was by no means the first person to attach labels to the various non-physical states of consciousness. Mystics have done this throughout the ages. But the big difference with Monroe was he explained his work using more modern-day terminology. Plus, he approached the whole topic from a more scientific viewpoint as opposed to a mystical one.

Monroe first began trying to identify the various states he was experiencing as "locales" which he wrote about in his first book, Journeys Out of the Body. But as he expanded his knowledge he developed a more wider-ranging view and mapped the various stages, as I say, with an arbitrary series of numbers.

For a person first setting out down the Phasing route, the most important numbers are 3, 10 & 12. Perhaps the "10" state is the trickiest and everything seems to flow from "12" onwards.

The Gateway CD's marketed by the Monroe Institute claim to be able to take you through all the various Focus levels. My opinion has always been that the CD's go off on a commercial tangent, and are darned expensive to buy. But, like I say, that's just my opinion. If you are reading this and have money to burn then don't let my comments put you off buying them.

For someone on a limited budget, however, wanting to dip a toe in the Gateway water, after researching the various "Waves" (as they call them) of the CD set, my advice would be purchase Wave-1 only. Reason being, once you familiarise yourself with this CD it can become a very useful mental primer that helps to kick-start the natural process. (Well, that's how it turned out with me and I see no reason why it cannot do the same for others.)

You must please also bear in mind that the CD's in themselves do not instil the various mental focus states. Nor did Monroe invent these states of consciousness from using a technology he termed Hemispherical Synchronisation. The mental focus states occur quite naturally. All Monroe basically did was attach labels to them and describe what he experienced.

He also did quite a lot of research into the brainwave patterns people experienced while in these states. What he then tried to do was reproduce these brainwaves by using various patterns of sounds fed to each ear; and that's where the whole Hemispherical Syncronisation idea stemmed from.

But the technology is by no means perfect. While I'm sure there are a number of people who only need to look at a HemiSync packet and off they float, most people not born with any particular talent for this kind of thing (myself included) will still need to put in quite a bit of effort in order to get results.

Yours,
Frank

[Nick]

Frank,

Thank you for taking the time to write such a cogent response to my query. I'm sure I will refer back to it again.

The Wave-1 cd set was in fact the only set I bought. The whole series is very expensive, as you indicated. My plan is to read all three of Robert Monroe's books as well.

After I begin to use the cds, I will try to either integrate or substitute what I am learning/experiencing into what I have previously been doing.

Again, thanks for your very informative post.

[Frank]

Nick: Best of luck with your future Monroe studies.

Yours,
Frank

[wonderboy]

Nick,
    If you haven't done so yet, I'd strongly recommend reading Frank's posts regarding tailoring your Monroe visualisation routine and not putting the headphones on and expecting to rocket to the astral. Also bear in mind that practice and devotion will win the day, I believe Frank said that he had used the focus 10 CD somewhere along the lines of 3 times per day during his practices. However, along the way you'll probably experience some spontaneous or unconscious exits to the RTZ or Astral, as that's what happened to me.
take care,
Wonderboy

[Nick]

wonderboy,

Good advice, thanks. I'll look into what you've suggested re Frank's posts. I've read a lot by now, but not all, and it doesn't hurt to reread them, that's for sure.

Re practice and devotion, that's no problem as I've been meditating for years and that has helped me so far in this environment.

Very Best,

[Adrian]

Greetings Nick,

Meditation is an excellent practice for this work. In addition, visualisation and concentration practices are also invaluable. If you can focus unwaiveringly on a visualisation of a scene, object or whatever, while your body is relaxed and falling asleep, you have an excellent chance of phasing by keeping your mind awake and focussed.

A well proven method is to get up early in the morning after about 6 hours sleep, wake up for 20 or 30 minutes by having a drink, browsing the 'net etc. and then go back to bed. You can then focus on your visualisation and/or Brow, Crown and Heart Cakras while your body goes back to sleep. If you succeed, you will see achieve the requisite state for phasing, and everything else should follow on. If you do fall asleep, there is a very good chance you will either have a lucid dream, at which point you can phase from that state, or you might wake later with "vibrations" at which point you can OBE.

Good luck!

With best regards,

Adrian.

[Nick]

Hi Adrian,

Visualisation is certainly something I need to practice. Your suggestion about focusing unwaiveringly on a visualisation is one that I will follow. In addition I pulled up a locked topic of yours from last year entitled: "Your Monroe Gateway Experiences please!" and have started reading over the posts.

The getting up early method will probably work best for me on the weekend because of my work during the week. However, I plan on giving it a try this Saturday. Thanks again.

Very Best,

[Serenity1]

Hello Nick and Others
[8D]
I have just started (2nd day)to use the Wave 1 cd also and am interested in following the learning experiences of others with this cd, such as yourself Nick.

I like the idea of Phasing and have been reading as much of Franks work as I can find on the forum. i have to keep re-reading your writing as there is a lot to retain and I have a shallow retention level.Thanks Frank! Excelient.[^]

Thanks also Adrian for your followups, they give me a perspective to the big picture, so to speak.

My experience so far with W1 has been that I drift of into dreams when the space between say f3 - the f10 countdown starts. I gess this is lack of concentration on the visuals. Early days still!

I intend to listen at least twice a day as I have the time available.

Looking forward to sharing the journey with any who are just starting out with the cd. []

[Nick]

Hi Serenity1,

Thank you for the post. The Wave-1 cds that I ordered from the Monroe Institute should be arriving soon. My plan is to try to integrate them with the Astral Dynamics methods that I have been using and see if that helps. Then, experiment as necessary.

Best to you with Wave-1. Let us know how things are going with a query or a post.

Take care,

[Frank]

quote:Originally posted by Serenity1

My experience so far with W1 has been that I drift of into dreams when the space between say f3 - the f10 countdown starts. I guess this is lack of concentration on the visuals. Early days still!

Drifting off into dreamland is the other end of the scale to being grounded in the Physical from visualising too strongly. In the monster thread I talk about not visualising to the extent where you being to engage in an act of creative visualisation. And, like I say, the other end of the scale is you don't want your attention to lapse or dissipate to the extent you drift off to sleep.

There is an inbetween state that you need to hold: where you feel like you are drifting off into dreamland, but you quietly retain an element of conscious awareness. This enables you to passively observe the process - as it is happening - and you simply flow along with it. It's quite a tricky mental balancing act because, at first, what normally happens is you'll just get an inkling that you are making progress: and either that will be the last thing you remember and you wake up some time later, or your protective sense of awareness will zap you out of it.

So the various beginning Focus levels (C1 through F22) which Monroe described and labelled, people pass through every time they fall asleep. Problem is they have no realisation of it.

Oh, you might find some of Jeff Mash's posts useful too because his technique followed similar lines. He's been a bit busy work-wise of late and hasn't had the time to stop by for a while. But some of his posts of last year describe how he goes about it.

The basic way I like to look at it is this:

Anyone with normal sleep patterns Phases to the Astral every time they fall asleep. But the big problem is, at the onset of sleep, all realisation of Self is normally lost. That's the key missing element you need to retain. So the key question is: How does a person retain their realisation of Self while letting their physical body just drift-off to sleep as normal?

This is where all the ideas about visuals come into play: they have the effect of focussing your attention on the task in hand, and give you practice in holding a mental scenario in mind for the time when (hopefully sometime soon) you need to "hold it together" for real, so to speak.

Followers of the Moen-school Focussed Attention technique practice making contact with former loved ones, and so forth, resident in an area they call the Afterlife. To do this, they are first taught to imagine they were holding a conversation with the person in question about a typical topic, and in a typical setting to what they would have done when the person was alive Physically. As they are imagining this, they are also taught to be on the lookout for circumstances which come about that were not on their imaginary script.

The visual rundown technique I recommend in the monster thread operates along similar lines. Where you'll be drifting along with a particular visual thread and then you'll get an inkling of an image that was not generated as part of your imaginary rundown. The shock of this happening tends to keep zapping you back to C1 (Physical) at first. But that goes away once your protective sense of awareness becomes used to it.

Once the natural process has been kick-started, you will then start to see a visual rundown that is being produced as part of the normal Phasing process - as opposed to the visuals you were consciously generating before. And that's when the fun starts!  

Yours,
Frank


PS
Thank you for your kind comments about my posts. I am pleased you have found them helpful.

[Serenity1]

Thank you so much Frank, this has been extreamly helpfull!
Cheers[8D]

[Adrian]

Greetings Frank,

My sincere thanks once again for all of your excellent assistance in this and all of those other topics!

I just wanted to observe in this topic that we are discussing the most important fundamentals for Astral projection - specifically - how to achieve that all important and often elusive mind awake/body asleep state.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that visualisation is a big facor in all of this for the reasons that you describe from your own experience, and also with reference to the work of Robert Monroe and Bruce Moen. I believe that you are absolutely correct about the balancing act of visualisation, which needs to facilitate providing something for the mind to focus on while the body falls asleep.

Of course, another major associated factor is deep physical relaxation - another problem for many people. This is where waking up early in the morning after a nights sleep has considerable potential, as the body is already deeply relaxed. It follows therefore that the way forward might well be to awake very early in the morning and proceed with the visualisations to keep the mind awake while the body goes back to sleep, at which point the chances of success would be considerably greater.

With best regards,

Adrian.

[Frank]

Adrian: You have made some very positive comments about my work which is ever so kind of you. For my part, being fully aware of just how tricky a subject this can be to get one's head around, it is a pleasure to give people a leg-up where I can.

Yours,
Frank

[brianspuk]

Hi everyone

My experience of the focus levels so far is that focus 10 feels like a sort of quiet, relaxing meditative state where you are looking inwards to yourself, and the space in front of you looks calm and smooth.  Focus 12, by contrast, is when you try to open up to the outside world, and produces a feeling of looking outwards which is accompanied by a vibrant staticy type of space in front of you, often like dark 3d clouds with electrical discharges in them.  Not sure if everyone will experience them the same way.  Very occasionally, objects of some sort will appear, not sure if this is still focus 12 or is an example of something else.

Brian

[Frank]

quote:My experience of the focus levels so far is that focus 10 feels like a sort of quiet, relaxing meditative state where you are looking inwards to yourself, and the space in front of you looks calm and smooth.

Yes, this is the point where with me I'm often surrounded by whiteness and everything is just still. My attention is 100% focussed inwards and I have no sensation of a physical body.

I do wonder if this is the state people who "meditate" try to attain. There was a thread a short while ago about Monks whose goal it was to achieve a "white screen" effect while meditating.

quote:
Focus 12, by contrast, is when you try to open up to the outside world, and produces a feeling of looking outwards which is accompanied by a vibrant staticy type of space in front of you, often like dark 3d clouds with electrical discharges in them. Not sure if everyone will experience them the same way. Very occasionally, objects of some sort will appear, not sure if this is still focus 12 or is an example of something else.

Sounds to me very much like Focus 12. Swirling clouds; passing shapes like outline drawings of all kinds of figures; noises such as static and/or all manner of pop and bangs; Velco-like ripping sounds; having the space around you take on various textures, etc. All are characteristic of Focus 12.

Yours,
Frank

[brianspuk]

Yes, I think that meditation is probably another word for Focus 10, where you try to blank out unnecesary thoughts and stimulation.

Focus 12 is therefore when you experience images of some sort, I wasn't sure because I find that sometimes this can feel somewhat like an astral projection, I've occasionally got wallpaper like patterns for example, just like Robert Bruce describes as astral plane entrance structures.

Maybe Focus 21 will turn out to be different from this.  I'm almost at the point in the gateway exercises which deals with Focus 21.  I've been spending much more time with each Odyssey excercise and should reach the last two exercises about Focus 21 next week, so it will be interesting to see what happens here.

Brian

[Nick]

quote: Yes, I think that meditation is probably another word for Focus 10, where you try to blank out unnecesary thoughts and stimulation.

This state is what we wanted to achieve when I was attending the zen center in LA. So that training has been helpful to me.

I can also say that there are a number of recent sessions when I am in the state where my mind is awake and body is asleep.

It's there where I seem to be stuck. The sensations I related in another post entitled "Almost there?" relate a lot of the pre-obe/ap  experiences I have had.

When one is in the Focus 10 state, then Focus 12, the posts indicate one should be focusing inward or visualising to some extent. For the life of me, I have no idea why this part seems difficult, but it does.

[Frank]

quote:Originally posted by brianspuk

Focus 12 is therefore when you experience images of some sort, I wasn't sure because I find that sometimes this can feel somewhat like an astral projection, I've occasionally got wallpaper like patterns for example, just like Robert Bruce describes as astral plane entrance structures.

Ah, that sounds to me like a "travelling projection". Last year I posted about how I experienced two types of projection. There's the "step-into" method which came about from my work with the Focus-10 CD and from studying Monroe's two later books FJ's and UJ.

Step-into is where I experience Focus 10, then various swirling clouds, textures and shapes of Focus 12 (the details of which can very each time) and this progresses to the 3D blackness at Focus 21. Then the Astral comes into view and I mentally "step into" the Astral scene. Hence the name given to the experience. The transition is a smooth mental transition with gradual feeling of moving forwards for a period of, say, 3 to 5 seconds from F10 to where I placed the Intent to be.

The other way I call a "travelling projection" which seems to have come about from mixing my earier "cannonball exit" with techniques developed from my Monroe studies.

This projection experience follows a slightly different path. It begins with a strange kind of "knowing" feeling where I haven't begun to feel anything yet, but for some reason I know the process is about to fire up in a few seconds... and then it does. The mental state I am in at this time is a lot like Focus 10. But from there on it takes a different path.

I begin to feel a mental stroking sensation which develops into a buzzing at the crown of my head. Then I get a distinct feeling of exiting the Physical in a more traditional sense into the real-time zone. I progress from here and enter the Astral (again in the more traditional sense) through some kind of Entrance Structure of the like portrayed on the back cover of Astral Dynamics.

This latter route is what I suspect you may be taking.

Yours,
Frank

[Nick]

quote:Sounds to me very much like Focus 12. Swirling clouds; passing shapes like outline drawings of all kinds of figures; noises such as static and/or all manner of pop and bangs; Velco-like ripping sounds; having the space around you take on various textures, etc. All are characteristic of Focus 12.

Just recently I've managed a breakthrough and have been experiencing all of the above. This post is to restate how important reading the descriptions of Focus 12. The other night I was experiencing the swirling patterns and passing shapes when I heard a loud BANG. It startled me so much that I returned to C-1 and switched on the light to see what the problem was. My wife was asleep and hadn't been disturbed. There was no evidence that anything had fallen. Then I read Frank's post today and there was the explanation.