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Hey here is a little video I ran across, wonder what your all thoughts were.  It's a pretty standard conscious exit technique but with a few twists and explained pretty clearly.  I like the concept of feeling the ramp up time with creating a copy of your room "in the astral".  Reminds me of pieces of the doorway technique a little bit but with you making a copy of your room instead of creating a door.  It's about 8 minutes long.  One of the things I did not like at all was the it will work every time bull statement in there.


https://youtu.be/1qw_69q-v8Y

A while ago a challenge was posted about maintaining focus using something such as a spinning top and seeing how long you can kept your focus on it.  I have a new one around memory.  This one I first came across in "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep" by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche.  I find it helps with dream recall as well as visualization and imagination.

It is a very simple exercise.  All you do is sit down and close and your eyes each night before bed and try to remember everything you can about the day.  Not remember in the intellectual sense of I did this and went here, but actually try to relive the memory of it, how it looked, tasted, smelled and sounded.  You may find it is a little shocking just how little you can ACTUALLY REMEMBER about your day, let alone your more distant past.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O14VL82duh4&t=986s

Interesting interview done recently, about 4 weeks ago with William Buhlman.  I think my favorite part is the interviewer does a good job of asking practical OBE questions and keeping the interview on topic.  It was interesting to hear William say in the first 10 minutes he usually has an OBE only about once every 10 days.  It is also interesting at the end William says he doesn't really know anyone that has success with direct methods and he doesn't even "waste people's time with direct techniques".  Do you all agree direct techniques are a waste of time?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fcKezLW__Q

Whole video is very good but I really like what he talks about at about the 11:00 to 13:00 mark.  There is some microphone issues at the very beginning but that is really the only spot.

"Becoming awareness in these non physical virtual realities does not require you to be foggy, nor do you have to sneak up on it with process or tradition."  (Tom Campbell)

What I see and read a lot is people talking about the "best" time to have obe and how to increase the likelihood of having an obe.  This pretty much unanimously comes back to working around the sleep states. While this is by far the "easiest" state to have an obe out of, it does mean it is the "best" state to have it out of.  I think it is important to remember that just because you have more obes does not mean they are more meaningful.  At the end of the day it all comes down to awareness and starting from a low awareness state (even though you can increase the awareness) is not going to be as good as starting from a high awareness state.  I personally would rather have a lower success rate of higher awareness experiences than a higher success rate of lower awareness experiences.

Anyways hope you guys enjoy the video

I have been thinking lately about what the purpose of the area referred to as 'local 1' or the 'the real time zone' or the here-now area of consciousness is.  It seems clear to me it is not here for the purpose we use, or many attempt to use it for during an obe.  That is to say it is not around as a way for us to see other places, or gather information, or visit people far away, or prove the existence of something beyond physical reality.  Although it can be used for those purposes, if that was it's main purpose it wouldn't be constructed in a way which yields these tasks as having a substantially higher fail rate with very few successes.  That is to say it wouldn't have so many differences or reality fluctuations in it.

The defining feature of the here-now area (As I will refer to it as for lack of a better name) to me is reality fluctuations.  They are commonplace and everywhere, you cannot avoid them.  This I believe is because the purpose of the here-now is held within the reality fluctuations.  If our reality is a virtual reality which is created by consciousness and is stable because it is a mesh work of billions to trillions to many trillions (depending on what you believe has consciousness, which is a debate for another time) of consciousnesses then this creates a problem.  If our physical reality is stable because it is made up of the shared thought or intent or thought energy of all the consciousness which is apart of it, what happens to the thought energy which is rejected as part of our stable physical reality.  If thought energy creates, then all thought energy must create, not just the thought energy which is used to make part of our physical reality.

In comes the here-now area.  It exists as a place for those thought energies to express themselves and dissipate without having a negative effect on this physical reality.  It would not do to have all thought energy randomly popping into physical existence and then disappearing once the thought or intent which created it vanished.  By having the here-now, there is safe way for these thought-energies to manifest and go unnoticed.  That is unnoticed as long as we don't go poking around through obes.

I think this explains many things, such as why your thoughts screw up the reality of here-now so much, also thoughts of those you are visiting seem to create reality fluctuations, the fluctuations are not confined to just the projector, here-now is a shared area(s).  Fluctuations are such a problem in the here-now because they are the whole point of why here-now exists!  If having a place for things to express themselves which aren't incorporated as part of reality is the point of it, then of course you are going to have more failures than successes when trying to use this area to confirm things in actual physical reality.

Lastly I imagine it is likely there are many here-now areas which differ in how close the thought energies which dissipate there are to reality.  The longer you are out of body the further you naturally slip further from physical reality and so are more likely to slip into 'less stable' versions of the here-now.  This would help explain why when you first enter here-now you are more likely to gather information which can objectively be confirmed, you are in the here-now 'closest'(again for lack of better word) to the actual physical reality, there are less reality fluctuations.  This would be the here-now where fluctuations which vary slightly occur, however as you experience fluctuations or as your own thought energies manifest you naturally slip further away from this relatively stable here-now into less stable copies with greater and more confusing reality fluctuations.

Let me know what you think of the theory and if you have come across anyone else that has expressed it in a similar fashion as I would love to read their work.  Also would like to note this is a theory, actually not even a theory, more a hypothesis I came up with while thinking about what a valid reason would be for why here-now behaves and has the characteristics it does.

So my guess is the root of issue is has to do with ideas translated from eastern languages into western languages, where there was no really appropriate word for what was described so they used fear.

The net result is in this 'new age' or whatnot movement there is what seems to be an almost universal view that fear and pain are 'negative' and love and such are 'positive'.  This is extremely misleading to flat out silliness.  Fear and pain are not negative, evil, bad, or something we should be striving to purge completely from ourselves.  They are actually necessary and we would never survive long enough without them to even be capable of doing any kind of spiritual growth.

Lets look at some examples.  Baby who just learns how to walk falls and hits his head.  This hurts, he feels pain, which leads to a fear of him hitting his head.  Is this negative or bad?  Absolutely not if we didn't have a fear of our brains getting smashed or of burning ourselves not a single one of us would make it to adulthood.  If we got rid of the pain of being burned and replaced it completely with pleasure, this would not be good or beneficial to us.

Even as an adult I am afraid of many things, and it is a good thing I am (I also struggle with negative uses of fear too, we all do).  I am afraid of getting hit by a car, so I don't walk across the freeway during traffic, I avoid the situation.  This is how fear is suppose to work, it identifies negative situations and you therefore use it to avoid those situations.  When fear is negative is when we use it outside of the situation it is needed for or allow it to control us (freezing and unable to act is rarely ever helpful, even in a legit fearful situation).  For example being afraid of getting bit by a poisonous snake is a good fear to have, it will serve you well as long as you can recognize when it is an appropriate situation to have that fear (for example if a rattlesnake is at your feet).  You still shouldn't let that fear control you, but you need the fear to stay safe.  Even worse is when you fear a snake is going to get you anywhere so you never go out for a hike because there could be a snake there, or you are afraid of a simple corn snake that cannot hurt you at all.  The problem is not fear, it is your reaction to the fear.

Alternately there is a current thread about if you need protection or not and how it is based on if you have fear or not.  Now having fear of something taking over your body or messing with you is valid, you should be afraid of these things.  However unless you are overly worried about these things they are not going to happen during a normal obe, so again it is not the fear that is negative, it is your reaction to it.

Even most of the greats seem to miss this point.  Everywhere you look spiritual growth is accomplished by replacing fear with love.  I was listening to Tomas Campbell preach this on audio book just today (actually what sparked this post.)  It is very important to point out you don't want to get rid of your fears, you want to get rid of how you react and allow your fears to control you.  Xanth was saying almost the same thing about emotions in the previous mentioned thread on protection.  The goal is not to get rid of emotions, this is stupid and honestly if that was your goal anti-depressants are great at achieving this, doesn't lead any sort of spiritual growth, you need to change how you react to emotions.  Same thing goes for fear and pain.  They are not negative, they are positive and necessary.  However how we react and use them (often as forms of control and oppression, both physically and spiritually) is what we need to address.

I came across a, seemingly to me, fairly unknown projection author named Graham Nicholls.  I was wondering if anyone has read his works or used his audio aids or just know anything about him.

At first when I came across his page it seemed a little over marketed and honestly threw up a few scam warning red flags in my mind.  The only reason I stayed around was because of a book endorsement by Thomas Campbell.  Basically saying a nice book with real information in a genre with a lot of crap (paraphrasing but you get the idea.)  I don't agree with everything Campbell says but I do think he is genuine and not out to just make money.  I also don't think he would endorse a book unless he really believed in it.  I don't recall seeing him endorse very many.

Nicholls audio aid is about 32.50 pounds (So what 60 bucks or so) which is expensive but it is based not off of binaural beats but neuro-linguistic programming and claims to be able to get people to the vibration stage extremely quickly.  It is called infra-liminal sounds.  He also has a course which is 125 pounds.  The price of his audio and course are largely what threw up red flags but he apparently works one on one a lot in his course to overcome whatever block the individual has and his sound has been in development since 1998.  Maybe total crap but maybe undiscovered gold, who knows.  Doubt I'm willing to spend 60 bucks to find out on the audio, and def not interested at this point in doing a beginners course.  I might pick up his book and see if it is any good though.  Let me know if any of have read it, called Navigating the Out of Body Experience.

So I was thinking and am just brainstorming here, I haven't used this or even created it yet, so I have no idea if it would work at all.  If anyone has tried something like this let me know, or at least let me know what you think of the idea.

I was thinking the other day about how smell is either the number one, or right up with number one, for senses most able to trigger memories.  You get stronger memories from smelling something than from almost any other sense.  Think the smell of grandma's home cookies.  So I was wondering if we could use that to trigger a distance phase.  I was thinking we could combine in it with audio in a method something like this.

Pick out a smell, for this example I am going to use oranges, though it would probably work better if it was a smell you already do not have associated with any memories.
Now find a picture of a Florida orange grove, and spend a few minutes each day smelling an orange and looking at the picture of the grove.
Next create a rundown in which you spend about 10 minutes (maybe roughly between minutes 15 to 25 or the rundown) in an orange grove.
Okay this is the tricky part.  We would need to come up with a way to trigger the smell at the 20 minute point.  Maybe a mister attached to a timer of some sort.  I would have to look into this.
Theory is with you already focused on the same orange grove you have conditioned to the smell or oranges, would this help to kickstart your phase?

Second part is with audio.  Gateway already uses conditioning of sounds to trigger different focus levels so this is just trying to use the same thing to trigger the phase.
Pick out a sound that is unique enough you can tie it to your orange grove scene but not so unique it will affect your meditation state.
Just like with the smell play the sound over and over for a few minutes will looking at your orange grove picture.
Create an audio track that is either nothing or maybe some binaural beats for 20 minutes.
At the 20 minute mark have the specific sound play.
Now you have a double trigger, smell and audio, both associated with where you are in your rundown, triggering at the same time.

Like I said I have no idea if it would work or if it has been tried.  I know audio association has been studied a lot in general with obe but am unsure of how audio cues work with Kepple's phasing method.  If anyone has any ideas for the time release on the smell, something like a perfume sprayer would probably be ideal for a delivery mechanism.

It seems to suggest there is such a thing as a non-phasing method.  This is not the case.  All methods are phasing, in fact the act of phasing is what makes an obe (or projection, or whatever you call it) an obe.  Therefore all methods work to achieve this phasing.  The only difference is where you phase to.  In "traditional" obe techniques such as rope, log roll, "goto door", floating upward, etc, etc, all you are doing is local phasing.  That is phasing somewhere "close" to your physical body.  With something like the Frank Kepple phasing method you are doing the exact same thing only distance phasing.  It is all the same. No matter your method you are using intent mixed with imagined sensations to switch (or phase) your focus from PMR to NPMR.

This I think is important for two reasons.  First reason is I read people talk about local and distance phasing like they are different experiences.  I have ran into several threads on if phasing even counts as an obe.  Of course it does, the phasing is what makes it an obe, you are just phasing somewhere (by phasing I mean changing the focus of your consciousness) probably not in local 1 (or RTZ, or whatever you want to call it).  Second point is often, especially new learners, treat traditional obe techniques like they are something other than phasing.  I read a funny post about an interview by Campbell where he states people often read Robert Monroe's Journeys and then go try to roll out of their bodies all night.  This will get you nowhere.  People think they need to learn some magic trick where they roll out of their body without moving or even being aware of their body.  Of course this isn't going to work.  You are simply thinking about having the focus of your consciousness roll out of your body, which (just like any phasing technique) causes your intent to be outside your body and leads to a phase.  Even if you are "in" or at the same location as your body when you project you are still phasing, as you are no longer in PMR, you must necessarily not be in the same place you were before phasing.

This leads me to something else.  Several authors write about "partial projections" or getting a limb stuck.  This is crap, you don't even have arms and legs in NPMR so the notion you can get stuck because you didn't fully create your astral arm is nonsense.  I believe there is two reasons this sensation happens.  First is the fear barrier, you see your body floating outside where it should and so your natural response is to hold on with anything you have left.  In other words you create the sensation of being stuck.  The second has to do with what RB (Astral Dynamics) calls the mind split.  Now I think the theory behind the mind split is either very poorly explained or just plain wrong, but the actual experience of it is real.  Xanth and Frank and many others I have read talk about how your focus is never fully in one place.  This is true, everyone has experienced it.  Just think of a time when you were half asleep and you were having a dream but at the same time you were also in your bed and aware of your body.  This is what I think sometimes happens when you do what I call local phasing projections.  The closer you are to your body the harder time your mind has with accepting the phase and you end up with a split focus, Eventually one wins out and either you are off to have an adventure or back in your body.  This I think this is much more likely than the complicated shadow memory multiple feedback mind-split RB talks about.

So to sum up my belief is all projections are a "phasing method" using the same tools (intent and sensations or perceived sensations) in order to cause a change in "where" your focus is.  Hopefully some will find this helpful.

EDIT:  This post is to help clarify how phasing relates to "traditional" or local obe projections.  I do believe the concept that all obe's are a form of phasing is the best current model we have for understanding obe, I however cannot take credit for coming up with the idea myself.  Many people (probably going back thousands of years) have thought of obe in this fashion.  The modern term phasing is thought to be coined by author and TMI founder Robert Monroe.

So all this talk about Titor and time travel made me think about something I came across a few years ago.  We often are at odds with proving consciousness from a scientific viewpoint but we do have one piece of ammunition.  It is the double slit experiment.  Now I had heard and read and watched in documentaries probably 10 or more explanations of the double slit experiment and it never made sense to me.  I always thought I just must not have a deep enough math and physics background required to understand it.  Until I came across this great youtube video from an amazing British physicist who explains it plainly.  Basically what the double slit experiment shows, or at least lends strong support to, is the notion that conscious observation and recording changes the way physical matter behaviors.  More than that, it actually changes reality from a probability wave into physical matter.  Einstein once said he preferred to think the moon was there whether he was looking at it or not.  This is probably not the case, in that if no one is looking at the moon it most likely only exists as a probability wave and not actual matter.  This opens the question of did the universe, time, and physical matter reality actually exist before consciousness.

Anyways I thought it might be nice if anyone wants to be able to back up their claim for consciousness with some scientific data.  Here is the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9tKncAdlHQ

So whenever I read a book, even nonfiction books, I spend at least a little bit of time researching who the author is.  I believe it is important to know where someone comes from and it clues you into their motivations and you can gain a lot more from your reading.  Not to mention you can objectively verify things they have said are true about themselves.  This is especially important when what they write comes from personal experience.  After all if you walked into a classroom and the professor said he had a Ph.D in Physics, but you discovered he really had only a high school diploma, you probably would not listen to what he said much.

So after reading Frank's phasing method I decided to figure out who he was thinking it would eat up an hour or two of my life.  That was not to be the case.  Literally dozens of hours have gone into this.  In case you don't know Frank Kepple came onto the forums in 2002.  I don't know what he originally wrote as his first 600 or so posts were deleted from the Astral Pulse servers (servers did not have the storage back then they have now I am guessing and posts were not kept forever).  His last post was on September 17, 2005 and his last recorded login was October 6th, 2005.  Nine years after his abrupt disappearance he is probably still known as the greatest online contributor to the world of Astral Projection.  Most notability he is known for the phasing model of projecting, along with a structure of consciousness which is rooted in the Focus system Monroe created.  Just like Monroe Frank Kepple gave his profession as audio (and mechanical I believe) engineer.  I do not know if his age was ever stated anywhere but He did claim to have over 20 years of OBE experience (in 2002) and said his first reading of Journeys was in 1977.

So now that we all know who Frank Kepple is, who really is/was Frank Kepple.  Franks last posts are, to me, a little strange.  He talks about having computer issues in a series of posts at the end of July and early August, then nothing until mid September when he says some health issues came up (I'm not sure if these health issues are documented in any posts previous to his last 3 posts or not).  Then nothing.  If you take his posts at face value the obvious conclusion is that he probably passed away, which is the most popular view on his fate.  I am going to try and keep this post filled as much as possible with only facts so I will not give an opinion on this.

What I will state though is that I believe there was never any such person as Frank Kepple, Married audio engineer from the UK.  Fact is several hours of searching through birth and death records show the last person even close to a Frank Kepple was a Frances C Kepple, born 1902 and died 1956.  I also looked into the last name Kepple and searched for various variations of it (Kopple, Koeplle, Koeppel, Keppler) and nothing.  Given he was married there should be at least a birth and marriage certificate.  I also searched through the French records as I know he had posted he was living in Nice, France around the time he stopped posting.  Again nothing, though these records are much less organized and complete than the UK records.

An interesting side note is the only record of any Frank Kepple in the UK is a television character from the movie, Bernard and the Genie.  This movie was aired on BBC in 1991, released in a limited edition on VHS 2 years later and has never been aired or released since.  If you have never seen it there is a copy of the whole movie on youtube and it is actually a pretty entertaining movie starring Alan Cummings.  Frank Kepple is a friendly elevator operator who is a habitual liar.  The main character tells him about everything going wrong in his life and Frank tells him a tall tale to cheer him up.  Then the main character says is that real Frank, to which Frank Kepple replies, no no it isn't.  This is either here nor there as far as evidence for anything just something I found very interesting as the only UK record of a Frank Kepple.

Really this proves nothing but points in the direction of strong evidence now existing that there never was a Frank Kepple, enginner, from the UK in a time period that would line up with the Frank Kepple of these forums.  What that means for how you choose to go about what you take from his posts is up for each and everyone to decide.  This is in no way meant to be a Troll against the memory of Frank, only a presentation of some interesting facts.

Lastly, it is worth noting there is one sole picture of Frank Kepple I have been able to find.  It was taken by Stephen C. (who posted here as Eol007) of London.  He states on his meetup UK page he met Frank Kepple in person and this picture was taken around 2004 (5 years ago in a 2009 article).  You cannot get a good look of Frank's eyes from the photo as he is looking at the camera but his eyes are tilted back into his head.  This would be strange if not for Frank's outspoken use of rolling his eyes back into his head as a Projection technique.

If anyone who was around during Frank's time has any additional information, or if anything in this article is written in error, please send me a message and it will be corrected.

If anyone is wondering about my motivates it is merely to share the findings of a lot of hours searching for who this Frank guy was.  I feel the fact that his identify cannot be confirmed is worthy of noting.