Messages

In regards to the Loosh thing...

Most people just assume that since Robert Monroe never mentioned it ever again after his second book that he figured out the truth of the concept and that it was based off his own fears or something like that.

You'd think that something as big as humanity being "farmed" of something like this would have elicited even a small mention in his third and final book. 

I remember reading in that book that he made some discoveries about the nature of the non-physical and one of them being that it's a subjective experience of an objective nature.  Which means that what you experience really happened, but how it's shown to you or how it plays out is subjective.

I'll need to re-read that book.  Maybe that should be my next read. 

Thanks for joining us over here!  I've always been very impressed with the quality of your posts over on the r/AstralProjection sub.  So happy to have you here. 

Welcome back to the Pulse!

I will disagree slightly with Xanth here and say that Focus 10 is described accurately as Mind Awake/Body Asleep by TMI. That never worked for me and was never my experience until one night, I had a several-hour NP/SP etheric/phasing set of experiences...probably brought on by a bout of severe indigestion. During this period, I had clear knowledge that my physical body was asleep and snoring, while my consciousness was free to roam as it wanted. I freely exited and re-entered my body over a few hours; an amazing experience. So, I guess I could call that a deep Focus 10.

Yeah, I've never been a big proponent of the focus model for this very reason.  haha

So, Focus 10... I'm reading the TMI Focus Model page, does indeed state "mind awake/body asleep" as Focus 10.  I guess I've been assuming this stuff all wrong.  I guess it's more of a deeper state than I first anticipated.

What focus level does TMI list "The void" at?  Cause I have always been saying Focus 12, the point where the blackness gains that sense of depth.

Ooooooh:

Focus 15 – A state of No-Time. Consciousness is now far removed from physical body signals. Linear time is no longer relevant to experience. Sometimes referred to as the Void or Pure Potential.

Focus 15!  Hmmmm... ok all this is going to seriously change the way I look at some of this stuff. 

I'm gonna have to mess around a bit more in those states and figure this out. 

Change that to "maybe I can stir up the old desire and do it again" and you will find more success with it.

 I know I harp on the "do" over "try" comments, but it is the truth. Change your words to "do" and you will see it is already "done"!

It's not exactly wrong. 

Just live up to your name. Become a "NPR" Seeker!
 
 I have found that changing your mindset in turn will change your reality. Visting the NPRs often will show you that to be true. You need to "de-program" a lot that has been programmed into you throughout your life. That being that you are only a "physical being". You are consciousness having a physical experience. That doesn't mean that you "have to" have that as your only focus! 

OMG, the amount of de-programming the average "human" needs to do is beyond disgusting. 

Chocolate chip cookies! Well, then he and I have something in common. : )

I read a good bit about the Hat man a couple of years back, and both my wife and I were very surprised that so many years later he was such a common experience. I actually read an experience where he was kind to someone. I don't recall what he did that was nice, but the person who was terrified at first, soon realized he was there for support. So, is he benevolent or malevolent? Even malevolent beings could like chocolate chip cookies! Lol.

Keep in mind that "The Hatman" is a thought-form, not an actual separate being. 

As Lumaza mentioned, he was most likely a fear test for you.  Just remember that you're as safe as you have ever been throughout your life while you were sleeping.  Nothing will harm you.  Always face things with love and curiosity. 

Seeker. I was recently reading some old posts that I made here in the past and came across this one here. I think this might just help you in your situation. Learning how to "hold" a focus is very important in the practice of Phasing.
https://www.astralpulse.com/forums/welcome-to-astral-consciousness!/new-challenge-focus/

Man, the stuff I missed not being around much the last several years. 

Thanks for this, I'll give it all a good read tomorrow!

Your body won't be asleep in focus 10.

Focus 10 is more akin to the kind of focus you get when you get REALLY into a good book or a good movie.
I'd suggest that you have 90% of your awareness still physically and 10% non-physical. 

Focus 12 is more of an expanded relaxed state where the void comes into play a bit more.  You'll start to get a sense of depth and 3d-ness to your field of view.  At that point, the physical/non-physical split is more like 60%/40%.  You're getting more into the non-physical, and you can still feel your body "back there", but that sense isn't gone completely. 

I finished reading this one the other day. 

It's fairly good, some chapters (which are all written by different researchers/authors) are better than others, but they laid out the theories, evidence and personal benefits in a very easy to understand manner. 

I REALLY enjoyed Robert Waggoner's chapter. 

My only beef with it is the perspective they took - even though they did mention several times that we don't REALLY know what's going on yet, but they kept expounding upon a materialist-perspective of consciousness.  Didn't like that much. LoL

But definitely worth a read!

Welcome back!  I'm also glad that we were able to preserve the forum.  It would have been a crying shame had the internet lost the 20+ years of knowledge we have built here. 

It's quite hard to find knowledge on the subject of phasing and OBE without a believe system or dogmatic principles involved.

Actually, at this point, ALL knowledge we have is "belief"-based.  It's impossible to find otherwise.
I *TRY* to remain as scientifically based as I can, but belief is unavoidable.

Posting not so much here because I have not so much to say, but always getting back here for reference and motivation.

I bet that you have more to share here than you think you do.   

[make]

but unfortunately I can't make the visuals coming to morph.

Maybe that's what you're doing wrong.  You don't make them morph, you're just watching and investigating with your awareness.  Just investigate, with a sense of curiosity.

It's like listening really intently to a train whistle going off in the faaaaaaaaar off distance.  You don't MAKE the sound happen, you're just investigating the sounds with your awareness, you might have to REALLY listen though.  That's akin to deepening your awareness towards those visuals. 

Hello Seeker!

I split your question out into its own thread so as not to interfere with Blossom's thread. 

I still don't get the Gateway-Tapes, how long you should listen to them and when to proceed to the next tape.

Listen to each wave until you feel the time is ready for you to move on.  It's really all about YOU and how YOU feel.
If you think you've gone too far with the tapes or you're not understanding them or making any progress, then you can always go back to other waves. 

I own the whole series since 3 years now and listend countless times to them, especially the first wave and especially the last excercise (Focus 10).
Never I felt anything special, no floating, no change in my dreams at night, no sense of being ,,elsewhere".
I just hear the sound and am very relaxed, and after 30 minutes it's over and I stand up.

You have to kind of engage your mind with the tapes.  There's no point where you just "listen", this is an active participation program. 

It's like when you sit down to meditate, you need to bring that same kind of engagement to this.

Should one listen to them during a WBTB, again and again?
(I listend to some binaural beats and guided meditations already with WBTBs, but this only created insomnia each time, so I gave up to do it)

Well, the wake back to bed method is more about reminding yourself to become aware *AFTER* you've fallen back asleep. 
So you wouldn't really use a binaural beat or any other sound.  Instead, you allow yourself to drift back to sleep, but while doing that, you're repeating to yourself something to the effect of "I recognize I am dreaming and become aware".  Something like that. 

I wanted to expand on this a bit...

The illustration shows that you can enter the non-physical at any level of awareness.

Would it surprise you to know that these same levels of awareness also work while you're physically awake as well?  The EXACT same levels of awareness.

For example, you could be so drunk off your butt that you don't or barely remember that night.  That's you being physically awake with a DREAM AWARENESS.

Your normal operating level of awareness in this physical reality is actually one of an ASTRAL AWARENESS - but to separate it from the non-physical, I call it the "waking awareness".  This is the awareness level you compare to when you're non-physical to know if you're astrally aware.

When you're reading a good book or get sucked into a really good movie or tv show... that's you being physically awake with a LUCID AWARENESS.

Your level of awareness really shifts and is very fluid throughout your entire day.  First thing upon waking you're groggy, waking up with a stronger lucid awareness.  Then some people might not gain their full astral awareness until they've sat down and had that first cup of coffee! 

All of these levels of awareness are a property OF awareness, which means they seem to apply to you regardless of the reality you find yourself in.  Each level of awareness, even while physically awake, come with a certain clarity or feeling of clarity to them.  While you're drunk off your butt, your experience might feel a lot like a dream.  I know I've personally experienced that more than once in my life.  haha

I've been REALLY BORED at work the last little bit, so I've been reading Alexander's book.

I'm on chapter four now...

So far, it's entirely written from the position of Materialism. 
I'm hoping that changes very soon... this was the fear I had when Alexander De Foe was doing his survey for this. 

I'm really looking forward to Robert Waggoner's chapter, but at this point I'm not very hopeful.  LoL

OMG and the fourth chapter starts with this drivel:

This chapter is a thought experiment about the potential for an evolutionary function, or functions, for out-of-body experiences (OBEs).

This proves that they're looking at this from, in my opinion, the entirely wrong perspective.  We'll never scientifically figure this stuff out looking at it from this angle.

It looks like nobody proof-read this book either, there are copious grammar and spelling mistakes.  That's a shame, because it really does take away from the content.
The other thing which bugs me is their constant use of the phrase "it's just a dream" - or something to that effect.  They should know better that we don't understand what a dream is, so using it as a point of comparison is completely and utterly meaningless.

Anyway, I continue to read... hopefully this gets better.  LOL

What consciousness is, how it comes to be and where it goes are questions that neurology, in its present form, cannot answer.

A direct quote from chapter four... which is a good start.   

I think it would be great if it were in schools. Even if it were only five minutes in the morning and five minutes after school before they went home. I'm with you on that. But I doubt many parents would agree. I think it would benefit young children a lot. Not many know how to sit quietly.  They are over-stimulated most of the time with television, movies, gaming etc...

I think for now, I just won't share my experiences with my family members. In the future, maybe. I'll just have to make that call if it happens. Right now, my sister, my son, and AP forum are it.

I remember my parents thinking I was brainwashing myself when I started to meditate in my early teen years.  Haha

It wasn't until years later that they realized it was actually a healthy thing to do - that it actually helped.

Nowadays my parents are more open with stuff like this.  👍

Most people know of meditation. I feel that it should really be normalized even more than it already is.

It should be taught in schools starting as early as kindergarten. I truly believe it would bring a new era to humanity.  Such a simple thing - to sit quietly.

Now, unlike projection, I am a bit more open about my meditations to people and the benefit it gives.

Prayer is also a form of meditation, you could broach that subject with your in law.  👍

Feel the waters from there.

[never]

I have a sign on my bathroom mirror that says "I am more than physical matter".

My ex came by today and I was dying to tell someone what happened last night so as I started relaying all of it to him, I happened to catch the look on his face. ut oh...  I put on the brakes,  stopped talking about it, and diverted the conversation in another direction and onward to another subject.  Thank god I had not gotten to the good part yet about being conscious inside my astral body while inside my physical body.

I could tell by his look that he thought I was stark living crazy, regardless of what he said in the past about astral travel... I will never discuss this with him again. 

Yeah, you can usually tell right away how receptive to this subject people will be. 
I'm always careful with whom I share. 

YAY FOR SSL CERTIFICATES!!  \o/

Glad to have you back, Szaxx!   

The thing is though, that if you can only experience a lucid dream after the fact, so to speak, and not while it is happening, what is the point of it? For example, in the waking fully conscious state, we don't need to be aware that it is going on by writing a journal the next morning. We know it fully and while we are experiencing it.

You're not experiencing it after the fact, you're just remembering what you just did.  If you don't have that full astral awareness during your experience, then you can expect it to be a bit harder to fully remember those experiences, but that doesn't mean you didn't have them.  I have epic dream awareness experiences every single night, but I don't fully remember them upon waking.  Whereby if I have an astral awareness experience at night, I remember it upon waking.

You wouldn't even have anything to remember if you didn't have even a base level of awareness, or as I call it a "dream awareness".

The thrill of lucid dreaming should surely be the immediate experience of it and not a later interpretation of it from vague memories of the event.

If this is all that can be expected of lucid dreaming, maybe all the time and effort needed to do it is not worth it.

Anyway, no offence intended to those who do it.

It's all good.  No offense taken, it's entirely up to you what you choose to do with your life. 

The medical study described, I read the highlights several years ago...and was not particularly impressed. These med techs stimulate the TPJ with some voltage and induce vague sensations of 'floating or weightlessness'...they then announce they have created an OBE in their patients. This is not an OBE and they apparently have never experienced an OBE, much less described it as one of the very many diverse types.

So, I don't completely discredit it (except for the experience part!), but maybe it does describe some limited aspect of how the experience may be translated and reported within the organic brain. But then, they want to say their experiment describes the 'limitations and constraints' of the organic system in defining 'SELF'...and I find this characterization as nearly criminal. These researchers, in qualifying some several synaptic firings to definitions of SELF, I find almost offensive...the study, as so many governmental studies do these days, uses the qualified language to say, the results 'suggest' that OBE experiencers are having synaptic disruptions within the TPJ which indicate lack of Self-indentification and awareness and mental stability...that is what it reads like...

That's pretty much my opinion on it as well.  Very clinical, yet missing the experiential part of the "OBE".
Although, they MIGHT have found the "trigger" for it... I always call it the projection reflex, maybe that's what they found.  The gateway, sort to speak.  The human brain must have a mechanism for triggering a projection in relation to consciousness.  Greater research is definitely required.  Hopefully they can connect it to "consciousness" itself, somehow.

Sorry for reviving am old thread, but regarding dream journals helping you to recall lucid dreams, I thought the whole point of a lucid dream was that it was lucid and experienced while you are dreaming it, and not just a vague memory that you write in a journal.

They can still be incredibly hard to recall after awaking.  A dream journal sets your mind into the correct state to bring those memories back fully and completely.  For example, if I wake up and don't immediately try to recall what I just experienced while non-physical, then I'm probably gonna forget it over the next few minutes.  What makes it harder to recall these things is if you wake up due to an alarm - or at least for me, it's much easier to retain my memories if I woke up naturally.

But yeah, a journal simply sets your mind into the correct receptive state for remembering them easier - it's not fool proof though, that's for sure.   

[nor denies]

To be fair to the quote, it does say:

"Again, let me reiterate once more what has been stated in Chapter 1 and 2 on the point that neurological information neither confirms nor denies the actual, or ontological, status of an OBE as an experience that occurs outside of the physical body. Rather, neuroscience studies show us exactly how the brain mediates the expression, and constraints, of perception as it relates to consciousness. What consciousness is, how it comes to be and where it goes are questions that neurology, in its present form, cannot answer."

Sounds like Alexander is defeated before even trying.  LoL

I don't believe for a second that the question cannot be answered, I believe that we haven't even begun to ask the correct questions in order to be finding what really needs finding. 

Does anyone happen to have a suggestion for a feature they would like to see on the Astral Pulse?
It might be something you've seen on a different forum and would like to see here.

I was mulling over a chat window/room where you could chat live with anyone who is online at the time?  Maybe?

Anyone else have any ideas? 

In my opinion, science needs to answer the question of "where is consciousness?" before it can start to tackle the question of what are OBE's/Projections.  Obviously, our brains are going to have an interaction when we project - our brains control so much of what we perceive to be.

I hope we make these discoveries within my life time - but I'm feeling like this isn't going to be the case.  :/

The perception of karma through the Western paradigm is problematic.

Ugh, the "western" view on most things always seems to boil down to whatever is good for capitalism. haha
So yeah, I'm not a big fan on most western ideas on things.

I just can't rationalize that we must suffer now to obtain a greater life in the next reincarnation cycle. Just my two cents

I couldn't agree with that statement more. 
This is probably the main point which puts me off on the western idea of what karma is.