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Here is a different take on "Phantom Limb focus". It works very good. http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/welcome_to_astral_consciousness/how_exactly_do_you_perform_the_phantom_wiggle_method-t44583.0.html

You will find that you get back from this practice in general what you put into it. I see that you understand this very concept very well Hfeline. Judging by your daily practice that you have already created, you are very close to your achieving your goal. Just remember the whole key of any AP exercise is to lose your focus on your physical body. There are many different ways to achieve that and no one way is more "right" than another. It all comes down to what you are comfortable with.

Thanks Lumaza that post you linked to is very much a worthwhile read.

@Lucidityman

In my experience many times things are not at all what they appear to be.  If someone is dressed in old fashion clothes I don't tend to think it is because time has gone backwards, as much as my mind is just using this as a way to interpret the data stream which has no pmr equivalent.  My theory is the reason we see things usually as past (or future for some) but not current is our minds know we are not in present day (nothing we are sensing matches with our knowledge of anything 'possible' within current time), so obviously we must be sometime else.  Past I think for many seems a more realistic alternative to future, which I think visiting the future has an innate problem for many since we view it as not having happened yet.

Another example is humanoids, I doubt most npmr entities are humanoid at all in appearance, they are most likely something we can't even explain or ever picture in our limited sensory processing capabilities.  So we just give them a humanoid appearance of some kind, since in terms of consciousness interactions on this planet it is mostly with humans (some might say solely with humans.)  And most non humanoids are animal forms.  Not that things are confined to being viewed this way only this seems to be how most view them, especially early on.

With that said, "time" is "time".

But is it?  On the Macro scale Einstein proved time isn't just time but is connected to space.  We even tested this scientifically with the flight showing the atomic clock moving slower on the fast plane than it's sister clock stationary on the ground below.  In the micro world, our entire concept of time seems to fall apart.  I saw this because I don't think, and science doesn't seem to think time is actually as real as we think it is.  Tying this back to the topic at hand what is real is how our brains process information, which gives the illusion of time.  Because of this regardless of if time exists in the astral or not, or moves at different rates or not, our physical concept of time will always be attached to our experiences there because that is what our brain can decode and store as memories and sensory input.

I think time will be one of the last things we understand in regards to dreams and astral.  Problem is in a dream or the astral you can have a single memory of say being somewhere for hours, or traveling for hours.  Does this actually mean you were there for hours or just that you have the memory of being there for hours.  Like Xanth said sometimes time seems to move very slow or fast here in the physical.  We can look at a clock and quantify how much time something really took.  We really can't do that very well in NPMR.  If we are out for 15 minutes and it feels like 2 hours we really have no way to verify if it was 2 hours of "our time" we were out or if that is just what it felt like to us.

For example as I have been trying to figure out how to word this response it seems like about 10 minutes has gone by, really it has been 45 minutes.  Or yesterday I really wanted to get home and my 30 minute drive seemed to go on forever.  I would have guessed at over an hour if I had not known the time.  If these events happened in a dream or the astral I would come back and honestly said oh I was in the astral (or dream) for 10 minutes (not 45), or I was driving in my dream for over an hour (not 30 minutes).  Point being I would be wrong because I can't just look at a watch and trust it in nPMR so I have nothing to go on for how long an experience took other than my sense of time tied to my memories of the experience.  These can lie big time, you cannot trust them.

I do doubt if you make a clock stop in a dream it actually 'stops' time.  This is much more likely to simply trick you into thinking time is moving slower, thereby having you attach a longer estimated time to those memories.

There is only one obe exit technique in my opinion, it can come in any variety of shapes and sizes, but all of it is simply you using intent or will to allow your focus to accept being outside your physical body.  Doesn't matter if you lift out, roll out, let vibrations 'take you out', let your 'guardians or helpers' lift you out, use any of a billion visiualization methods to pictures yourself outside your body.  All the same thing, you simply are trying to well trick yourself into thinking you are outside your body, which then leads to you being 'outside your body' (or your focus is outside or however you want to word it).

In my opinion you are always doing something.  If you are familiar with the state it may appear you are doing nothing but you are simply letting it happen, that is something, you are making a decision to let it happen (and in this is also the intent for it to happen).

@casey

Great post.  I am just now getting into that part of the book where he goes into collective consciousness.  Your post brought me to oh maybe a year or so ago when I was thinking back on my first reading of Monroe's books (which were my first reading on the subject period.)  I remember being very excited when I finished JOB and in the beginning of FAR and then I fell flat somewhere near the half way point of FAR.  I couldn't believe what happened with TMI.  I felt sure Monroe's purpose in setting it up was to investigate the connection of the obe state with this reality.  And I felt what happened was he instead turned it into a company capable of making a profit by focusing not on the connection between local 1 in particular and here but instead just how to get as many people into the obe state as possible (and with the use of aids which brought in revenue I might add).  I was mad, I had bought all three of the books together and after FAR I think it took me close to 5 years before I would pick up Ultimate.  I'm over it now, it was Monroe's journey to do with as he saw fit and TMI has been great in expanding this field.

My point with that story though is that I think so many people do just use local 1 or rtz or whatever as a jumping point.  I don't know how many times I have read oh local 1 is boring and you will never go there after the first view obes.  Several posts and comments I have read have the view Kepple's distance phase method is so great because you can just bypass this altogether and get on with deeper 'more important things'.  In the end all of our consciousness's are here on earth.  What is the point of being here if your only goal is to get as far away as possible.  Not to say you shouldn't explore those 'deeper' areas but I do believe we need to not only stay grounded to this reality in a physical sense but also in a nonphysical as well.

Basically all that was to say I agree with you 100% what Graham is doing is a worthy cause and we should acknowledge and appreciate that.  Which is not to say I agree with all his conclusions and research, I haven't even finished the book yet let alone processed all of the information from it.

@ Subtle Traveler

Thanks for the Bob Peterson resource, I am familiar with him as a writer (though I haven't read any of his books personally) but had no idea he had so many (or any) book reviews.

As far as Graham Nicholls I am in the middle of reading his newest book.  I am enjoying it so far, about half way through.  I feel it could of used a better title as it really isn't a tutorial based book, and all the induction techniques are in the back in an appendix (some of them are variations common methods, which he points out) some of them are pretty new though.  He has one called the G technique where you you basically do the same thing pilots do to move blood into their brains to prepare for G-forces (where he got the name G technique from), this causes your muscles to become exhausted and it puts your brain into a 'heightened state of awareness'.

So far the book is not at all what I expecting, though it is more interesting so this has been a welcome surprise.

@Trepkos

I was just wondering if you would mind clarifying something for me.  When you talk about 'contraction' being less powerful are you saying as an individual becomes use to using it, it loses it's power (desensitization) or are you saying that because it is widely used by others around the world this will make it less powerful for an individual from the beginning when they start using it?  Thanks

This has become quite the interesting ethical discussion.  Thanks for sharing and starting this discussion kuurt.

@Xanth

I don't want to speak for you, but I am pretty sure you, like myself, believe this physical reality is really some sort of virtual reality.  In that case do we here in the physical really 'have genitals?' are we therefore not 'capable of rape'.  Very simply put we never can really KNOW like you said what is real or fake.  So doesn't that come with some sort of responsibility to treat everything as if it was real.

If non-physical is as real as physical than it does require just as real of an ethical code.

Some things such as shared dreaming are well documented.  How often things like this occur who knows I don't think any large enough studies have even been attempted and may not even be possible with out low level of dream recall.  This possibility may be really low but is it really worth the risk of giving someone a nightmare.  I'm not saying you should worry over every action you have in a dream but yeah I think it is important not to do things CONSCIOUSLY which you deem as non-moral just because you are not in physical reality.

@ Hfeline

Quick thing on building the reality check habit.  What is best, in my opinion, is for the reality check to be kind of similar to washing your hands.  What I mean by this is something you don't think about.  So even after you develop a habit for doing a reality check, say in the bathroom, you probably have trained yourself to always have a surface thought of hey lets do a reality check.  This is almost there but not quite.  For a reality check to be really effective you need it to trigger without a surface thought, from a more 'basic' or 'deeper' level of your brain.  Kind of hard to explain but lets say you are having a problem with work or school or a relationship, whatever it may be.  You go to the bathroom and that issue is taking up all your surface thoughts, you are concentrating 100% on it.  Do you still do your reality check in the background, without ever having it triggered by a surface thought?  Or do you miss that reality check.  When you still do the reality check without thinking about it on the surface, this is I feel when the reality check starts to really become effective in triggering LD.

This bring up an interesting point about thought in general.  The washing hands example is not quite the same because you can train yourself to wash your hands without thinking about it, it takes practically no awareness of the act.  In the reality check we still need awareness and thought behind it, just not surface thought.  Without awareness you will just do the reality check in your dream, your hands will melt or become swords or whatever, but you will not analyze this and just go about the dream.  If you remember the dream chances are you will wake up upset you did your reality check but it didn't trigger a LD.

I have been trying to figure out how to describe thoughts that aren't thoughts.  My best example I can up with is this (feel free to let me know anyone if you disagree).  Sit down and clear your mind of surface thoughts.  Now move your hands around, this shouldn't be too hard to do without a surface thought popping up if you do it quickly and have just a little practice with 'clearing your mind'.  What just happened?  You are thinking about moving your hands around, they are not doing it out of habit or randomly, however you never had a surface 'thought' about it.  I may be the only one but I do this sometimes and analyze it just because I find the whole concept of thinking without thinking totally fascinating.  Anyways this I believe it is good to shoot for your reality check to be.  This thought, which isn't mindless auto-pilot, and has awareness, but is done without ever needing any surface thought and indeed can be done while your surface thoughts are completely occupied by something else.

Great idea to add some motivation and intent to your early projections.  I would think perhaps using a distance phasing rundown (Kepple method) which takes place in your desired 'universe' might be a potentially successful method to achieve this.

As far as how 'real vs fake' imagined thoughts are.  This is not something, I believe, anyone really knows with any certainty.  The idea of this though is not new.  Several popular books and movie even deal with this concept of how imagined things are real.  This idea is something author Neil Gaiman visits (he wrote Stardust if you saw that flick) in many of his books/comics (American Gods, Sandman).  In regards to the Harry Potter universe being more real because it is more popular.  I think the more common view is it is active thought, so the Harry Potter universe would have been more real back when the books and movies were just coming up and many more people were thinking about it.

One interesting experiment would be waiting for say a movie premier or book release of a fantasy setting you are interested in and then seeing if you have more success reaching it during the short window after release when much thought is being given it.

In the end however my guess is you are going to have the most success getting to the places which are the most 'real' and important to you and how much thought others are giving to the setting isn't going to matter much.

Teach a man in the middle of the desert with no lakes around to fish and he starves to death.

This is not a classroom, there are not teachers and students.  This is more akin, in my view, to a study hall where everyone is a student.  Some students may have more experience and knowledge with the subject matter but there is not a professor that holds the answer key.  Just like any study hall, you ask a question, people around will give you their perspective on it and you take what makes sense, and leave out what doesn't to you.  Or if someone has an idea you haven't though of you think about it, maybe do some research and decide if you agree with it.

I'm not sure I am understanding you correctly but it sounds to me like you are suggesting if someone says something we don't agree with we should just say great job keep at it and not give the perspective we see as correct.  This does not lead to advancement.  I play guitar, I jam with people.  If I learn a new rhythm and go jam with them and show them my new rhythm, and it is off or missing something.  I don't expect them to say awesome rhythm man way to go and just leave it at that.  This doesn't lead to me becoming any better of a musician.  I expect them to say awesome rhythm, but you are slightly off here and here and then show me how to correct it and help me in a supportive fashion.  This is not the same as just agreeing blindly with everything I do and play as being correct.

Yes I do agree with you experiences are personal and there is no right or wrong experience.  I don't share experiences and I try not to comment directly on what anybody else's experience means, as I believe this taints the experience's meaning which is interpreted by you, for you.  Who knows how many people have had their 'obe' experiences altered by the fact they were expecting them to match up with Robert Monroe's or somebody else's who they had read.  This is one of the issues I have with using consensus data from TMI.  If you have listened to the gateway tapes you pretty much are prepared through the tapes and told much of what to expect or what the experiences mean.  TMI affirmation is a full paragraph in which you state your belief in Monroe's style of obe.  Over and over again.  Of course once these people actually have the experiences they are going to be very similar.  This says more about the power of hypnosis and suggestion than it does that their experiences are universal.

So going back to the fishing analogy.  Before you teach someone to fish you should probably make sure they have access to water, and that the water has readily available edible fish in it.  Then you need to make sure they know A successful method of fishing.  You should not try and force your method of fishing if they naturally have a different one as long as their's is valid.  If they are trying to fish by dangling their feet in the water and trying to sandwich the fish in between their feet, you probably need to show them another way.

In closing my point is there needs to be a balance.  You can't just say good job to any idea if that idea seems to you to have no merit, you would be nothing short of straight up lying.  However if the idea has merit but isn't your cup of tea, sure just get out of the way.  One example is chakras and the more direct interpretation of eastern energy body and planes structure.  Not really my cup of tea.  However I would never tell someone using this is wrong, first off I don't know it isn't correct, and second off it is well documented to be an effective model to use.  So sure if it resonates with you, go for it.  On the flip side if someone directly asked what do I think of chakras I'm not going to say I they are the best thing ever and they explain everything fully.

There is such a thing as being wrong.  If someone said the best way for the average person to learn to have an obe experience is to do a handstand and then hum the national anthem to themselves until their body floats up to the ceiling.  This statement is wrong.

Welcome!  Hopefully the site will be an asset to your explorations as it has for me.

You meet "entities" every day of your life... you simply call them "humans".  There's no difference though. 

Might be a little more careful about kicking them though, usually frowned upon

First off let me apologize, you clearly took what I said as a personal attack, and I see what you saw it that way.  It was not meant to be so.

My comment was in response to your question about 'If I behavior good will I get to higher levels?", period.  And yes, I do believe if you behavior merely to gain access to a 'higher' realm it is both manipulative and deceitful, and no it is not likely to work.  The deceit here is not with the purpose of harming someone, or to be a bad person.  It is more a form of self deceit and manipulation.  We often buy into the physical view if we behavior a certain way, we are that way.  What we earn we earn with our actions.  Our actions are not as important as our intent in the 'astral'.  It is my view everyone struggles with this, without exception.  The extent people struggle with it varies though.

I do not think it is highly unlikely, definitely not provable, that all of physical reality and all of us could not be some type of 'though form' in some way.  Truth is no one knows how 'real' or 'fake' thought forms are, so yes I do think we probably owe them some degree of respect.  Also it goes beyond the questions of wether or not it is right or wrong to treat them this way.  In the end regardless of what they are, they represent real people (even if they are only your unconscious manifestation of real people), so yes the way you naturally want to treat them matters.

Also might want to look not only at your fears but your motives.  You say you want to be filled with love, which is a good thing don't get me wrong, but this also is kind of vague.  There could be any number of motives for wanting this.  I am not trying to judge your motive any way here, and I honestly don't even think it is important that you share with us what your motive is.  But what is important is that you are open and honest with yourself about why you are seeking this.

Motives are very powerful and can cause barriers just as fears can.  They can even give rise to new fears.

Usually people are in too big of a hurry.  Working out these fears and motives and removing their barriers for most of us takes much more time than learning the how (techniques and methods) of projection.  There are ways to work around these barriers without removing them, one being using dreams as a backdoor, and although this may lead to quicker success it will also be limited success.  Most people who take this route will realize they only can get 'one foot into the door' so to speak and are then blocked from entering further.  They will soon become bored with this introductory level of experience and the whole non physical becomes just a quickly forgotten short lived hobby.  Those who deal with these things first may take longer to come to 'success (as measured by obe activity)' however once they come across that success they will be able to advance much quicker and gain much more.

It is like learning to play guitar through guitar hero.  Sure you will learn a little bit, you will know the absolute basics of rhythm and how to pluck a string, push down with your fingers.  You will definitely feel more accomplished quicker.  In just a few days you can be pumping out 3 or 4 stars on songs, getting achievements left and right.  You get an instant satisfaction.  However when this becomes boring and you go to learn on a real guitar, you will be far behind someone who spent that same amount of time learning the basics of the real guitar.  Some overcome this and stick with the guitar and just say oh well, I'm not as advanced as I could be but I don't care I'm sticking with it.  Most will either go back to their simple guitar hero limited experience or give up on music all together.  Kind of a weird analogy but I think it works and is actually pretty accurate.

I feel I got a little off topic there but I hope some of it is helpful.

Simply behaving 'good' will get you nowhere.  It isn't about behaving, it is about being.  It isn't about what you do, it is about who you are.  Manipulation and deceit of our true motives does not yield very good results outside of this physical reality.  Everyone here hides behind a false mask.  Usually the mask we present to ourselves is the worse of these.  The first step is to confront this mask you are presenting to yourself and eliminate it.  Then deal with and confront the real self you find underneath.  Once this is done advancement can start.

So in short yes you will be mostly, or totally, blocked off from "higher" (the idea of higher and lower realms is just a model) areas, but simply behaving the way you think is considered best to get past those blocks will not get you past them.

@EscapeVelocity

I really liked that comment 'Even thought forms deserve a minimum of respect.'

Hard to know... maybe this is true, maybe it isn't.

There might be some intangibles in our experience here that don't fit into mathematical modeling... the best candidates for these being "first person experiences", like  "I feel too hot", or "I am elated". Now of course I know there are physically modelable processes surrounding these feelings, like temperature, and dopamine levels, etc, but I think your understanding is nuanced enough in this area to know what I mean when I say those are merely the periphoral "functionalist" explanations, that don't address the experential component. The mathematical model can tell us when a human might feel uncomfortably warm, but they don't have a prayer at explaining why the experience that human mind has is like it is.

I agree with you that this reality seems like a construct built from within another reality... but our minds are also part of this reality too, and they possess all of these slippery unquantified qualities...

I like what you are saying.  In the end the most objective thing we have is yes/no statements.  Either something is or it isn't.  Math is a model for dealing with this.  Either you are feeling hot or you aren't.  Either light is vibrating at certain wave length or it isn't.  If the light is vibrating either your eyes are translating that light or they arent.  Everything either simply is or it isn't.  How many yes/no statements do you need for all of PMR.  Well you could easily do it by every atom (who knows how many) or just as easily with one.  Is PMR this or is it something else.  But that doesn't matter because once we try looking at that way we are just using our model (math) to understand the yes/no statements.  I am quite open to the idea that the is/is not statement itself might be an objective truth.  Of course you would have to filter it though since we never actually directly interact with PMR (we being our PMR minds, not the NPMR us), only our interpretation of it through our senses.

I've said recently that the simple fact that you can use math to model *ANYTHING* in this reality is proof that this reality is virtual.
If you know the math, you can model everything.

Could not disagree more:)  If math could model everything, math itself would not be a model, it would be reality.  However concepts we use in math are not reality.  I gave the example of negative.  We assign negatives, we created the concept of something being negative.  There is no such thing as negative in reality without our definition.  Same with fractions.  If you cut an apple in half do you really have half an apple?  No it just is what it is.  We see what it is as a half of something because we decided that.  We just don't see things that way because math is the way everything is related, beginning from the second you are born.

Max Tegmark is a brilliant, mathematician.  There in lies the problem.  Math is not real, it is not tangible, there is no physical thing as math that exists or ever has.  But we treat it like it is an objective fact, and almost every scientist believes the universe at it's core is math.  Math is the greatest human invention ever.  It is the best model we have ever come up with for how the universe works, period.  Every single science and economy and way of life is based off it.  However it is still a model for how the universe works and therefore is limited.  Just like you can only go so far (barely at all) into chemistry using the model of electron clouds.  Electrons don't have clouds, it is just a model that allows you to predict how they operate under certain conditions.  Under other conditions we need a different model.  Math has always been our best model and been without limitations.  I believe quantum mechanics and the resulting creation of computers allowed us to process enough information where we are now at the end of the line for the usefulness of math.  As far as these theoretical physics and hardcore applications of it go.  I believe we are going to start seeing not greater understanding of how things work but nonsense, multiple worlds theory being one of them.

I do think if we did not have computers we would never reach the end of what math is capable of.  Math probably is capable of handling any input the human mind can come up with.  It took crazy amounts of data processing from crazy fast computers for us to start and see it begin to stretch and bend.

But who knows maybe I'm completely wrong, either way it is going to be interesting to watch.  I'll get more excited about watching a physics documentary than the superbowl any time.

EDIT:  I will add on that theoretically IF (and doesn't appear this is likely) but IF there was a single unit of something that made up the universe AND that single unit of whatever was uniform (all exactly equal and unchanging), THEN you could say math based on whole positive numbers is real and objective.  However even this extremely unlikely scenario still only allows positive real whole numbers (integers) to be real.  Anything extrapolated from a fraction (not reducible to a whole number), or a negative number, or an imaginary number would still not be "real".  You will never ever be able to take 3 of anything, subtract 5, add 4 and end up with 2.  You can never make it past the first step.

Just because we normally can control lucid dreams doesn't mean we ALWAYS can.  Just like I can normally control my skeletal muscles, but there are many many reasons which might prevent me from moving say my arm (fatigue, sleep paralysis, neurological, etc.).  All of these are internal (problems within my body) which keep me from controlling my normally controllable arm.  There could be any number of reason why you internally block yourself from controlling a lucid dream as well.

Or it could also be what Xanth said about it being a dream about lucid dreaming and not an actual lucid dream.  (level of awareness issue)

Hey Fuzzy hope you are doing well today.  In one sense you don't have any "vision" at all in the way we usually think of vision or sight because you must remember you have no physical eyes.  So yes you do 'sense' or 'gather' data in NPMR in a 360 degree fashion but what we are left with here in our physical experience and memory of the event is not the event itself but our physical brain's interpretation of the event.  Our brains are capable of interpreting data into a visual '360 degree' field but it is not what we are programmed to naturally do, it is not how our eyes operate.  There is never a time in PMR where your physical eyes take in 360 degree input so this concept is alien at first.  You said your field of vision was a bit wider than usual.  I would say that is because that is what your brain was willing to accept at this time as possible, and even that was a stretch from what it normally expects for visual input.  So I guess that was a really long way of saying it comes with time.  Some people get it much quicker than others.

Real quick just a note about the neighborhood looking like cardboard cutouts, as this goes along with what I was just saying.  You now are in NPMR and you can visually 'sense' or gather input at a much greater rate than your physical eyes are capable of.  You are sensing houses in all directions and at much greater range than in PMR, it makes sense this is overload for your physical brain to interpret and so it compresses it down to something it can understand.  It can't handle all those details at once, your physical eyes can't even focus on your entire field of vision, only a very small amount, much of what you actually think you see in real life is made up by your brain, our brains are great at filling in details so our reality appears 'smooth'.  So in this state of overload it goes and puts the input in as simple a form as it can to create a somewhat smooth reality, what could be more simple than cardboard cutouts?

Last thing about the memory not being all that clear.  We put more value usually on our obe experiences and memories and try to recall them more, so they appear more fuzzy or vague than real life memories but I really don't think this is so.  Think back about what you had for dinner 4 nights ago.  Can you even remember?  If you can do you remember every exact detail about where you sat, what you said, how many bites you took.  My point is memories in general are fuzzy and vague, just how the brain works.  We connect emotions to memories much more than we do actual sensory input in my opinion.  Also memories of any type are not always accurate.  Just think how many times you have gotten into an argument with a friend over what was said just yesterday.  You said this, no I didn't I said this and you said that... No I didn't.  We like to think we remember things the way they happened but most of the time that is not really the case, especially when it comes to details.  This has a direct relationship to the amount of time between the event and the memory.  This is why I think keeping a journal is such a good idea, not just for NPMR stuff but PMR life as well.

Congrats Fuzzy, awesome experience.  Sounds like your efforts are really beginning to pay off.

Cool experience, thanks for sharing!

I'm taking a guess right now that he entered his subconscious "training ground" (not sure where I read that term from... ) that people sometimes have to escape from to get to the astral proper.

Pretty sure you are referring to Frank Kepple's training ground.

@stillwater

I agree with all your points.  Though infra-liminal is his creation so it would only be on his site (much like hemi-sync is a Monroe only technology.)  The base technology (like binaurual beats is to hemi-sync) would be the neuro-linguistic programming.  I have not looked into it too much.  60 bucks is a lot for a audio download.  However gateway is 600 bucks and even the basic audio files to go along with Journeys is 80 bucks.  I mean you could spend literally thousands on hemi-sync products, at least he is just offering one download.  Who knows I never would of given him a second look if not for the Campbell endorsement.  Was hoping someone on here could save me the trouble of being the guinea pig with him:)