The inner voice/inner guide and its relation to our waking selves

[sac_boy]

I've had some thoughts on this recently and it occurs to me that the forum might be the best place for a long-form discussion of the matter.

I'm talking specifically about that inner voice that pipes up during OBEs (or during the pre-OBE state) to give suggestions, instructions, or occasionally answer those questions that you shout out to nobody in particular. Functionally it is similar to an actual embodied guide, except that it has no astral avatar of its own, and the voice seems to well up from within.

I'm deeply interested in other people's experiences with it.

Here are some of my encounters with this inner intelligence:

I was young at the time, fairly new to AP. I flew to a nearby road underpass to have a look at the graffiti. In my youthful hubris I asked "take me to someone who needs my help!", as if this inexperienced human teenager was in any position to help permanent astral residents. A voice answered me from within: "are you sure?"

I said yes, and I was immediately lifted into the air by an astral wind and carried about five hundred yards to the junction in front of the regional hospital. The same astral wind then pushed me into the ground at that junction, and several feet under the tarmac and rubble I became aware of a terrible dark grasping thing, and a sound like twenty people screaming at once...I reeled away like a scalded cat and returned to my sleeping body in a perfect ballistic arc, with this inner voice laughing the whole time.

There was something beside me in bed. A humanoid figure, glowing a pale green, hugging my right side. It wasn't entirely human-shaped as it had some kind of branching tentacles instead of arms, and these were draped over my chest.

A voice casually directed my attention to my own left hand. "Take those chopsticks and stab that thing, would you?" Sure enough there was a bundle of sharp and broken black chopsticks in my left hand. I thrust them to my right and the thing started thrashing around violently. I felt fairly unemotional throughout this process--20 years ago this sort of sight would have bounced me right out of the state and left me shaking afterwards. Still this is definitely on the upper end of weird pre-AP experiences.

Then it was just me again, alone in both bed and head, and I was ready to exit.

After a little while I began to feel the pull of the body, too soon as usual. But then my inner guide spoke up. "Eat something," it said. I reached out and took the tip of a piece of dry grass, and placed it in my mouth. As soon as I did so, a kind of relaxation came over me, a sense of being unhurried and settled in my new environment. The sensation was a bit like that first drink after a long week...

Some observations about the nature of this inner guide/voice:

• It speaks from within, with a voice like my own inner vocalizations.
• It has the ability to carry me on an astral wind, delivering me to new locations with great power and accuracy, in a way I can't generally do myself.
• I have gone years at a time without (consciously) hearing from it. It does not take requests.
• It provides advice and instructions, but otherwise isn't much of a conversationalist. It definitely has a sense of humour though, and what feels like a chaotic neutral attitude to the world--like it's about as divine as I am, just more experienced in other areas.
• I may have met it once or twice in an embodied state, where it presents itself with my body and my face, just looking particularly youthful and physically perfected. When I suggested he should go meet my wife in my place, he laughed and pointed a finger at the sky, saying 'I don't think they would approve of that'.
• I have met several astral 'friends' who I don't recognise, but who react in amusement when they realise they are are meeting the Earth-me. They say things like oh it's you...oh you're doing *that* now... It could be that these are relationships maintained by this autonomous astral self. I have also received extremely powerful hypnagogic visions that seem like gently taunting postcards from elsewhere.

I'd like to hear about similar experiences as well. Theories even. My current working theory is that this is some astrally-aware element of my self that I am usually walled off from. I sometimes get the feeling like I'm borrowing the body for a while, like a teenager taking the car out for a spin. I've even taken over while it seemed to be working on something deep in my own neck.

Another thought (entirely speculative now!): we often talk about kids knowing how to AP from a very young age, and then they inevitably forget. What if this 'forgetting' is actually a kind of mind split, the construction of a memory wall, and this astral-competent aspect of you continues to build experience and mature along its own path? The next time you 'meet' this part of you is when you've taken over the AP mechanism yourself, as your waking personality. Then it advises, seemingly amused at its Earth-half having control of the astral body. The 'astral wind' and other forms of automatic travel would then be the result of this other aspect of you taking direct control to get you out of trouble or show you something of interest.

I wonder what re-integration would look like, if it's even possible. Would its memories and its mind simply be incompatible with a normal life on Earth? Is there some evolutionary advantage to this memory wall, such that it actually grows in during a specific point in brain development? What if this memory block failed to form correctly, what would that look like for the individual?

Is it blocked from communication when I'm outside of the vibrationary state or OBEs, or is it simply respecting my right to a quiet mental landscape? Perhaps it is entirely disinterested in what its Earth-self gets up to. Perhaps we have simply evolved to have this split (both as a human animal and a wider consciousness system) as it delivers some kind of unfathomable evolutionary fitness. Perhaps this astral self considers himself to be primary, and he has a sort of Venn subset of himself that he uses to maintain a life on Earth, which I experience as me. (Why, then, does astral projection work at all, why are we guided to learn things while we're out there?)

Strange that people don't run into this aspect of the self more often, though, even via deep meditation. Strange that it is so under-reported in general. It's definitely an area where I have more questions and speculations than answers.

[Xanth]

In recent memory, the only strange voice I've heard was while I was meditating at lunch one day about ten years ago.  I was sitting at my desk and my goal for that particular session was to try and contact Frank Kepple.  Well, a bit into the meditation I heard, clear as day, as if the person was standing right next to me, someone say, "Who is this?!"

It actually surprised the hell out of me.  I couldn't proceed with answering or anything because my desk phone started ringing and ended the experience, but it was definitely a voice clear as day.  I might have made contact with Frank.

But I think this isn't what you're referring to.

What you're referring to kind of sounds more like your higher self or something.  Someone willing to help guide you, even if that guidance led you to an uncomfortable situation.  It sounds like a parent who allows this kid to play with the light socket and fork just so they know not to do that again. 

[sac_boy]

Love it. It reminds me of the time I had opened up some kind of stable hypnagogic telephone connection to a random old man in the USA:

...I experimented with closing and re-opening this stream, and it worked. I could close it off (air sound away, back to normal brain sounds) and reopen it (air sound returns). During this time I was looking at myself in the mirror, still on my side, bathed in yellow morning light, but I'm fairly sure it was just closed-eye vision of the room.

I opened the stream again and there was someone new. A friendly, upbeat American male.

He introduced himself as "Rich Roymore" or "Roy Richmore/Mitchelmore" of Cornaldio. Again, forgive my memory--it wasn't a mess of names at the time.

I said "Cornaldio? Is that some astral location/other planet?"

He said "no no, Colorado!"

...

Quite soon into the conversation he said "let me just send you this" and a printout started unfolding in my hands. I was up on my elbow in bed at this point--most likely astrally without realizing it, in a close duplicate of my room. Page after page of information about Rich/Roy spawned in my hands, annotated here and there, with stickers with arrows pointing out interesting parts.

I love that edge state, where it feels like just about anything can happen.

[Lumaza]

I love that edge state, where it feels like just about anything can happen.

Yes, the anticipation of it is hard to harness, but you must. This is when you either move forward into or have destroyed the momentum that you had. You need to "passively observe" at that point, with an "air of curiosity". Allow your curiosity to draw you further into it and you will be! 

[Lumaza]

 I had that inner guidance as well. It's like the little voice in your head. Should I, shouldn't? Sometimes it can be quite "chatty", lol. Now it's my deceased wife that is in there.

 In the beginning, I was fortunate. After a while of visiting the NPRs from a consciously aware state, I suddenly saw my deceased brother-in law. At the time, he was the furthest thing from my mind. He was a good friend here in the Physical though.  For a time there in the NPRs, he had become a Mentor of sorts to me. He taught me how to navigate my new surroundings. He taught me depth perception. The most important thing he taught me was to "take it all in before you react". This coming in his repeated reminder to "passively observe".

 Once his duty was complete and after sitting at a bar and having a beer with him, he disappeared and has never shown up in any of my NPR adventures again. That is, he has never revealed himself to me again.

[Tak]

Hello sac_boy, I am very glad to have found this topic. I feel this inner voice speaking to me constantly during my last few experiences. A few years ago I was a passionate practitioner and I left it because I didn't pass the fear tests, I never felt that voice before during the practice. However now that I have returned to the practice "full steam" all the time that voice is with me, it doesn´t feel like my own thoughts reflecting, no, it´s definitely a voice that speaks independently, but at the same time I have come to the same conclusion that you, that I am myself, another dissociated part of me. This voice gives me instructions when I find some obstacle or gives me some advice (until now it has not made fun of me, it is not necessary, I do it myself 😊) I am really happy that in this new stage it´s present, many years ago I was so confused... now everything is clearer. I posted a thread here where this voice recently gave me an Ego lesson saying...

(...)"somehow "an inner voice" told me that this was not possible because there was no one who could interact with these people... that is, "I" did not exist at all, therefore there was no one there who could interact and talk with others. There were simply images perfectly organized through a creative mind, and life flowing in all its splendor, existing and being, but there was no person behind all those events, which in some mysterious way, happened automatically alone and in perfect order. I laughed knowingly because I knew it was all true, until I found it totally terrifying! And I open my eyes with a start." (...) -

 I have also discovered  "The Commands" and traveling through tunnels and whirlpools from the Void, I imagine that will be the Astral Wind. Now I don't know who specifically I directed The Command to.

Also like you, I have discovered that another part of me has an active and agitated life in the astral, of which I am not aware here, or rather, I could only be aware for a few seconds before everything ends, I caught me "with the hands in the dough" talking and discussing with my guides, also diagramming like an architect of life, my physical situations from the Void, etc. But being aware of this, BAM! To the physical body, a glimpse of what happens "behind the scenes".

My first OBE was at the age of 6, I found myself in my room outside of my physical body, this didn´t surprise me, I just said.... ok! I'm out of my body now (no one ever told me this was possible). I also had my first lucid dreams at that age and this voice told me that humans were capable of traveling to other worlds, but that I shouldn't talk to anyone about it, they wouldn't understand. When I was 10 years old, when I was afraid, I imagined a golden bubble around my body before going to sleep and I also knew that when I died, I could travel through the entire universe "as a ghost" or the RTZ. My religious education was Christian and beyond Heaven and Hell, no one told me that such a thing was possible.  I still have a long way to go, but I feel that it is like that, I think it is just as you say, we have parts of us dissociated and with a very active life in other areas of consciousness. I feel like my Earth self is being "educated and trained" by those parts, to remember what we already know deep down.

Greetings!