Good old Broken Files

[AndrewTheSinger]

These last few days I felt inspired to write this essay, got interesting ideas derived from experimentation and reading I've been doing, so I decided to put it all on text. Hopefully someone will find some of the things in this material useful for their astral explorations.


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Good old Broken Files


The astral world certainly doesn't seem to be the most suitable place to be called 'home', with all it's landscapes, trees and houses that disappear after a second look, but it's ever changing environment is surely a great ground for explorers, travelers, passersby and most interestingly, maybe operators.

Things over there are very much like things on Earth. The most common scenario encountered by astral projectors is to find people behaving just like they would in the physical world, this is, going up and down about their own things in total oblivion as to greatness of the reality that they are in.

Now if you stop for a while and pay enough attention to the strangers, you might see that most of them operate in a very predictable manner, usually in groups and involved with the same basic things, and this makes us feel like it's always our first day in school. It's like they are on automatic mode, completely inserted in their activities and supposed 'daily duties'. But remember, unlike here on Earth there's no routine in the astral, you might go out the door one day and see skyscrapers, then go out that same door the next day and watch the ships come ashore.

So, who are these people and what are they doing?

You can easily answer this by analyzing them, but let me give some pointers:

Do you recognize them?

If you're seeing a known figure, it can be the real person or your image of the real person.

How can one tell the difference?

Simply by their reaction in seeing you. Let's suppose you're able to make a real trip to the Moon, and, upon arriving there you are met with an old friend, what would you do? You could be surprised, greet, hug, be happy, excited, that's the most natural reaction of any real person. Why does one think the same thing can't apply to the astral?

When somebody you know doesn't have that natural reaction of being surprised and greeting you, you can safely dismiss it as it is not the real thing. It doesn't matter if you regularly see that person on Earth, don't forget that if it is real then you are both momentarily sharing a different state of consciousness. You should always be looking for a sincere positive reaction, specially surprise.

Another thing to check is their ability to maintain a conversation, imaginary subjects are poor in expressing themselves and their emotions, they might not even reply at all, but I'll cover this more ahead.

In the astral, a real person should always be happy and surprised in finding another real person.


And what if I'm seeing a real person who is unconscious?

Many dreamers fancy about waking up the dream characters and having them enjoy the wonders of lucidity, but find that they don't really understand what is being said, neither show any kind of emotion that could confirm that they are conscious indeed. Don't get frustrated or worry too much about this, actually, in my experience at least, there's no such thing as a 'real person who is unconscious'.

Being unconscious is like being a piece inside someone else's game, in this case, it is the game of the subconscious mind. To the unaware dreamer there is no will of his own, just the will of the character that he is portraying. Without lucidity one is just as real as the story that is taking place in the dream, for this reason, you won't find any real person in the dreamworld unless he/she is conscious, because if they were unconscious, they would be inside the games of their own subconscious minds, playing endless roles and characters, and wouldn't be available to you.

In the astral, a real person is only reachable by another real person when he/she is conscious, and not while involved in the games of their own subconscious minds.



What about the other explorers?

They are there, and we've learned that being lucid helps us access them or have them access us, but you can't actually see them, at least not initially.

The fact is that vision is a fantastic tool, but only when you're using it, not when you're being used by it. Consider this, how could a blind person become lucid in a dream?

For a start, blind people don't really dream like we do, they experience kinetic sensations and sounds, so that leaves them with very little to operate when most of the techniques involve noticing something different in the scenario. One thing they could do is to attend to weird sensations like floating and flying, which is the same thing that we do, only we add visuals to that.

Now I ask you:

If you are blind and you're in front of me, how can you know that I am real?


...perhaps by touch...


Yes, and what if you can't see me nor touch me?


...perhaps by talking...


But let's suppose that you're confronted with a very tricky situation where you're standing in front of a robot that is programmed to ask and answer certain questions, you'd still be able to touch it and "communicate" with it, yet, is it real?

No, it is a broken file.

Broken files are everywhere in our dreams, they are images of people that we have seen during our lives, and they occupy the spaces where the real files should be, therefore, what we can access through these broken files is very limited. When questioned, some of them may change into objects, animals, or simply disappear.

Generally speaking, in my experiences I could identify at least 3 basic reasons for the presence of characters, they were there to either:

*Aid: telling me where to go, how to find this or that, etc.

*Disturb: blocking me from getting what I wanted and from going where I wanted, etc.

*To occupy space: on buses, trains, subways, streets, school, work, etc.


Now a problem arises, the situation is, whatever they are there for there's one common result, they will be all around you, anywhere you go they will be there. It's not difficult to conclude that being conscious helps us escape from being a piece in the game of the subconscious mind, but we're still on it's board, and it's other pieces are there still moving around us.



Breaking the constraints

There is no use in trying to look for other explorers among the broken files, because the astral is specially known to react to our desires in the following manner:

1st) there's a desire to see, so it appears;
2nd) there's a desire to experience the visions, so it becomes, and we integrate them.

That would just end up creating another fake character. Also, it is likely that the other minds are still on their own boards, but if they are conscious, they just might be able to hear you.

What you do is send out a signal, a thought expressing your intention to communicate with another creative being, just like a bat or a dolphin would do in the nature to explore the environment. The primary idea is to establish a connection with a sentient mind, so it's best not to try to look for a figure or a location, but to wait for a special feedback, which can come as a voice, an external thought, a message in a cloud, etc.

After getting that positive response, it's possible to trace the source of that information. The order I suggest for this procedure is:

1st) Hear - send/receive signal
2nd) Feel - establish connection and trace the source
3rd) See - acknowledge the source

Below there's a simplified scheme of how the communication between minds can occur through the astral dimension. The yellow circles represent the fully lucid dreamers or projectors, the gray circles represent the broken files, the black background represents the board where the dream takes place, the blue background represents the astral plane, and the green lines are signals emitted by the minds that, after successfully escaping the dream thresholds non-materialized, propagate indefinitely.



Contacts can be requested beforehand, like a meeting with a guide, with a friend; can be induced by sending the signal while conscious in the astral; can happen totally spontaneously, however, when the dominant desire is more related to the physical experience (ie: seeing, touching), than with the mental experience (ie: communicating, learning), it won't pass through the dream threshold, and the subconscious mind will satisfy that desire by providing broken files and environments.

Non-materialized thoughts will propagate indefinitely outside the dream thresholds.


A promising route

Probably one of the most objective ways that I've found to demonstrate my intention to establish contact with an outside source is to use the astral telephone. Recently I've been experimenting with it and had some fantastic results communicating with unknown voices. For more than five minutes I talked to a voice and had a high number of very important questions answered, though I never thought I would get the answers for those questions. There's much more I wish to try, this is still very new. Often I get shivers while communicating due to the fact that, so far, most of the things that I've heard were totally unexpected, to say the least.

Ancient cultures worshiped oracles that supposedly gave them instructions straight from the Gods, some of those oracles were extraordinarily accurate. Now, the astral telephone might not always be such a trustworthy tool, nevertheless I'd say to everyone that wishes to find out how far can they delve into the unknown, go ahead and pick up your astral telephones! You don't need to type numbers, just wait and listen, but be careful not to let yourself be affected by what you might hear.

Five out of six experiences that I've had were positive, one specially was simply awesome, I couldn't believe the things I was hearing. One another was not so good and I didn't like what was said, the voice didn't seem to be very reasonable. All in all, it's a very interesting thing to try.





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Note that this is a theory, it is not perfect. All feedback is welcome, questions, comments, personal experiences that confirm or oppose these ideas, etc. I might update the text and add more subtitles as I find more information, for now I think this pretty much sums up my recent investigations and inclinations.

[CFTraveler]

Questions:  So the astral telephone would channel all the 'real' information for you to access it?  Is that because it's an intentional creation, and archetypical to boot?
Comment/Question: A telephone seems to me a 'technical' way to communicate, something that would appeal to a man (although many women love the phone, me not being one of them)- is there something else that would sugest or evoke the idea of this transpersonal communication (I thought about a seashell, but it's too lyrical and some people might not like it) Any ideas for an alternate communication device that may not be a telephone?

[T.L.]

I have to say it was well written. I know everyones experiences are different so keep this in mind, Im only speaking from my experiences. I had a problem about how you said a few things. One example is when you said "Lucid dreamers or Projectors". They are not the same things. Its almost as if you believe an astral projection is the same thing as a lucid dream and from my experience they are not. In a lucid dream sure you are conscious, sometimes not so conscious. The degree of consciousness in a lucid dream can vary. For instance in one lucid dream you might say well this dream is beginning to suck, yet you do not realize that you can actually change the dream. So you realize you are dreaming but do not realize you have control over it. Other times you can competely control or redesign a dream or the settings and add people to it. In a projection or obe though in my experience it is akin to being "super conscious" of course you can lose consciousness and be pulled back to the body and A.) youll wake up or B.) start a dream.  Like I said though each has his/her own experiences and their ideas and theories have to be based off that, but my experiences show that these two things (Ld's and obe/ap's) are two entirely different things.

[AndrewTheSinger]

CFTraveler,

Exactly, as a tool, basically it works for it's symbolic value. The most interesting aspect of the telephone is the possibility of receiving informations without necessarily seeing where they are coming from. Not having to worry about who might be behind the scene makes it very comfortable for us to simply accept that the information is coming from an unknown external source, it's reliability is also unknown. As I understand, anything that you can think of that could operate in the same fashion would suffice.

The seashell sounds like a good idea, a hole in a tree, a sphinx, a religious object to a devotee, or anything that can produce sound. I have experienced exchanging messages through a small ground level cloud that acted like a pigeon carrier, and also the suggested telepathic signal.


T.L.,

You're right, I also differentiate lucid dreaming from astral projection, specially by the clarity and realism of the projection, which sometimes makes lucid dreaming feel like child's play. Technically though, they are having similar experiences, for they're both asleep and experiencing an alternate reality, but with varying degrees of awareness, like you said.

I should have depicted the average lucid dreamer with a mix of gray and yellow, that would show the extent to which they are fascinated, and thus limited by the visuals. Lucid dreamers tend to be much more cautious about their surroundings.

This raises another question: If someone is half lucid, can he still make a contact? I'd say no, for he won't be able to think outside the thresholds, but he could probably receive impressions. I don't know how those would be interpreted though, since he's not aware enough to conceive anything beyond his domain. Maybe he would get glitches, like faulty perception of places and people, hmmmm...

Thank you, I'll make some corrections.

[T.L.]

My post probably sounded more critical than I wanted it to. Way before I could project consciously or lucid dream my grandmother died. That very night or the next I had a dream and out of no where she walks up to me and was trying to tell me something which seemed to be important to her. Like she was trying to get me to listen so I look up at her and half of her face is rotting off and it scared the crap out of me and I woke up. The interesting thing is that my conscious mind or whatever recognized that my grandmother was dead and therefore the rotting of half her face. So I believe that yes when you are sleeping even if you arent even really lucid people can try to contact you. Maybe even reach you but depending on your state of consciousness, can reach you or at least have you recognize that they wanted to reach you. So you dreams may overlap the impression or message what have you.

[AndrewTheSinger]

That's right, nice account of yours, and these experiences are not rare. Yesterday I had a validation that involved a message that was voiced to me by a character in a non lucid dream, and a possible glitch.

The dream was very short and straight to the point, I was given word of a kidnapping of a person that I will call 'Mary'. This saddened me a lot, I began to cry asking 'Why, why?'. The possible glitch was that there should be another person there with the character that gave me the message, I missed that person there, but even that wasn't enough to make me conscious.

When I woke up disturbed by that possibility, I talked to Mary's mother at about 10:30 am, and she told me that Mary was asleep and fine. I told her about my dream and asked her to tell her daughter to be alert.

Later yesterday Mary went to a birthday party and left her car on a different block, since there was no space to park on the block where the party was taking place. After the party is over, she returned to where she left her car, the alarm was ringing and the doors were opened. They have tried to take her car, but haven't stolen anything.