Category Archives: Other

Astral Void Forums!

With the seeming disappearance of the Astral Viewers forum, some of the old Astral Viewer members and myself decided to start a new forum dedicated solely to the pursuit of learning, teaching and perfecting the art of Astral Projection.

The Astral Void Forums

This forum is entirely dedicated to learning and teaching the art of Astral Projection to anyone wanting to honestly try. Our aim is to also get into more advanced discussions on the subject. Everyone is welcome though, especially beginners. Our prime goal is to get you exploring the non-physical on your own terms.

You can get there using the above link or the link on the right side of this page.
So please, drop by, create an account and post away with your questions or help others! :)

Addition to Your Non-Physical Perception

I wrote an article earlier in July on how our perception in the non-physical works.

Here is an example I came up with to further illustrate how your perception works in the non-physical. Meaning, as a consciousness, you can only experience that which you experience within the paradigm of the sum of what you’ve experienced previously. And it also illustrates the subjective nature of our non-physical experiences.

For example, you’re gallivanting around the non-physical in some alternative reality and you run into a “Dadipladouche”!!! (That’s completely made up, btw ^_^) How will you know it’s a Dadipladouche? Now, *I* know what a Dadipladouche is as I’ve run into one before (since this is made up, duh obviously I haven’t lol)… so when I run into one, I have something from my experiences to draw from so that I perceive it as a Dadipladouche. If I didn’t have the experience to draw from, my consciousness would have to scour my experiences for something that resembled it as closely as possible and then display that. That’s the interpretation factor of the subjective nature of our non-physical experiences. It would then appear to me as whatever it was that was the “closest representation” to what it was that my consciousness could find.

Say this dadipladouche was some kind of “big scaled creature”, it might appear to me as a Dragon or a Dinosaur, since that would be the closest matches that my consciousness could make in order to “define” it and make it “understandable” to me. The key here is “make it UNDERSTANDABLE TO ME”. You can’t experience something if you can’t, in at least in SOME SMALL WAY, understand it.

You might experience a reality frame and all you experience are flashing white lights. That’s not because that particular reality frame is made up of flashing white lights, that’s just because “flashing white lights” was the only way your consciousness mind could interpret that which you were seeing.

Now, say you have two people. They can experience the “same reality”, however it’s also very possible that they will each perceive that reality in completely different ways. One person might see that “flashing white lights” reality, where the flashing lights are floating, orbs of light randomly dispersed about… whereby the other person might end up having an experience of rows upon rows of car headlights pointing towards him/her. They both experienced the same reality, but the source of the lights and the nature of the lights are perceived completely differently.

What you experience in the non-physical (be it dreams, lucid dreams or astral projections/obe’s) IS REAL. How you experience it is a metaphor… an interpretation based upon the sum of your previous experiences as something that your consciousness can draw from for that interpretation to take form.

The Muliple Consciousness Awareness Levels of Physical *AND* Non-Physical Realities

A realization hit me this week.  It’s the realization that “awareness” is a property of consciousness and not a result of the reality you’re experiencing!

There are a lot of people who see all the different experiences (dreams, lucid dreams and astral projection/obes) as being all separate and different experiences. Well, “awareness” is a property of consciousness… and we can directly view it in relation to our physical reality as well as when we’re non-physical.

Some people believe that dreams, lucid dreams and ap/obes are different. They give the reason that they’re different because they “feel” completely different. Let’s compare our varying levels of awareness in this physical reality? Why don’t you take a look at your “awareness” when you first wake up in the morning? It feels groggy, drowsey and unclear. Now compare that to how your awareness is after your first coffee? And then again a couple hours later? They’re all varying levels of awareness within our physical reality… and the key point is that they all FEEL very different. They all feel like UNIQUE experiences. However, nobody really pays much attention to it because they KNOW better, right? We KNOW when we wake up it’s the physical reality… and throughout the day, we KNOW what is going on.

Well, all of those varying levels of conscious awareness take place in the SAME reality. I experience these same varying levels of consciousness awareness in the non-physical as well. Everything from the “Groggy, drowsy” (dream awareness) feeling, to the “just had a coffee” (lucid awareness) feeling to the “wide awake” (astral awareness) feeling. This tells me that “Awareness” is a Property of Consciousness and NOT a result of the reality you find yourself in.

How Your Non-Physical Perception Works

I’m going to explain how I think our perception (what you experience) works in the non-physical. Your non-physical perception actually works in *EXACTLY* the same manner as your perception in this physical reality works, but because of how the non-physical is malleable to your thoughts/expectations/beliefs/snap judgments/etc it can play havoc on the true nature of the things we “see”.

First, an anecdote that shows how my perception fooled me while physical:
I was biking home the other day, and off in the distance I saw a dead squirrel lying on it’s back and it’s legs sticking up in the air. Now, at the time I was absolutely positive that’s what it was… I was about 50 feet from it. As I biked closer and closer to the “dead squirrel”, I saw it for what it really was: a folded up piece of fabric, however up until that point, it WAS a dead squirrel, literally and figuratively. I fully perceived it as such. The object’s true nature came through because that’s how our physical reality works, I was able to distinctly identify the truth because in our reality an apple is an apple.

Now, let’s investigate how this same scenario would end up when played out in the non-physical. All the same stuff would apply, I’d be biking home and in the distance I’d see something. My initial impression was that it was a “dead squirrel”. This initial impression would then become reality. Because of the malleable nature of the non-physical and how our assumption/expectations/beliefs react with the reality we find ourselves in, even if I got closer to that “folded up piece of fabric” it would have retained that “dead squirrel” perception because I had formed the belief and expectation that that was what it was. In the physical this isn’t a problem because our perception, as such, doesn’t directly effect/change that which we see, but in the non-physical it’s a huge issue because our perception DOES change what we perceive.

Now, how do you stop this kind of perceptual filter from being applied? How do we see the TRUTH behind what we see and not allow our perception to colour/filter our experiences? Well, it’s VERY hard… and in some cases you just might not be able to see the Truth behind what you’re seeing due to the very nature of what you’re experiencing. However, the major thing you need to learn is to not make snap judgments upon what you experience. This is usually the first thing people do when they see something. As you can see it’s the first thing I did in relation to the above story… I made an immediate snap judgment of the “folded cloth” and assumed it was a “dead squirrel”.

This is something you can practice even in your physical life. Try to catch yourself making these snap judgment calls, then work on slowly stopping yourself from doing it until you’re in a state of passively observing. A by-product of teaching yourself this, is that it will also help you to control your emotions and thoughts. That’s the next thing you need to learn to control. Learning to control your emotions and thoughts will keep that bit of fuel from influencing your environment and in turn, will keep the experience as pure/true as possible.

Let’s look at the perils of what would have happened. Seeing the dead squirrel up close might have brought forth some sad emotions of me feeling sorry for the poor creature. This would have added fuel to what I was experiencing whereby something “sad” would have occurred… then that scene might have further fueled more emotional sadness which would have added more fuel to it. In the end, if I didn’t nip the original emotional outburst in the butt, I would have been caught in a never ending emotional filled loop. The only way out of it would have been to wake up and start over. This one snap judgment might have been the end of a fine non-physical experience.

The more you keep these three things (snap judgments, thoughts and emotions) under control, the easier time you’ll have directing your experience and making the most out of it. :)

My missteps over the last ten years

It took me over 10 years to make any real progress towards my goal of experiencing astral projection.  I was thinking about this last night and I felt it might be helpful for others to know the points during those 10 years that I feel were the prime motivators for my unsuccessful attempts.

I feel that the #1 reason for my unsuccessful attempts over such a long period of time was due to the term that Robert Monroe coined: “Mind Awake / Body Asleep“.  The problem with it, and a concept that I couldn’t grasp at the time was that the “Body Asleep” part is completely WRONG.  Unless your goal is to actually fall asleep, go into a dream and become conscious within that dream (this is called a lucid awareness experience), then there is actually no point where you ever need your body to be put “asleep”.

Your body isn’t put to sleep as much as you make it so that the input you’re receiving from your five physical senses is greatly reduced.  This begins the process for you to disassociate from this physical reality.  While that’s happening focus your attention ‘within’, which is away from this physical reality.

The second biggest problem I’ve encountered is that when I was younger, I was quite impatient.  I’d read through a book that had a dozen great exercises in it and then I’d go to bed and TRY THEM ALL!!  *facepalms*  Yeah, don’t ever do that… it’ll cause more frustration than anything.  Pick a single exercise and try it out for at least a solid week.

Another issue was that I didn’t make the connection between Conscious Exits and Meditation. If you want to learn to Astral Project at any time during the day from a completely conscious state of awareness (this is called doing a Conscious Exit), then it’s just about a mandatory requirement that you learn to meditate. This was something I didn’t understand back then. The state that you should learn to get into is called the Point of Consciousness (PoC) state. It’s from there you can do most of the classic OBE techniques from. I remember one whereby you were instructed to create your own astral body using your thought power… but it never really indicated what “state of mind” you initially needed to be in to do it. I haven’t gone back to that technique, but the PoC state would be perfect for that.

So yeah, hopefully reading these will help you to move forward in the future… I’ll try to add some more of my missteps as I think of them. :)

Forum Get-together with Tom Campbell!

So back in the end of March, the forum go-ers over at Tom Campbells MBT Forums had a small get-together with Tom to finally have a chance to meet face-to-face and have a good MBT-discussion!

Lots of audio and video was taken during the event. The video portion is still being edited and will be a few more weeks away… however, the audio has been released!

http://www.my-big-toe.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=5978

Head over to that link and save each of the audio files. Each one is roughly 200mb, and there are five in total. It’s almost 10 hours of audio from that weekend! Lots of questions by everyone, lots of answers by Tom! Great information! I highly encourage everyone to listen to these when you have the time. :)

EDIT: OH! This was my 100th post! I didn’t even realize until I was checking up on my posts just now. :D

“After Sleep Exit” Vs. “Conscious Exit”

As the subject suggests, there seems to be two ways of successfully projecting your consciousness away from the Physical.

The first way I call the “After Sleep Exit”. This is probably the easiest way for beginners to begin practicing because, when you wake up from sleep or a nap, you’re generally already relaxed and your mind is in that optimal point where your it’s drifting on that edge of sleep, without being fully awake yet. This means that you only need to initiate an exercise (two examples would be the Noticing or Mental Rundown exercises) to practice.

The second way, is a bit more practice-intensive. It’s commonly referred to as a “Conscious Exit”. It’s an exit you do from a fully conscious state, generally anytime during the day after you’ve been fully physically aware and active. This particular way requires you to initially put your mind into that “edge of sleep” state. This is what most beginners have the most trouble with as it actually requires a base knowledge and understanding of meditation. Without that base knowledge and practice of meditation, you’re going to find it very hard to focus your attention away from the physical long enough for your consciousness to make the shift.

This is where the Point of Consciousness State meditation comes into play. My suggestion for those of you wanting to learn to project at any time of day whenever you want is to first learn to quiet your mind and remove any sense of physical awareness or your physical surroundings. Any form of meditation should allow you to do that… I highly suggest google to find one that suits you best.

I’ll try to expand on this at a later time, but I wanted to get this down as it’s been bouncing around my head lately. I’ll see if I can find a list of potential meditations you can use to attain this State. In essence, it’s also called the “Trance” state. Trance… Sleep Paralysis… Point of Consciousness… the idea is to remove your consciousness from this physical reality and exist as just a “point of consciousness”. LoL

Tom Campbell on Frank Kepple

I also wanted to bring up the post that Tom made regarding the Astral Pulse’s own Frank Kepple. I have to give Frank a lot of credit as his information was what initially propelled my own experiences in the non-physical. Until I began reading and understanding what he was saying, I was in quite the non-physical stalemate.

It would seem that Tom was made aware of the Frank Kepple Phasing Resource on the Astral Pulse thanks to one of the members of his own forum and he had this to say about Frank:  http://www.my-big-toe.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2589

JoshM: Granted, your books goes into greater detail but it appears to me that the maps that are given by both of you might be overlapping.

Tom: I did read over Frank’s posts — interesting that he cut up consciousness-space into four areas after declaring that there was no separation within consciousness. Everything he said was driven by genuine experience — Frank is a good explorer. Of course there is overlap — we (and everyone else) are exploring the same larger reality — there should be major overlap. The difference is the extent of our experience, the context or structure we place that experience within, and how we communicate that structure to others. Each of these reflect the uniqueness of the explorer — his beliefs and interpretations.

JoshM: I am wondering if his description of what he calls “Focus 4″ related to what you are talking about when you talk of the need to go beyond OBEs and go “out of your mind”.

Tom: Yes, it is — that is one description of it. I find his Focus 3 and 4 to be defined rather narrowly. The superset of the larger reality is bigger yet.

JoshM: A description I once read of this place he labeled “Focus 4″ was that it felt like you were losing your mind.

Tom: That feeling is only temporary — until one gets oriented and accustomed to that mode of awareness and existence — then it becomes much like any other reality frame — only different.

JoshM: Am I way off base and making a connection where none exists?

Tom: No, you are on target. One reality, many views and perspectives, each necessarily limited and structured by the mind of the beholder.

Tom C

So it would seem that Tom is very respectful of Franks experiences and even goes as far as to call him a “good explorer”. The rest of the thread is equally interesting.

Enjoy!

Regarding Binaural Beats – Tom Campbell

Someone brought my attention to a post on Tom Campbells “My Big TOE” forums that he wrote up regarding the use of Binaural Beats.  As most people already know, Tom was instrumental in the initial creation of the Monroe Laboratories regarding their original Explorer Team’s efforts of exploring Consciousness.

They essentially took the book that was already written regarding Binaural Beats and began to add to it and refine it.

This post that I’m going to link to you here is a great place for people wanting to start out with Binaurals to assist them in their meditations or Non-physical exploration: http://www.my-big-toe.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=5056&p=22957&hilit=binaural+beat#p22957

One can use binaural beats to encourage OOBE, remote viewing, or healing ability.

You can purchase Hemi-synch, a professional mix of binaural beats and other sounds (Google “The Monroe Institute”) or you can make your own binaural beat audio file for free. Which is better? Only you can answer that with experimentation — everyone is different. Both have the ability to help you learn to be a good meditator. Many individuals find binaural beats helpful, some don’t. Google “binaural beat” and find a site that lets you make your own customized audio file for free.

The binaural beat frequency is the difference between two base frequencies. A pure tone generated at the base frequency goes in one ear and the base frequency plus the desired beat frequency goes in the other ear (using stereo headphones). The two tones combine in the brain producing a “beat” frequency that is the difference between the two pure tones. This beat frequency (which you can “hear”) drives your brain wave pattern toward the beat frequency, thus inducing an altered state of consciousness similar to a very effective and practiced meditation state.

If you already know how to meditate you won’t need to ramp in and out. Make several binaural beat stereo audio files using different base frequencies and use each for a month to pick the one you like best.

Some suggestions: 100 Hz and 104 Hz; 500Hz and 504Hz; 2000Hz and 2004; 5000Hz and 5004Hz These different base frequencies will all produce a 4 Hz binaural beat. Males tend to like the lower frequencies and females the higher.

You can try a slightly slower beat (difference between frequencies) of 3.75 or 3.8 instead of 4 later on if you get to that level of refinement.

Experiment. Continue to experiment always, but don’t jump between things too quickly. Take the long view …take your time .. don’t rush the process.

Many people, especially in the beginning, want to ease themselves into and out of the 4Hz theta brainwave state. This softening and slowing the transition to and from the desired theta state of 4 Hz (to make it easier to follow) is called ramping. The ramp going in from beta to theta should be slow and gradual enough for you to follow. The ramp coming out from theta back to beta can be much quicker and steeper. On and off ramps are individual.

A typical relaxed, focused in the physical, awake state is in the beta region (20 to 15 Hz) A typical meditation state is in the alpha-theta region (somewhere between 14 to 7 Hz). To encourage OOBE or remote viewing, or healing ability, you want to be in the theta region at about 4 Hz or slightly less (3.75 Hz to 3.8Hz).

If you are a good meditator you don’t need ramps at all.

If you are fair, start in the alpha region and step down in 1 Hz steps from 10Hz to 4Hz to theta. Each step should last anywhere from 30 sec to 3 minutes depending on how quickly you can follow (better meditators follow more quickly).

If you are poor at meditation, start in the mid beta region and step down in 1 Hz steps from beta at 20Hz to theta at 4Hz. Each step should last anywhere from 30 sec to 3 minutes depending on how quickly you can follow. Lower your starting beat frequency as you get better at it.

Once you are in the 4 Hz theta state that is your goal, stay there for a half hour to two hours — that’s enough. You are in this physical reality for a reason. Do not use this as an escape. It is a tool, as is meditation itself, for teaching you to eliminate the noise in your mind thus allowing you to more powerfully, clearly and steadily focus your conscious intent. You want to learn the process of coming and going to and from this 4 Hz state so that eventually you can do it on your own. Sometimes try it on your own without the binaural beats.

So you see, you have to do some experimenting to optimize your sound to your ability and then modify the sound as your ability changes. One size does not fit all.

Trying to sort all this out in a week or two won’t work so well. Pick 3 to 5 different configurations that span your personal unknowns. If you are a good meditator, use each one for a few days cycling through all configurations three or four times each. If a fair mediator, use each configuration for a week or two, cycling through all configurations at least three or four times each. If you’re a poor meditator, use each configuration for at least three weeks, cycling through all configurations four or five times each. Dispense with a given configuration when it is clearly inferior to the others (but not too quickly). Every three to six months add new more refined configurations that are converging to your optimum. In several weeks to a year, depending on where you start and how quickly you progress, you should find an optimum sound. Use it for six months to a year or two, by then it will be time to change it because you will have changed. Commit to a life of constant experimentation because, as you progress, what is optimum changes.

Binaural beats are like training wheels on a five year old’s bicycle — eventually you must wean yourself from the training wheels and take them off or they will retard your development by locking you into specific altered states when you should be free to shift states as easily as you shift your attention. Eventually, you will even let go of formal meditation because you no longer will have a need for the process. You will be able to accomplish the same thing (actually better, being unencumbered) instantaneously. Do not become habituated or addicted to this tool or any tool — or the tool that was once so helpful may turn into a self-limiting crutch.

Tom C

I bolded last paragraph because I feel it’s the MOST IMPORTANT part of it all. Please read it… understand it… then read it again just incase. :)