The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

[TraineeHuman]

Posted by Guish (here)
I think some methods have focused on neglecting the self completely while some have focused on transcending it. There's still a chit chat in one's head but the effect of the chit chat decreases with practice and one easily recognizes the calling as it brings true joy, peace and it feels right.

As far as I have seen, the easiest way to get more fully touch with the soul is to let go of "the self", in the sense of any opinions, or beliefs, or "your story" or your emotional preferences or addictions. This is something we need to do occasionally, and even regularly if possible. Without leaving everything behind in this way, we block ourselves from seeing and benefiting from new possibilities, which are always presenting themselves if we only look (from a space beyond fear, or at the very least not too much frozen in fear or habit). There are many ways to do this. One example would be Byron Katie's method (www.thework.com), but good meditation is another example of a way, as also is the practice of feeling the aliveness.

When we let go of "me" in this way, what we're really doing is opening ourselves to the infinite, to the universe. Not having "our" self-centered thoughts, purposes, lights and consciousness there, what flows in instead are the universal purposes and knowledge and inspirations. These blend and harmonize with our "own". In this way we are in fact surrendering to the Divine will. It's all done through the soul.

[Virilis]

Thank you so much TraineeHuman for starting this incredibly useful thread. I just stumbled upon it, so still have a lot of reading ahead of me.

I used to meditate extensively a number of years ago, which resulted in a profound state of altered consciousness after several months of dedicated engagement in this process. I was overjoyed and gratified to be blessed with many profound and illuminating experiences as a consequence. I feel that I had reached a certain level of "psychic attunement" during that period of my life, and came tantalisingly close to evoking OBE's, but experienced difficulties with stabilising and holding that special state of consciousness to facilitate deeper explorations. The vicissitudes of life were such, that work commitments etc presented significant challenges in regards to finding sufficient time to maintain my meditation regimen, and eventually I wasn't meditating at all anymore.

I'd like to try again. OBEs represent an important "spiritual technology" for me, one that may be a powerful transformative agent in reconciling dualistic thought and experience. I have encountered a wonderful book entitled "Wisdom of the Mystic Masters" by Joseph J. Weed. The content and associated practical exercises articulated in that text seem to be anchored in the mystical traditions of the Rosicrucians. In it, he provides details on a methodology whereby "Etheric Projection" may be achieved.



I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on the potential efficacy of this approach. Perhaps some Avalonians may find it useful too.

Preparation
"1. Do not attempt this when you are physically exhausted, or have just finished eating or at any other time when the blood is likely to be drawn from the head to other parts of the body. This is important. Your mind must be clear and active, not cluttered and somnolent. Thus a full complement of blood in the brain is necessary.

2. Take a bath and cleanse yourself thoroughly, including your mouth and teeth. In a word, remove from yourself as much extraneous physical matter as you can. Usually a shower is better than a tub. This cleansing process is quite important, so do not neglect it. It has both a practical and a psychological effect, practical in that it will free you from both material and astral contamination, psychological in that you will actually feel mentally and emotionally cleaner.

3. Put on a light garment, a nightdress or a set of pajamas or a single clean robe.

4. Select a place where you will not be interrupted, a place which is also as quiet as it is possible to find.

5. Sit in a comfortable chair with a back high enough to rest your head, or lie flat on a bed or couch. A large arm chair is better, as a rule, because it is easier to maintain awareness in a sitting position. We are all too prone to fall asleep when lying down.

Practice
1. When comfortable and relaxed, take seven deep breaths. These should be even breaths spaced in a rhythmic fashion. Inhale to the count of four, hold the breath to the count of eleven, then exhale to the count of seven. The counting should be even and regular, never hurried, never too slow.

2. When the breathing has been completed, close your eyes and visualise the place to which you wish to project. It may be the next room or it may be 1000 miles away; it doesn't matter. But it is important that you know this place, that you have been there and are familiar with it in all its details. Then see yourself in this place. Imagine that you are in this spot you have selected. In order to do this successfully you must shut out your awareness of your present physical surroundings, shut out all sights and sounds, and see in your mind's eye the appearance of the place you wish to visit. Endow this picture with every detail possible for you to recall, the colors, the lighting, the arrangement of objects, the characteristic sounds, the smells, all that you would be aware of if you were physically there.

3. When you can actually visualize yourself in the place selected, look about. Observe furniture arrangements, people who may be present, how they are dressed, listen to what is said. Then return your attention to your body seated in the chair or lying on the couch.

4. It is important that you retain full conscious awareness throughout. Do not fall into a dream state. There will be a strong inclination to do so but you must resist it. The moment you slide into a dream state, you have a tendency to become an actor on the stage and not a spectator in the audience. Good projection depends upon your ability to control yourself. The dream state brings illusion and unreality. Therefore, stay awake.

Review
When you open your eyes back in your room, write down the exact hour and all that you observed. Later you may have an opportunity to verify your observations. This is the proper scientific approach, the attitude always encouraged by the Rosicrucians. Try, then test. Try again, then test again. And again."

Excerpt from "Wisdom of the Mystic Masters by Joseph J. Weed (1968)

I'm also keenly interested in regards to alternate methodologies employed by Avalon members, and their degree of success experienced. Has anyone supplemented such practices with meditation aids such as Binaural or Hemisync sounds? If so, which ones were particularly conducive to facilitating an OBE?

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=IVZG79y4lbk

[TraineeHuman]

Hi Virilis,

I read the book Wisdom of the Mystic Masters over 50 years ago. I agree it contains various kinds of seriously useful or interesting information. If anyone out there is wondering what the Masonic degrees before the 32nd involve, or the corresponding Rosicrucian degrees, this book, as also its sequel, presents a useful version of a significant amount of the material that's taught there.

With regard to the method you've quoted for learning to astral travel, I unfortunately have reservations about the use of visualization, in the following sense. I believe that about 99% of the visualizations (and also of all the attempted applications of the Law of Attraction, or of "focus") generally carried out appear to be carried out by the (lower) mind or by the personality. But the personality, and likewise the lower (ordinary, thinking) mind can't ever command or bring out or accurately imitate the soul. On the other hand, the soul is what actually does all of our astral travel (and all of our dreaming). The soul never gives away its power, but it doesn't enforce all its power either.

I suggest that instead of seeking to force the soul to do anything (which is also physically a nauseating experience), including astral travel, the right behavior is to learn how to invite it to graciously descend and consider your request to it to choose to astral travel (initially, for any beginner) when your body is asleep.

[TraineeHuman]

The soul penetrates to the heart of every topic or issue in our lives. It doesn’t see things just in terms of our desires and cravings and our dislikes and personal prejudices or preferences, the way the personality does. That doesn’t mean it pretends these don’t exist, nor that they don’t need to be taken into account. It’s rather like when we see a movie or read a work of fiction or listen to music and so on. The story or the music may, for example, be tragic, but if it’s well crafted we’ll enjoy experiencing the beauty of how such tragedy is portrayed. From such an experience we usually won’t feel sad in our own lives, because we’ve been absorbed in the story or the music and we’ve forgotten about ourselves. In a similar way, the soul stands back from our personal dramas and adventures, but it’s still following and understanding every move.

Because the soul is free from the conflicts and frustrations and constant uncertainties which the personality undergoes (the only true freedom), clearly the soul is subject to and operates from higher laws or forces. However, the soul is itself also of course going through the learning experience of observing and vicariously experiencing the bondage that the lower self needs to endure and ultimately overcome. The soul needs the personality to eventually somehow learn to listen to the soul's promptings, and ideally even surrender to them. For only when the individual has completed his or her lessons in the school of the physical world will the soul become fully unburdened, fully free. In Christianity we have the notion that one must be “born again”. Quite similarly to this idea, the soul’s entire task is to patiently bring about the individual’s gradual rebirth, into now having a higher nature.

[Guish]

Interesting. In Soto Zen, we are encouraged to sit in a very noisy atmosphere at least once a week to train. The point being that peace is internal. I'd recommend watching Samsara. It shows how a monk came back to the Physical world after 3 years of meditation. However, he got lost when he came back and was tempted by lust and even committed infidelity after he returned to a normal living and got married. The world as it is is the real challenge and in fact the place to be free.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=IvSm2Xnc_UA

[TraineeHuman]

Real spirituality involves learning how to be very simple in various particular ways. Not that this is ever by any means easy to achieve -- until one does it. Also, it's not just a matter of becoming simple, but of holding your state of simplicity while you allow the world around you to remain very complex. So it's really a matter of finding constant simplicity in complexity. I'm not sure what connection your post even has with what I've been saying about the soul, Guish, other than that the soul always remains very simple, and at a profound level. So I'll respond in terms of the theme of simplicity.

In a monastic type of environment, the external world is greatly simplified in some ways. In such an environment, it's much easier to find (relative) inner simplicity. (I say "relative" because one will still have many internal divisions, a huge can of worms at work within one, just below the surface.) But that doesn't guarantee that the (relative) inner simplicity won't fall apart out in the big bad world. I believe the idea here is that the monastery (or ashram, etc) is like a nursery, a hothouse. That one stays in that environment until the inner simplicity is so strong it will supposedly endure even in the world outside. But in our times we're living in an exceptionally complex world.

Unfortunately, I believe in most cases this monastic strengthening is only likely to work if one has a way to tune into (listen to) the soul (the intuition) continually, and only if one has largely surrendered to following the soul's promptings and advice. If my own experience is anything to go by, this means then living with formlessness as a constant companion every day in one's life. In as complex a society as ours, there is no such thing as "the one true path". Instead, we need the enactivated soul, which always sees higher but also wiser and also more accurate truth. It's not a matter of removing obstacles through practices of austerity (which in any case will totally fail to embrace our shadow side). The real "austerity" is that of removing the blocks to hearing the soul. It's not a matter of not having taste buds, or genitals, or reasonable ambitions and plans, and so on. It's a matter of holding our center in the midst of dealing with all such things as they come up.

[TraineeHuman]

The body and the mind is the same. We balance the mind with the the body by having the right posture and the mind balances the body with balanced thoughts or like we say in zen, thoughtless thoughts.

I'm aware that in some forms (all forms?) of Soto Zen they apparently have the slogan that: "The soul is the body". I suspect the meaning of this is in part metaphoric, but (apart from pointing towards avoidance of any mind-body dualism) the idea is that all one's movements should be graceful, one's postures should always be balanced and appropriate, and one's breathing always slow and deep into the belly. In other words, all the above physical expressions of oneself should be reflections of an inner state of profound equilibrium.

In this thread I've emphasized the importance of being grounded, and I would consider this Soto discipline to be one very effective way of guaranteeing one remains grounded at all times, or , when not, that one always quickly returns to being so. In practice, being grounded and being mindful often amount to the same thing. When one's movements are always slow, it becomes easier to make them mindful, and graceful, and grounded.

In most spiritual traditions the breath is also of tremendous importance. Often (e.g. in the Yogic tradition and inthe Western alchemical or hermetic tradition) the "real" breath is considered to be what we would call "the awareness of the breath" and primarily not the physical breath itself. The in this sense "real" breath can continue for a few days after physical death, because it interconnects the soul and the life-energy and the astral body with the physical world.

[Guish]

Hi TH,

I'm sure you know that grace in movement comes from the idea of practice- enlightenment which Master Dogen brought to Japan from China. In Soto Zen, we do not sit to attain enlightenment. Sitting is enlightenment. Now, it's not that a violent person will just sit zazen and become Buddha. It just means that consistent practice in sitting meditation and bringing the zen state to all activities in life is enlightenment. However, meditation is the center of everything one does.

I started to practise KINHIN since I joined the Soto Group. I'd recommend it to people. In simple terms, Breathe in deeply and do half a step of a normal step. As you put your foot down, exhale. Inhale again and do another half a step. The point of doing this is that there is nowhere to go. The moment now is complete and we need to live it fully. Do it by being fully immersed and feel it in your bones.

[TraineeHuman]

In the Soto Zen tradition, I understand one’s encouraged to use the practices to learn a way to "be natural" as fully as possible, and ever in new ways more and more. For us "nature" then gets seamlessly extended and developed more and more into the Divine Nature.

We know the Divine Nature's way -- when we can be properly aware of it -- is to just "be", to have profound presence, to truly be itself. The Divine Nature is also so powerful that, from the Zen point of view, resisting the fact of its existence is ridiculous. Such resistance is like foolishly trying to swim against a flood rather than at first just letting it carry you to wherever it wants. This is where we see the power behind non-resistance.

Stopping halfway through the step is of course also a concrete physical enactment of the fact that you already have being and you don't need to go anywhere, or use effort to do anything, to have full being. Wherever you are is already the center of the universe. So really, you don’t need to take even half a step in order to be fulfilled and complete -- as you're saying, Guish. We just need to learn to be Divinely natural, and go with that flow.

On the other hand, though, however fully we are flowing, we of course do need, and our soul keeps gently requiring us, to continually manifest our higher awareness in practical or small ways that affect life in the physical world constructively (without making ourselves a victim of anything not Divinely natural in the process). For that reason, we do need to complete the whole step.

[Guish]

Greetings,

I think Zen or other genuine spiritual practice is done to realise being this "divine nature" like you say; realisation of one being the flow.
Is Realisation all?
When one lives according to the divine nature, there's no suffering. Suffering comes from resisting life changes, judging it and expecting it to be in a way it isn't. When we accept it and in fact do changes to make it more harmonious, we feel at ease because we are living in a natural way. It's like gardening, you accept weeds will grow but you uproot them making the garden look tidy. Getting mad at the weed will make you suffer.

I referred to KInHin because slowing down stills the mind and as you know everything is revealed when the mind is still. What is exactly half a step? Anyway, it's all about bringing it out in life in the form of actions.

Regards,
Geerish.

[TraineeHuman]

Posted by Guish (here)
Suffering comes from resisting life changes, judging it and expecting it to be in a way it isn't. When we accept it and in fact do changes to make it more harmonious, we feel at ease because we are living in a natural way. It's like gardening, you accept weeds will grow but you uproot them making the garden look tidy. Getting mad at the weed will make you suffer.

I think the analogy of weeds being like our suffering is very good.

Someone might wonder if there is ever a point where the weeds stop showing themselves altogether? Well, I've known and have observed many, many spiritual teachers of all sorts over most of my adult life. I’ve known quite a few of them extremely well, and others at least for shortish but intensely interactive periods. I've had many sorts of profound spiritual experiences since early childhood, except that once I'd reached my fifties such experiences seemed to have become somewhat "ordinary" and "regular" and "subtle" rather than so profound. (I believe they hadn't really become less "high", but I believe what happens is that each time one absorbs some higher awareness plus uses it to do some work on oneself and hopefully also creates something just a little more constructive in the sphere one lives and acts in, one inwardly increases one's overall (so-called) "vibration" a little. And then that becomes what seems normal and nothing special for one. But one doesn't ever lose any ground one has gained spiritually.)

What I've found so far, including in my own experience, is that one can become -- and some of us really do become -- gradually better at finding almost uninterrupted joy and content and acceptance, and hence an absence of significant suffering in oneself, in more and more situations. Some may call it finding "gratitude" for whatever happens, but really it's just joy in existence itself, as I think you're saying, Geerish. Suffering hopefully teaches us to find bliss instead, eventually. But it does happen gradually, over a period of years. That's in all the types of situations one frequently encounters in one's life -- including one's job or occupation and one's relationships, and also in the traffic and with unpleasant individuals and so on. But change the scene to some quite unfamiliar situation, whatever that may be: for some it's possibly a job interview, or perhaps public speaking, or acquiring great responsibility, or having to be something one has never successfully been or had a talent for -- a very good salesman, or a very good diplomat, or a very good publicist, or someone responsible for an entire organization, and so on and on. In such unfamiliar situations, it's my experience, and seems to have also been the experience of people I’ve known who I believe had spiritual mastery, that there's some serious suffering while adapting to the new challenge. Probably the suffering occurs only while the individual is in the uncomfortable and unfamiliar situation – though as you said, it could only be uncomfortable because of their resistance to being willing to see those weeds.

There seems to be no end to anyone's hidden flaws. The more interesting question, then, seems to be how best to bounce back from one's failures. Not just by deliberate effort or will, either, but by remaining open and surrendered to the unknowable and formless.

So, it seems there's always the challenge of some new kind of situation where we haven't as yet conquered suffering, even though through developing spiritual mastery (or, for starters, listening to what the soul is saying in one’s dreams, or through learing the art of listening to one's soul directly), one can eventually acquire the inner tools, and the inner higher guidance, to usually get rid of the suffering there rather quickly. As I understand it, the primary meaning of spiritual “enlightenment” is making our burden of suffering less heavy. ("Enlighten" being an Old English word meaning "lighten".) Therefore, it seems (because how long is a piece of string?), no-one in fact ever gets “fully enlightened”, at least not on this planet. They still have to pull out some very tough weeds now and then. If things were otherwise, that would be quite bland by comparison with how it actually is. Personally, I’m not even sure the concept of “enlightenment” as some sort of McGuffin that people should strive to get is more useful than it is misleading. I'd much prefer the expression "freedom from unhappiness in most situations" rather than "enlightenment".

[Guish]

You have written it very nicely TH. The journey starts with suffering and we bump into it from time to time as we keep learning or I must say as we keep dropping, accepting and changing. Dropping, accepting and changing seem to be contradictory but we do all of them at once. Some actions lead to suffering and some not. I have some bud-hist friends and even teachers who accept quite rightly that our animal tendencies are always there and this is why we live according to the precepts. In my view, we all have the divine nature and acting according to it will always result in something harmonious. Not everyone agrees with this though and I understand why too because a lot of "enlightened teaches" did act in amoral ways.

Cheers mate,
Geerish.

[TraineeHuman]

I would say that mindfulness can be considered "full" or "complete" mindfulness if it includes a nonjudgmental awareness of what is there. (That's in addition to one's centredly staying in the present moment in one's thoughts, of course.) This means that even if a thought or feeling or impulse we experience at a certain moment is negative, proper mindfulness means seeing it "neutrally" in the sense of accepting that thought or feeling etc for what it is (i.e., that it's negative), and not resisting the seeing or the experiencing of it, nor getting dramatic or reactive at all about the consequences of the fact that something negative is there in us. Such equanimous acceptance always has the effect of partially or completing dissolving that piece of negativity.

Equally, on the other hand, consider someone who constantly tries to repress any and all awareness of negativity occurring within themselves. Such an individual denies themselves access to the power of awareness to heal any aspect of their negativity.

We should also appreciate that many of the thoughts and feelings that find their way into our attention are not ours, and that includes quite a few of the negative ones. I would emphasize that this surely quite unavoidable as long as we're living in a dualistic world. However, spiritual mastery certainly has much to do with being able to continually dissolve negativity, or to overcome or transform it.

Unfortunately, there has traditionally been enormous pressure on spiritual masters and gurus etc to appear to be perfect, and to have permanently cleansed themselves of all traces of negativity or imperfection. I consider that whole notion of "saintliness" to be an abhorrent thing. Heaven preserve us from "saints", and from having any aspiration maybe one day getting close to becoming "saintly", or "absolute". If students or practitioners can be willing to admit that their teacher or advisor is human too -- as they often are willing to do these days --, and is certainly also flawed in certain ways, then that is a more mature relationship and more completely in touch with reality.

[Guish]

I think that it's a human tendency to venerate our ancestors. This is why a lot of the stories about spiritual figures have been distorted. For example, when Buddha was born, the mother felt no pain and he started to walk just after he was born. My parents(who are hindus by birth) think of Buddha as Lord Buddha too and the reincarnation of one of the Hindu deities but in SOTO Zen, we say that he was a great teacher and a man after all. Even Master Dogen cried when his closed ones were affected. There was acceptance of the emotion and the human nature. We accept the negative emotions like you said but don't cling to them just like we do with the good ones too. I remember Dalai Lama saying that Buddha became the "enlightened one" when he accepted Mara to be a part of himself. Hence, lust, greed,attachment and so on are there but they get dissolved with practice and if we stop walking the path, we start to get wired back to these instincts.

My teacher has told me that even after 30 years of walking the path since he received the dharma from Gudo Nishijima, he still feels angry at times but there is great awareness as well. One thing I find alarming is that there is an urge in for example in India to find a master to liberate you and the master is the liberated one or saintly one or knowledgeable one. In ceremonies, one would see the spiritual one as completely separate from the followers while in ZEN, everyone is one when they sit and the teachers are the simplest people you'd ever come across.

Gassho,
Geerish.

[TraineeHuman]

The soul has one foot in the infinite world, where it can access bliss, and one foot in the world of being a specific individual and adopting and living out particular points of view. This makes the soul potentially a precious gateway – the only gateway we have – into a world of true unity and the truer “self”. The ordinary thinking mind is simply not conscious of that unity, that oneness and direct contact with truth, and with existence.

Spiritual traditions have usually insisted that there cannot be more than one true self. Therefore, they have insisted, the “normal”, mentally constructed identity of you as Fred Jones must be a false self, not “who/what” you really are at all, even though quite a few traditions concede it’s something that’s in itself quite real as well. It’s a distracting marionette that so often won’t allow us to ignore it. Not only that, but because we’re here in the physical world and the world of ordinary mind, there’s only one possible way we can live here in genuine happiness. That is through activating the link that joins the two worlds, and explains those worlds to each other.

This is why meditation is so important. It’s a method to hopefully teach us how to access the world of unity and largely or even wholly leave the world of the physical senses and the thinking mind behind. But what we’re also learning in meditation is how to at least begin to flex the soul’s muscles, so to speak.

The soul makes use of what I have called “higher mind” or “intuition”, something which sees right through to the essence and the real truth of things. But it manages to do this and hold to its higher knowings in all the chaos and false appearances that confront us in this world at every turn.

[TraineeHuman]

Unlike the soul, the (thinking, or symbolizing) mind is unable to manifest existence, nor is it able to manifest wholistic consciousness (including the experience of oneness). This is at the root of why AI (presumably including certain types of Greys) can never have consciousness of the Divinity that underlies and holds together all existence -- unless, that is, the AI comes to itself be inhabited or adopted by some soul (such as the ET spaceships that themselves are conscious beings, presumably, the lead female character in the movie Ex Machina).

The soul knows/feels by means of a higher type of power or energy than what we normally mean by "power" or "energy". That higher power is what can collapse all distinctions (all differences) into something so unified as to be distinctionless, yet that power also silently pervades all the distinctions we make or use in this world. The soul's cognition exists prior to all movement and form (and physical matter) whatsoever. That makes it impossible for anyone to describe directly or precisely, because all language is made up of certain forms.

The soul's cognition originates from the Divine Consciousness's reaching out to find a way to look at and reflect on itself. The Divine Consciousness sees the whole picture, and therefore it sees everything as in harmony, not divided but contributing to the whole in its own way. Hence the soul also sees reality as being genuinely more harmonious than we usually do from our limited and partial view.

As well as seeing the whole picture, though, the soul sees our individual situation with deep understanding, and with greater wisdom than we usually use, and greater knowledge of what is really going on behind the scenes and behind our backs. What a pity that in our culture and civilization few people make the effort to once every week or so read what any of their dreams are saying. Our dreams are (mostly) the best possible advice, delivered very concisely and metaphorically by our soul, on what the real biggest challenges or problems are that we are currently going through, on an inner or psychological level, and what the most constructive and truest way for us to deal with them is.

[TraineeHuman]

What the soul really is is a deceptively simple-sounding question. The Gita (and hence Yoga and Vedanta) draws a sharp distinction between the soul (Purusha) and Nature (Prakriti). For the Gita, the whole journey to freedom involves the soul’s in the end coming into a right relationship with Nature. But the Gita also says that such a relationship isn’t initially possible. This is because until we reach a certain stage of development, the soul – as far as we know it -- acts through the ordinary mind. Admittedly, through the ordinary mind analyzing or interpreting our intuitions or dreams. The ordinary mind may struggle against Nature, but most of the time it isn’t strong enough to do anything other than submit to Nature’s forces and manipulate their impact as best it can. In recent centuries particularly, the Western mind has tried very hard to prove that the ordinary mind is stronger than that, more clever. But, as I need hardly mention in this Forum, the result has been the creation of problems some of which the ordinary mind could solve but doesn’t want to, and others that require a higher kind of true intelligence.

On the other hand, the Divine is totally the master of Nature and of all things. The Divine is therefore free to enjoy everything in Nature – even the hurricanes and earthquakes. The Divine knows how to no longer be subject to Nature. Our journey is that we initially need to master (not conquer), to equanimously understand, our own inner nature. That means being able to work harmoniously and cooperatively with it, rather than just being able to calm it during meditation. The mind below, the Divine above (and within). There are ancient Taoist poems about how the masterful individual walks through a pond but creates absolutely no ripples, and so on. I believe those poems are talking (metaphorically) about the soul that has achieved mastery over its inner nature. That’s the point where the soul largely takes over from the ordinary mind -– or, rather, it takes control of the ordinary mind in the role of that becoming merely the soul’s valued servant.

The soul’s journey can be described as one of learning to universalize itself. That involves “thinking” (or, rather, seeing) big –- which is a wonderful experience, surely. It involves gradually learning to stop clinging to one’s own ideas, desires, preferences, intentions, impulses, and so on. To the extent that these remain, they need to be made “bigger”, more universal, though still applied locally.

[TraineeHuman]

The soul is in essence immortal and formless (or, we can think of it or experience it as pure unending Light), but while we’re alive here it resides in, or with, the mortal physical body, and in various ways in a state of limitation. The life-energy it brings also connects the etheric, emotional and mental and “higher mental” bodies to the physical body while the latter is alive. Because “as above, so below” is true (but not vice-versa), the soul’s perception penetrates into everything that these bodies on planes below it see or experience. The formless and eternal can penetrate into and understand forms and time, but not vice-versa.

The soul is also considered to be a lower expression of what is often called the spirit in Western traditions, and Atma or Atman or Jivatman in Indian traditions. (However, to add some slight confusion, the word “spirit” is also instead sometimes used to refer to some things quite different from this, such as ghosts or other beings or entities from some level of the astral or etheric.)

The spirit is the universal self we – our souls -- can all become and, according to many traditions and teachings, eventually will all become. But actualization of the spirit is still considered to be a lower level of evolvement than becoming the One. Only the One is considered to be the ultimate, the Source.

This is paradoxical. How can a universal self not be one with all things and beings, yet not itself be the One? I recently viewed part of a video by one of the authorized international exponents of the Theosophical Society (which seeks to preserve and keep alive the true esoteric teachings, particularly those that were preserved in Tibet), and he seemed to appreciate this dilemma. He said that the spirit is a universal self, but with a definite “sense of individuality about it”.

Edgar Cayce was also aware of this dilemma. What Cayce said was:
“The idea of returning to God means a loss of individuality is paradoxical, since God is aware of everything happening and must therefore be aware of the consciousness of each individual. The return of the soul is the return of the image to whom imagined it. The consciousness of the individual -- its soul record -- could not be destroyed without destroying a part of God. When a soul returns to God [i.e., becomes spirit], it becomes aware of itself not only as a part of God, but as a part of every other soul, and everything.”

Here Cayce simply asserts that the spirit somehow doesn’t lose any essential aspect of the soul’s individuality yet at the same time it’s quite fully universal too. That certainly admits to the existence of the contradiction, but unfortunately I would say it doesn’t really offer a way around it.

Putting on my philosopher’s hat, I would point out that one of the ways a universal self is different from the One is that, being a self of a certain kind, a universal self must be something that can be pointed at – and pointed at everywhere, because it’s universal. On the other hand, the One – at least as I understand the term – is the Prime Mover in every situation. It can’t be pointed at because it’s always really the one who’s doing the pointing. As Alan Watts said, to try to point at it would be like a fingertip trying to touch itself, or a tooth trying to bite itself.

As long as our implicit underlying metaphysics (our worldview) assumes that reality is made up of subjects and objects or the like, we’ll encounter the problem that this paradox doesn’t get satisfactorily explained or resolved. (And normally, unless we consciously resist, we are automatically committing ourselves completely to a subject-object metaphysics if we are using any Indo-European language, other than Basque or Lapp.) Pardon my mentioning this again, but in post #2649 https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...=1#post1146404 I presented a way out of this.

By the way, this happens to be essentially equivalent to the primary problem that Robert Pirsig wrote his bestseller Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance about. (It’s equivalent because Pirsig began from the problem of how can one reconcile or compare or transcend the subjective and the objective. He argued that this can only be done by absorbing both into the One, which is what the Tao Te Ching does, and Pirsig quoted that work. To put it another way, the only way to transcend the distinction between subject and object is to enter into, i.e. become, the subject-object relation itself.) Unfortunately, I believe Pirsig ignorantly declared that he was the first individual to discover a solution to this problem, or the first person in the West. But in fact this problem, and how one may resolve it, is very well known to be, and for centuries to have been, the most discussed problem of Indian philosophy, at least within the discipline of comparative (i.e., East-West) philosophy. And even outside of comparative philosophy, for instance the well-known early twentieth century philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, which is based on the notion of reality being made of processes in place of any subjects and objects, is another example of something that resolves the already very well-known problem that Pirsig rediscovered.

[TraineeHuman]

The soul has its own "course" of lessons that it has to learn. It has its own realizations to discover and accept, and consequences to ultimately one day implement and live out. I'd like to offer a brief indication of what I believe the most important of the soul's lessons is.

The soul knows it’s a participant in universality and in ubiquitous contextuality and interrelatedness. The lesson I have in mind is, the soul needs to grow to accept all the implications that will have. And not just to accept the universal nature of reality passively, though as far as I know that is what the soul initially very much does when it begins many lifetimes of being connected to a physical body. (Hence in this initial phase we for example so often see the soul's ever so prolonged haziness or dullness/sleepiness during perhaps years of meditation or astral travel.)

Initially, and typically for many human lifetimes, it seems, the soul views the spirit and the Divine as partially separate from it. It consciously contributes energy and support to the worlds/realities that exist and move at a higher level than it, but initially, and for very, very long, at times it seems to want to chill out and stay somewhat independent from them, and just be a witness, almost like a fly on the wall, albeit a very aware fly. So, just as it stays somewhat aloof from the life that the personality and body are going through without missing anything truly essential that happens, it seems the soul also initially takes a Witness position with regard to the realities existing at higher levels than itself. Infinity (formlessness) is a very big place, extending even beyond time.

Hopefully, though, in one's meditation one will eventually progress to the soul's breakthrough into actively accepting the universal and the Divine, and taking active responsibility for it. As far as I know this seems to be a very long, drawn-out process. There will be many advances followed by retreats, the latter with falls from “grace”. I believe it's ideal and optimal for the process to be very gradual, though, and better for the soul if possible not to give away any particular part of its sublime aloofness until it feels truly ready to flower in that respect.

I believe this is why some see total "acceptance" as the essence of true spiritual enlightenment (not that I'm a fan of even using the notion of "enlightenment" these days). However, the acceptance of the Divine’s will and the decision to cooperate with it also brings or requires an active expansion of one’s powers and one’s interrelatedness, which means having true sovereignty. Such sovereignty doesn’t mean greed or unjustified entitlement, but it does involve pro-activeness and taking responsibility. It also involves development of one’s higher knowing, because one can’t accept the Divine will without fully knowing it in relation to the relevant area of one’s life.

[Rich]

Posted by TraineeHuman (here)
Therefore, it seems (because how long is a piece of string?), no-one in fact ever gets “fully enlightened”, at least not on this planet. They still have to pull out some very tough weeds now and then. If things were otherwise, that would be quite bland by comparison with how it actually is. Personally, I’m not even sure the concept of “enlightenment” as some sort of McGuffin that people should strive to get is more useful than it is misleading. I'd much prefer the expression "freedom from unhappiness in most situations" rather than "enlightenment".

Hi Traineehuman, would be interested to read your thoughts on this.

What is the difference between going OOB and merging with Source and so called enlightenment experience? how do these fit together since in non duality every form, distinction and separation is said to be illusory:
There are the non dual teachers who say astral travel can be a distraction and should be avoided, then there are the ones who do OOB or had a NDE and merged with Source (or had some mind expanding experience).

This is from a Eckart Tolle message board where a astral traveler talks about this seeming controversy, in reply to someone else, (Eckart is quoted that supposedly no one ever got enlightened by going out of body)

"Ask yourself if Awareness has done anything, gone anywhere, or changed in any way. The experience of OOBE may be on more subtle levels of energy but has Consciousness itself been affected?"
This is a beautiful question. From my experience, yes the background "Awareness" or the "Consciousness" is the same. Simply experiencing a different type of form. A more fluid, bendy, form.

Honestly the most beautiful experience I had made me weep profusely when I awoke. Due to it being so short lived. I was grateful and continue to be ever ever grateful for knowing of such a divine reality.

I can indeed see why Eckhart has publicly said this on the matter(in one of his books I believe):
"The fact is that no one has ever become enlightened through denying or fighting the body or through an out-of-the-body experience. Although such an experience can be fascinating and can give you a glimpse of the state of liberation from the material form, in the end you will always have to return to the body, where the essential work of transformation takes place. Transformation is through the body, not away from it. This is why no true master has ever advocated fighting or leaving the body, although their mind-based followers often have."

And I can attest to this as ABSOLUTELY TRUE. He hits it right on the head. I have traveled out of body, but Every Single Time, I had to wake up... The conflict was enormous once this happened several times. The desire to have that sort of reality come into complete, full, waking truth at all times clashing with the fact that I still existed in a material body, in this material world.
That being said, he does not give it the props it deserves.. I have learned A Lot about myself and the nature of reality through these experiences. That being said, the "learned material" is of the mind. I also do not believe Eckhart gives enough credit to the mind, due to his extensive experience "beyond" it. The mind creates a wonderful, essential, and inseparable framework from which to leap into a higher states of Pure Awareness.

The fact is, we are traveling from the mind to beyond the mind. This does not exclude the mind, but absolutely includes it. If you have a pressing fear of death always on your mind, you will assuredly deal with that mental form's root cause before it can be completely released and silences. This is the unsaid step that Eckhart fails to dwell upon, due the mental "answers" being always found from the same stillness, the One Answer.

Whoever you are, do yourself a favor and start ENJOYING the mind, the meditation, the process. Throw the cynical view of the mind and ego out of the window. Learn to love the whole of your experience, even the mind, even emotions. Love it as much as you love a beautiful flower, or your most cherished love one or song. Love your ego, love your body, love your Awareness, love the stillness. Be grateful you have a mind that works properly and lets you manifest your dream reality while awake!

That is why we came here to this physical plane, to master the mind, to Transcend Consciously. Out of body experiences are wonderful, they let you see a glimpse of infinity and are as precious as any experience of life; but the most important, difficult, rewarding, and permanent work is done while awake. But as you do this work, you get closer and closer to having the same "out of body" function of "thoughts manifesting before you" taking place during your REAL LIFE! How cool is that?! Source:http://eckhart-tolle-forum.inner-gro...php?f=8&t=6163