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Thread: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Yes, thank you indeed, I broadly or strongly agree with you on nearly all those points, EmEx. I've certainly never intended to imply that experiencing OOB comes anywhere near to being some form of enlightenment. That would be an extremely ignorant thing to claim or believe.

    Quote What is the difference between going OOB and merging with Source and so called enlightenment experience?
    Well, first of all let me make it clear that merging with Source isn't enlightenment at all. Not directly. What counts is how you e-merge from that mergedness consciousness, not how you potentially escape from everyday reality. Fifty years ago I believed, based on my experiences, that enlightenment was all about merging with Source. Forty-three years ago some very wise, old, very spiritually astute people told me that was only the beginning, the first step, the kindergarten class. Four years later I had thoroughly confirmed that what they had said was true, and for me that was followed by the longest journey of gradual realization you can imagine. The more you know, the more you realize how much more there is that you don't know at all. (Or is that what you meant by saying "so-called enlightenment"?) Enlightenment is all about integrating Source fully with everything one is experiencing in nonduality. The everyday things are all just as real as Source. (As can be proved by one's trying to walk blindfolded across a busy, so-called "nonexistent" freeway.) True oneness is in any case impossible without such full integration. (By the way, it's a pity I need to use the word "integration," because Ken Wilber has many notions about what "integration" is that I don't agree are accurate, even though Ken also has some great insights.)

    Going OOB is just very clearly and very distinctly being aware of and experiencing the psychic level of the self. You can look at post #2680 https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...=1#post1157279 for a description of the levels. Going OOB has nothing to do with merging with Source. My reply to "What is the difference between going OOB and merging with Source?" is: "What is the difference between the number two and the color blue?" Except, that is, that for many it can be easier to initially contact Source from an OOB position.

    Quote how do these fit together since in non duality every form, distinction and separation is said to be illusory.
    They' re said to be illusory by such nondualists as Shankara and Ramana Maharishi. But not by many other nondualist philosophers, including Wittgenstein and Nagarjuna and Krishnamurti, and all the most famous Taoist and Zen Buddhist masters such as Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Basho, Dogen, and so on and on. I claim that some of the latter were greater philosophers, and certainly more in touch with reality. Also, let me clarify that in Indian philosophy, a "nondualist" position has always simply meant, and continues to mean, any position that agrees that Source, or some part of reality, is nondual.

    I'll continue in another post.
    Last edited by TraineeHuman; 2nd February 2018 at 00:15.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    One thing I perhaps should clarify is that Nagarjuna and Wittgenstein (and mainstream Zen Buddhism, among others), like myself denied the existence of an individual self as an object or subject, but did admit its existence in a relational and a contextual sense. Let me clarify what that means. Firstly, as I explained in (the later parts of) post #2649, Indo-European languages such as English have a grammar which silently demands that the only things which can be real are objects, and perhaps also subjects (like "I" as distinct from "me"). In the philosophies of Nagarjuna and Wittgenstein and "No-mind" Zen and Taoism. however, what is real can only be that which is either contextual or relational, or both. Let me try and explain.

    In Shankara's and Ramana Maharishi's philosophy, the only thing anywhere that's real at all is one subject, which we can call Source. But in these philosophies that I favor, on the other hand, the only (ultimately) real things that can be identified as your self are either individual contexts, such as the Universe within and as the particular context of "your" physical and astral and mental and upper mental body and "your" soul field and spirit field; plus the relation(ship) between the Universe and all the latter. So, your physical body is only considered individually real in whatever sense it's an inseparably embedded part of the individual context of its relationship with the Universe. And when we talk of your physical body, what's real is not the object known as "your body", but only its relationship to the Universe. It's kind of like the way the ancient Greeks believed that the sky was a great dome with holes in it, and the stars were really just a big light beyond the dome shining through the holes. The relations (the interconnections) are what's real, not any subjects or objects.
    Last edited by TraineeHuman; 25th August 2017 at 07:04.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Quote Posted by TraineeHuman (here)
    Yes, thank you indeed, I broadly or strongly agree with you on nearly all those points, EmEx.
    That was not written by me (the text in brown) I myself have very limited experience with OOB.
    Apparently I didn't make it clear enough that it is from the link posted below which I found in relation to my question.

    Will add more later...

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Quote Posted by TraineeHuman (here)
    Well, first of all let me make it clear that merging with Source isn't enlightenment at all. Not directly. (Or is that what you meant by saying "so-called enlightenment"?) Enlightenment is all about integrating Source fully with everything one is experiencing in nonduality.
    You meant to say in duality?

    The reason I chose the words "enlightenment experience" is that it is said to be a point where all duality ceases and you are at one with all existence. Then you move back into the world/duality but with a new reference point of the truth, supposedly now you are "enlightened".
    Is this so called enlightenment experience where your personality ceases the same as those who have gone OOB or NDE and merged with source?

    Quote The latter things are all just as real as Source. (As can be proved by one's trying to walk blindfolded across a busy, so-called "nonexistent" freeway.) True oneness is in any case impossible without such full integration.
    That is quite a radical statement "equally real", as you pointed out there are teachings that say the world does not exist at all or is a dream that has no reality anymore once one wakes up and those who say the world exists as a game of maya.

    For me the question is; would this world remain if Love was completely realized? if it would not remain then IMO it is not real. As I believe hate/pain/suffering can only be experienced as a misconception, therefore it cannot be said to be Real in that sense because it will cease to exist. If this duality is built out of the false perception that pain is real then it consequently would cease to exist if Love would be accepted. But if the world/duality remains despite the recognition of Love then this world is just as real.

    Quote My reply to "What is the difference between going OOB and merging with Source?" is: "What is the difference between the number two and the color blue?" Except, that is, that for many it can be easier to initially contact Source from an OOB position.
    Sorry I didn't mean to ask that I just expressed myself a bit clumsily.

    Quote They' re said to be illusory by such nondualists as Shankara and Ramana Maharishi. But not by many other nondualist philosophers, including Wittgenstein and Nagarjuna and Krishnamurti, and all the most famous Taoist and Zen Buddhist masters such as Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Basho, Dogen, and so on and on. I claim that some of the latter were greater philosophers, and certainly more in touch with reality. Also, let me clarify that in Indian philosophy, a "nondualist" position has always simply meant, and continues to mean, any position that agrees that Source, or some part of reality, is nondual.
    Interesting point, I've seen followers of that belief deny duality completely even in the world "there is no one there to be angry, anger simply arises out of oneness".
    However to say that a part can be nondual and another part duality would be a contradiction too, nondual meaning "not two" there could be nothing besides it.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    You can only gain any degree of freedom from the (ordinary) mind by understanding it. That means by looking (hopefully continually) at what your actual thoughts and feelings are this moment, or recently, or when you wrote them down. You can't find freedom from the ordinary mind through understanding something higher but taken in separation or distinction from the (ordinary) mind.

    So, you can only find something higher by, initially, understanding, and not denying the reality of, the lower. You only find the unknown via going awarely through the known.


    Meditation (true silence) is also great, but as a way for you to know, and more and more fully understand, the unknown -- which does happen once you've mastered the known somewhat. Meditators need to learn how to take huge doses of "unknown".


    Also, I prefer to use the word "self" where others might use a word such as "consciousness". (Though there I stipulate that by "self" I don't mean anything that's a subject or object.) While we're alive in the physical world, at least, the self (or consciousness) does have parts or subdivisions. You do have a location in space and time, for instance.

    Some comments about what individuality means. The original meaning of "individual" is an undividable whole. So, to truly realize your individuality you do need to expand to become completely wholistic in your consciousness, embracing all that's there around you. But while you're in the physical world, that's still a particular consciousness. It's totally linked to that one particular physical body, also to that one particular (quite non-physical) soul, and so on.
    Last edited by TraineeHuman; 31st August 2017 at 01:11.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    This is a continuation of my response to EmEx. One major trap in understanding or discussing spiritual reality is an adherence to what I like to call black-and-white thinking. I know that some observers (not from this Forum) have also used the term "fundamentalist thinking" to refer to something similar. I regret to say such thinking is particularly prevalent (and sometimes unconsciously assumed to be perfectly OK and appropriate) when there’s the attempt to discuss a subject such as, among others, the One, or Truth, or enlightenment, or Love, for instance. It causes ever so much mischief and misplaced perfectionism or unrealizable idealism. Not to mention causing division among people at every turn.

    Before I talk about black-and-white thinking, though, let me say I would like to ask some, and indeed most people (perhaps not specifically or particularly members of this Forum) two questions, which are relevant to the topic of black-and-white thinking but not obviously so. The questions are: "How can you (or anyone) possibly want, or imagine, the complete truth if you simply don't know what it is?" And then also: "If somebody tells you what ultimate truth about how to obtain freedom from suffering, or enlightenment, or whatever, supposedly is, then even if they’re right, won't that immediately become to you a dead thing and not the real McCoy, because you hadn't discovered it and directly experienced it, and lived it somewhat, for yourself first (unless you indeed already had)?"

    There's a verse in the New Testament where "Jesus" says that foxes have holes to sleep in but he has no resting place anywhere. We all need to be like that. We all need to have no resting place, psychologically speaking, ever. We all need to be like the wind that blows everywhere, or like water that fills a container of any shape, and then moves on. That's the only way to (eventually) find the truth about freedom from unhappiness, and the freedom from the chains that come from our desires. And of course to find it only through our direct experience. Actually, it seems clear to me such freedom can't be achieved through seeking, but only through the act of freeing ourselves and becoming more fully alive, and dropping all seeking in favor of being more fully aware of how it truly feels to be alive and what that implies, plus the dropping of all our forms of bondage as we become more aware of such.

    Where the black-and-white thinking mostly comes in is that that type of thinking is how the ordinary thinking mind (the cunning Western mind) works, in relation to everything. Always jumping to and grabbing the extremes (such as black, and white, or, say, “nonduality” and “duality,” and so on), always “standardizing” and isolating everything and denying its setting, its environment, its context. Meanwhile anything independent of or orthogonal to the tones of black and white and grey, such as colors and hues, simply doesn't and can't exist, can it, now? Black-and-white thinking is always grasping and trying to own the supposed truth and turn it into a statue – a supposedly "absolute" statue at that. The thinking mind is ultimately based on drawing distinctions – on creating separation, and on absolutizing. Once those extremes have been put in, that sticks. Often permanently ever after. That's absolutizing. And light greys look white, even if a dirty white, while dark greys look like black, even if like black under some strong light. Once the thinking mind has broken things up and set things in concrete, it's impossible to restore the original unity, however much the thinking mind may try to summarize things or want to somehow seamlessly stick the pieces back together. That's not to say that the ordinary thinking mind doesn't have its uses, even in the field of spirituality where, however, higher understanding tends to take over the stage (hopefully).

    In contrast not just to black-and-white thinking but to the ordinary mind's thinking is the experience of genuine non-separation. How contradictory and untrue, surely, to believe in a concept of non-separation when one hasn’t experienced for oneself all of what that really means – which means one’s not having experienced it at all. And how inappropriate, it seems to me, to supposedly claim to be knowing it, or even considering it, unless at the time there’s no thought present or shaped by the mind, no communication, no witness to evaluate or record anything. How inappropriate altogether, surely, I suggest, to try to discuss “full” non-separation at all, except very briefly, and then only just to let somebody else who has experienced it know that you have tasted it too.
    Last edited by TraineeHuman; 15th September 2017 at 03:34.
    Above all, always refuse to cut your life in two: nonduality/duality, matter/Spirit, etc
    A mind which is not crippled by memory has real freedom. ~ J. Krishnamurti
    (True, deep) stillness is the way.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Just came across a long but very easy to listen to talk by Osho Rajneesh which describes the Buddha's entire metaphysics [or "worldview"] in very great and thorough detail -- without ever sounding technical or like anything but easy reading. This post is for anyone who may have experienced any difficulty in fully understanding, or appreciating the implications or the truer reality of, adopting the relational metaphysics I described in post #2649.

    http://www.gurdjieff-con.net/2011/06...reincarnation/

    Here the late Osho Rajneesh describes the Buddha's metaphysical position through a very full and simple explanation. I've always greatly liked Osho's poetic, soulful streak. Presumably, Osho Rajneesh's own preferred metaphysical position was effectively the same as the Buddha's (assuming that Osho could indeed extricate his view from a very, very Indian/Hindu one where reality is ultimately a very paradoxical kind of object known as "the Universe"). It's also effectively (or by and large) the same as my own position (which was based totally on my own experience and intuition at age 15 and not on any reading or any knowledge of any others' positions), and is described in post #2649.

    One of the things Osho points out is that, as I also mentioned and dwelled on in my post: "Buddhism is the first religion that brought this message to the world-that your religions, your philosophies, are more grounded in your linguistic patterns than in anything else. And if you can understand your language better, you will be able to understand your inner processes better. He [the Buddha] was the first linguist, and his insight is tremendously meaningful."
    Last edited by TraineeHuman; 27th December 2017 at 12:42.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Unfortunately there would seem to be enormous ignorance in the West regarding why in the ninth century Linji (or Rinzai, to use his Japanese name) founded the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism. Simultaneously he invented the koan, and there also seems to be gigantic ignorance, or misunderstanding, at least among Westerners, regarding Linji’s purpose and intention regarding what the use of a koan was actually all about.

    It also turns out that the underlying issues behind Linji’s project have huge commonalities and similarities with what was the most central and influential issue for most of the most influential Western philosophers of the nineteenth century, also developed further in the twentieth century by Wittgenstein. Western philosophy underwent probably its most extensive and shattering revolution ever (occurring in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) as a result of this. Again, unfortunately I find there’s a staggering degree of ignorance about all this among most New Ager types and many other Westerners professing to understand issues to do with spirituality. Over half of the philosophers involved (including Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Wittgenstein) were very, very spiritual and very highly evolved individuals, by the way.

    For instance, Wittgenstein was so horrified by his experiences of three years as Chairman of the Philosophy Department at Cambridge that he resigned and spent the next nine years living in fairly complete isolation from society in a cave. (Maybe that’s not necessarily any proof of spiritual advancement, but it does show how sincerely he felt the need to recover himself by dwelling in or with the unsayable for a number of years. And discussion of the unsayable is what most of this post is going to be about.) I suspect it’s safe to say these individuals, except Kant and probably Hegel, became philosophers at least partly because of the profundity of their direct ongoing mystical experience, and because of the perceived need to communicate to themselves and those around them something of what all that apparently meant. All of them also made statements to the effect (and behaved in ways to suggest) that the unsayable is vastly more important than anything and everything that’s sayable -- even though the unsayable always gets left unsaid (yet it directly shows itself all the time)!

    Looks like it’s my lot to attempt hopefully to undo some of that ignorance a little, or at least to try. I’ll even throw in a little about some connections with the teachings of the great Indian first and second century philosopher Nagarjuna (incidentally, sometimes known as “the Second Buddha”, and also known for his further developing and refining of the (sayable) doctrine of the middle way), as Nagarjuna’s insights fit in with all this.

    I confess I do suspect that if anyone truly gets the point of what the rest of this post is about, though, they’d be a little like the Zen teacher some centuries back who had spent years collecting the best books on spirituality and then one day burnt them all. He burnt them because he eventually clearly realized that to continue reading them would be to stay attached to and deluded by the sayable. And he’d realized that the unsayable is much, much more important than the sum total of what’s sayable. Sadly, I don’t necessarily believe it’s likely that anyone reading this will by doing so get that and all it implies. But one never knows – I could be quite wrong. For the other readers, my fear is that unfortunately the mental concept of "unsayability" may merely be added to their collected baggage. (But as many Zen teachers used to say: "You're looking at my finger that's pointing to the moon, and you’re mistaking the finger for the moon.") On the other hand, the truth ought to get shared, as far as possible, so here we go.

    A koan typically asks a question such as: “What is the nature of ultimate reality?” The optimal answer to this is something like “Wu”, which is Chinese for “negation” (or “I’m negating that”) and in this context it more specifically means something like: “You are using words in a meaningless way, and presupposing that your words refer to something real and profound, but they don’t.” Actually, it’s also the case that most koans ask a question that gets expressed somewhat nonsensically. The purpose of the nonsensical quality is to point to the inadequacy and the limited nature of the mental, and hence of words in general. For Linji (and all true subsequent Rinzai masters), the monk will have answered the koan correctly if the monk shows clear recognition that language is being stretched well beyond the realm of legitimacy and reality whenever any “big” word such as “oneness” or “ultimate reality” or so on and so forth is being used. Plus, the monk will need to have demonstrated the primacy of the unsayable in his (or her) daily life, a deep recognition of how the unsayable keeps continually showing itself directly.

    Wittgenstein said much the same, except without any reference to koans or Zen monastic life. He said that words are being stretched well beyond the bounds of legitimacy when they try to express anything that’s in reality unsayable.

    By the way, this is also exactly the reason why the TaoTe Ching opens with: “The Tao [Source] that can be spoken of is not the true Tao.”

    Incidentally, Krishnamurti would begin most of his talks by saying the problem of humanity can be summarized in the need to find freedom from "thought, and the movement of thought." I believe that at least half of what he meant by this amounts to basically the same thing as what Linji was concerned with.

    Kant didn’t recognize that there was such a thing as the unsayable, by and large. But he provided some very valid arguments that prove that the essence of spirituality certainly isn’t part of the sayable. Hence he considered spirituality to be the pursuit of an illusion. An example of his reasoning is as follows. Let’s ask what “the supernatural” is like. This is rather like asking what the ideal, best possible version of a sports car is like, assuming there are no limits to human ingenuity and technology. If I may pursue this sports car metaphor further, Kant proved that the supernatural would be to the natural rather like, say, a Star Trek transporter machine (the one that dematerializes bodies and rematerializes them somewhere else), or something even more way out than that, would be to a sports car. In other words, it would be so totally “other”, so different, that it wouldn’t be relatable to sports cars, i.e. it couldn’t even be called a “sports car”. That’s what the supernatural is like – too “other” to be relatable to physical reality just through words.

    Nietzsche and Nagarjuna would both simply demolish everyone else’s individual position or views on the nature of reality. They did this by having such powerful intuitive insight and wisdom and genius that evidently they could (rationally) out-argue anyone else any time. This would leave the latter with no (mental) belief system to cling to, and hence virtually compel them to begin to now discover the unknowable and the unsayable.

    Let me digress at this point to mention that clinging to a belief system about spirituality or what is spiritual reality, knowingly or unknowingly, is what I consider to be a major spiritual trap for many people, even quite a few New Ageish people, today, apparently. Over forty years ago I used to get taken astral travelling at night and I’d attend various classes, all over the solar system, it seemed. One of the first skills I learned was how to swiftly raise the level of the astral (or of the mental) plane I was currently in. Another of my first skills was that I quickly learnt to avoid the astral level that contained quasi-“heavens” belonging to different faiths, even several “heavens” for the “faith” of scepticism, and so on. I soon recognized that these were actually hell worlds, though admittedly the least unpleasant of the hellish levels. (Not like any Christian notion of “hell”, but much nicer than that. And I would say this physical world is the real hell, the place of suffering. Everything in the afterlife seems to involve less suffering, even in the earthbound world.) Robert Monroe also discovered something similar, though I didn’t read his account until decades later. Meanwhile I had become aware it isn’t uncommon for individuals to apparently get trapped in such a quasi-“heaven”, sometimes for decades, it seemed, and to subsequently regret it when they eventually escape. Sometimes an individual won’t realize that they’re strongly committed to a certain belief system until they die, and then it comes as a total surprise to them that they were.

    The other very common mental-world trap I see many New Age or alternative types fall into is to fail to recognize that the inner knowledge that comes from the flow of intuition or the soul etc, at least provided one is evolved enough, is always superior to that which comes from good critical thinking/analysis. This is certainly not to say that the latter isn’t desirable and indeed necessary. But to elevate it to a supreme position can often turn it (or you) into a Sorcerer’s Apprentice, in my observations -- particularly given the fact that communication with the soul hasn’t been adequately developed in most people as yet.

    Finally, I’ve mentioned the philosopher Hegel but so far I haven’t said anything about his philosophy. You may know that David Icke’s “problem action solution” formula is simply a restatement of the dialectic logic invented by Hegel. Hegel’s philosophical system (= “theory of everything”) was historically the last attempt at a “theory of everything”, because its being proved to be a failure led most Western philosophers to the conclusion that such a thing as a “theory of everything” was necessarily quite impossible to achieve. Hegel’s philosophical system was in many ways a synthesis of the major attempts that had taken place in the prior three centuries, but in each case with an ingenious “repair” designed to overcome the weaknesses of each previous system. Yet again we see how trying to stretch words and mental concepts to supposedly describing all of reality, or even a summary of the essence of reality, proved to be a futile project. Even though words can aptly summarize certain aspects of reality, such as “problem-reaction-solution”, to mention only one.

    So, please deeply trust your experiences of the unsayable. They take you into the very heart of reality. If you experience “fog” in meditation, I can attest that eventually it does get replaced mostly by continuous delight, if, for as long as it takes, you first go into it deeply enough and thence through to the other side of it.
    Last edited by TraineeHuman; 29th January 2018 at 06:41.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Trainee, I agree wholeheartedly with your statement regarding inner knowledge and the flow of intuition being superior, if one is evolved enough, to that which comes from critical thinking and analysis.
    "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone when we are uncool." From the movie "Almost Famous""l "Let yourself stand cool and composed before a million universes." Walt Whitman

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    This post is a belated one regarding what I consider are some of the major inadequacies and side-effects of affirmations and visualizations, not to mention of such things as self-hypnosis and NLP as well. Around five years ago I indicated my strong reservations regarding the use of all such methods. Oh really, whatever can possibly be wrong with any way of being positive? you may be thinking.

    Firstly, just a minor objection or criticism. In the above practices you may be saying or implying that you currently are all sweetness and light, or something similarly impeccably positive. But my criticism is that this will almost always be a dishonest or exaggerated statement to yourself -- a lie. To that extent at least, it will be alienating you further from the authenticiity of your soul or Higher Self.

    Next, we need to look at the phenomenon of resistance and repression. Every affirmation or positive visualization features the assertion and highlighting of something involving sweetness and light or success or positivity (maybe, even, of a supposedly "nondual" form). But there are two sides. There's a second side -- very often unspoken -- that involves resistance and repression. (Or else, the negative side is explicit in the affirmation, such as 'I will stop smoking today' and then the positive side will be the implicit half -- such as: 'I will eat organic fruit instead'.) The resistance or repression comes from your using will power that will (supposedly, or hopefully) make the positive assertion or scene come true. Unfortunately, though, I claim that much of what passes for "will power" is actually what would more accurately be called 'desire power'. I do also concede that there is certainly such a thing as will power that doesn't involve desire. But I won't elaborate on that here (apart from what's already in some of my past posts). The trouble with all desire, though, is that --as the Buddha clearly said, and as my own experience very much confirms -- it's flat-out simply one of the most major direct causes of unhappiness and of suffering. (I do, however, enjoy a tasty meal and so on, but I deny that such enjoyment necessarily has any connection with desire as distinct from wanting a basic need to be met well.)

    The trouble with resistance and repression of something psychological within you is as follows. Instead of removing it from you, it removes or weakens your consciousness of it. This means it makes that repressed piece of "you" at least partly if not wholly unconscious, usually without weakening its intensity at all. This means that the contents of your shadow side have just been enlarged. (Your shadow is simply all your unconscious negativity or dysfunctionality.) The trouble is, it seems to me that most of what I've come across in New Ageish settings (including, but not especially, this one), that describes itself as "shadow work" only exacerbates and expands the shadow further. This is because such "shadow work" is usually dominated by use of the ordinary thinking or analytical mind instead of by use of the Higher Mind (which would primarily involve such things as true intuition or inspiration) of the soul.

    For such reasons as these, I consider most instances of using affirmations or visualizations or self-hypnosis or contrived "positive mindset" to usually be anti-soul, and anti-authenticity, in their ultimate effect.

    I do, however, see nothing wrong with the kind of affirmation where one pats oneself on the back for making any major breakthrough, or even after any legitimate success. You're then affirming that before you were somehow being a victim of X but now you're not, and yes, it doesn't hurt to savor the fact that you're now not.
    Last edited by TraineeHuman; 21st May 2018 at 02:56.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    There are some common myths about "loosh" which, I believe, should be looked at in a broader context, though in this post I’ll only do that in one brief and partial way. Although the concept of "loosh" comes from Robert Monroe, as far as I know he only said it was something he encountered in a dream, as part of one of the dream-worlds he experienced. (I happen to know that the Many Worlds Hypothesis is quite valid in the astral and indeed in all dimensions that are higher than the physical. In fact, even in the lowest levels of the astral, whatever you want or expect to see will be a possible world of its own, and it will be created by you or entered by you simply through the act of imagining it or expecting it. But don’t forget that most of what makes you, even when you are in the astral, is unconscious to you, and that it will have the greater say in what actually gets created. Even so, this is why when one goes astral traveling one always finds one’s “home base” and initial locus to be with very like-minded others. And true, at death you’ll still initially be carrying much of your accumulated emotional baggage and your many sub-personalities competing with one another into one such possible world that you’ve made real, unless someone else had made that world real already.)

    I'd like to present just one fact that I'm aware of regarding astral energy and its accessibility and some of its possible uses. One fact should be enough. But I do believe that various facts about astral energy just don't entirely gel with many individuals' conceptions regarding "loosh", although it's also true that there is such a thing as negative astral energy that can presumably be targeted at a human individual, though I won’t discuss that here. I suggest it's also the case that a normal individual who's sober and hasn't taken drugs (or excessively large amounts of alcohol) to a major extent is considerably safer from being supposedly able to be "harvested" as a victim than many seem to suppose. I don’t approve of using the term “harvesting” anyway, because I believe it’s so impossibly vague it actually has little meaning, except as a concept to scare people or stimulate their paranoia. Whenever and wherever two people interact or communicate, surely they can be said to be “harvesting” each other (each other’s energies) to some degree. Any relationship or communication is a “harvest” or “feeding off the other”, regardless of whether it’s, say, parent-child, employer-employee, or so on. And yes, in a minority of cases the relationship or interaction will presumably be very exploitative of at least one of the parties involved.

    Now for my one fact for today (apart from what I’ve said already). Let’s note (or notice) that whenever an individual is practising something such as qi gong, t’ai chi, hatha yoga, dance, and so on, once they learn how to do it “expertly” they also learn to effortlessly draw greater energy into themselves and to flow with it. They do this effortlessly because there’s an unlimited supply of 100% good astral energy all around us. Actually, it comes from the cosmic or universal supply of energy. Indeed, the core of most meditation methods involves just profoundly letting go (of everything, which includes your identity and opinions and so on). You simply allow the universal energy to flow into you, by the truckload, so to speak. You just need to remain truly open to it. Even a beginner at meditation will come to learn how to feel refreshed every time they do this. And anyone who is truly advanced at meditation will feel tremendous joy or pleasure – call it “bliss” or “love” – on most occasions when they meditate. My question is, why would anyone, or any being, not use the process of drawing astral energy from the universal astral plane? It’s possible to also draw it from another human being, or animal, or plant. But it’s clearly much harder to do so, and the supply there will be limited anyway.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Hello TH,

    about the many worlds you said that „..., even in the lowest levels of the astral, whatever you want or expect to see will be a possible world of its own, and it will be created by you or entered by you simply through the act of imagining it or expecting it. But don’t forget that most of what makes you, even when you are in the astral, is unconscious to you, and that it will have the greater say in what actually gets created.“.
    Why doesn‘t that fit to the physical plane likewise, although maybe the characteristics of this oscillating field seem to differ?

    Best regards.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Hello, animovado. As far as I know apparently everyone seems to agree that the physical world is a world that's limited compared to other types of worlds -- that what life is about "down here" is living with and learning to adjust to or overcome or transform our limitations and those of living in this type of world. By contrast, in the Divine worlds all possibilities are experienced and perceived as if they were real. That doesn't mean the Divine worlds are placers of pure fantasy, but , if you like, they're places of incredibly fully developed imagination. That's also the reason why the Divine created evil -- because it was possible.

    Why do I say the Multiple Worlds Hypothesis apparently isn't true in the physical world? Well, firstly the majority of physicists are of the opinion that the evidence suggests it doesn't apply in the physical world. But secondly, it seems to me that Source would have insisted on creating a type of world limited enough for that Hypothesis not to apply, because such a thing was quite possible. Also, almost immediately after death I find that everyone becomes able to "fly", as far as I know. By that I mean that when they think of anything or anyone, they immediately move to whatever location whatever who or what they thought of is at. Clearly, the laws governing physical bodies and matter are inimical to that. It's something of a struggle for us to afford a car, say, and even then we need to get in that car and drive to where we desire, if we even can get there by driving. And so on. So by contrast with even the lowest astral planes, trying to do or get something in the physical world takes much more effort, and also involves the overcoming of limitations, plus often living with limitations that make it impossible at least for the time being, and sometimes (or often?) impossible forever within the current life.

    My father had an extraordinarily difficult life. He was the eldest of twelve children and his father died when he was twelve. Then he suffered during the war, and so on. He died at 47 and was an alcoholic at the time, having gotten into an unhappy marriage, among other difficulties. Because he was an alcoholic, that meant that when he died he was stuck in the earthbound world. People can get caught up in there for up to several centuries after their death. I think he's just about broken free of it now, at last, after fifty-plus years. But he told me he was better off in the earthbound world than he had been in the physical because there "the alcohol" is free, he said to me, and there's an unlimited supply, according to him. But since I claim to know that before birth we all choose the type of life we want to have, I can only conclude that he wanted to experience enormous limitations, and that in the big picture he considered that was very good for him. What else but "limitations" could have been the focus of his having that particular life in the physical world, I wonder.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Hello TraineeHuman,

    Thank you for discussing “transcendent experience”. I have pushed forward into many kinds of transcendent presentations, to experience what was there. Perhaps i was backwards at times, but this provided me fascinating samples of experience, (while paying life’s costs for various lessons).

    I feel my present source is the most reliable yet, (in 50 years of searching unabashed). I find this (longed for) source so validating and restorative…. Pythagorean Hylozoics as published online, (at laurency.com). Hylozoics offers a large amount of criticism on traditional meditation and prayer methods (and all traditional teachings). Details are spread throughout a number of Hylozoic books and not all condensed inside one chapter or book.

    There are possibly some cautions, contextually related to “drawing astral energy from the universal astral plane”. (Post #2731). Where some forms of guidance offer warnings like the following).

    Quote A Hylozoic Excerpt: “Hatha yoga philosophers have begun missionizing more and more in the West, spreading their spurious teachings in ever wider circles, especially confusing people with their risky breathing exercises. Esoterics teaches that the centres of the etheric envelope are vitalized in the one correct way through meditation and mentally directed mental energies. Any other vitalization implies roundabout ways and entails rebuilding of the etheric envelope in many subsequent incarnations.”
    Or regarding generalized, widespread hopes for the astral worlds:

    Quote An abbreviated Hylozoic Excerpt: “… It is useless talking to those who know everything better and have been taught by their masters in the emotional world (the astral world, the “spiritual world”), those who “visit Shamballa”, etc.

    There is no limit to madness, imagination, and credulity. Thank goodness only higher selves are able to visit other planets…. But the “masters” of the black lodge are able to shape forms in emotional and physical matters, forms that mislead …. These “masters” do everything they can to mislead and sidetrack people. Occultists are proofs that they score heavily.”
    Last edited by Bo Atkinson; 18th July 2018 at 11:39. Reason: I instead of it

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Hi wavydome,

    I'm certainly glad to hear you've found "Hylozoics" so useful to you. I think if it’s worked that well for you, you should keep pursuing it to the full – at least, for as many years as it continues to work so well for you. Certainly, Pythagoreanism was/is a very substantial and deep approach to the spiritual life. I understand archeologists or historians have proved that the Essenes were very strongly influenced by Pythagoreanism, and had virtually identical teachings to the latter, with the exception that they didn't include number mysticism to the extent of regarding the numbers as gods, the way the Pythagoreans did.

    For me personally, the key thing is direct experiences, even extending thoroughly, in the end, into everyday living. It’s not theoretical frameworks, of whatever kind – though we also need to lean on theoretical frameworks until we’ve truly transcended them, if we ever do. Everything I've written about in this thread has been based on my own direct experiences, though no doubt what also comes out on the page includes my wordy interpretations of things I've experienced rather than the things themselves -- which are often beyond words anyway, strictly "speaking".

    About five years ago, Eram sent me some material from laurency.com that was extremely pejorative regarding , supposedly, it seemed to imply, the whole of Indian mysticism. As I have a certain amount of knowledge and even direct experience about some aspects of the Indian traditions, it seemed to me that Mr Laurency had chosen some extreme examples that mostly weren't part of the Indian mainstream and, it seemed to me, didn't even remotely come close to painting a fair or balanced portrait of the traditions of Yoga or Vedanta or so on. It seemed to me to be comparable to taking some examples of, say, the most extreme Christian fundamentalist sects/cults and criticizing "Christianity" as a whole because that was being (I think quite misleadingly) implied to be typical of Christianity. For example, some such sects brainwash thirteen-year-old girls to be child-brides (actually, child-concubines) to old men, or so on or so forth. I think that, whatever the inadequacies of most forms of Christianity might be, nevertheless most Christians would deplore that as being very “un-Christian”.

    For that reason I would currently be very sceptical of most if not almost all of Mr Laurency's criticisms of Indian spirituality. And I would certainly have expected a spiritually awake individual to present what I would see as something much fairer to that tradition. Personally, then, I unfortunately wouldn’t currently trust the veracity of anything Mr Laurency presented, at least at first, unless I verified it in my own experience.

    In the end, though, teachings or models or practices are only a boat to get you to a certain level of freedom from unhappiness and all that that brings and implies. At a certain point you ditch the whole boat, if it got you there. And prior to that, getting towards the end of the journey, what boat you used becomes less and less important. But one thing I’m very conscious of these days is that it’s vitally important to be grounded in and continually live in a nonjudgmental space. Which is one of the primary core things that the true meditation traditions require mastery of, and something which few seem to truly achieve. That of course doesn’t mean one should neglect using wise discrimination wherever it’s genuinely appropriate, either.

    I’ve been around, because I had very regular very profound spiritual experiences ever since childhood, but I’ve never yet come across a spiritual “path” or “teaching” where the practitioners don’t spend a huge proportion of their time falling into various traps and then extricating themselves from them (hopefully, eventually). I’ve come across various followers of Mr Laurency, and I certainly haven’t noticed anything different in that regard with them.
    Last edited by TraineeHuman; 19th July 2018 at 03:07.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    I am grateful for your discussion TraineeHuman.

    I share “sort of a quest”, for personally realizable experience . Above and beyond the various presentations we happen to find in our world. It will take me some time to read all the hylozoic groundwork, because it is a big system, combining both the astral-emotional and the objective-scientific in unity. This unity can seem immature or as the ultimate liberation, which baffles inquiry. Yet to trace the connection with Pythagoras, thrills my sense of exploration.

    Yes, the East-West criticisms are severe and actually more condemning of the western cultures, but mostly where these teachings burden ‘selves’ with additional struggles of endless, irresolvable reincarnation cycles. (Instead of actually freeing selves from the cycles). Buddha is actually noted to be the most freed self, already, as of long ago. It is the aftermaths of ‘idiot-ization’, basically, which Laurency condemns most. Cristos, on the other hand, is presented as a far advanced self, coming down to earth’s materiality, temporarily borrowing the body of Jeshu. Where that effort admittedly failed due to human idiot-ization and of the masses. Where Cristos was not incarnating, nor subject to the laws of incarnation.

    A “black lodge” dating back to Atlantis, is especially described, which captures men, for eons of reincarnation, under idiot-ized bondage. (Likely related to many thread contents on this forum). Hylozoics applies a journalism of the emotional-astral realm, outlining it’s arenas of enticements. To warn freedom seekers of such risks… “Let the buyer beware”, as we are on our own, totally responsible for our beliefs and situations, as selves. Here is also where my personal experience, of seeking such freedoms, from sort of a pied piper, who sang a version of “The Sound & Light” mysteries, dating back through Sanskrit sources, (partly plagiarized, but captivating). Ultimately, i wondered if this was just one of the countless ploys, of this “black lodge movement”.

    Please advise: Let me know if sharing my personal experience on your thread is misplaced. If you prefer only your own personal experiences detailed here, i can accept that. If you ask me to remove my posts, i could do so. I expect that this forum does feature some very focussed threads, without detailed contrasts of other personal experiences. Initially i felt detailed responses were welcomed.

    PS-
    You wrote: “…include number mysticism … numbers as gods, the way the Pythagoreans did.”

    If i may surmise this… Laurency’s ‘Pythagoreanism’ uses a number chart to describe states of evolution, of selves, in what is called “The Septenary”, (to indicate states of personalized progress). Higher evolution is designated with larger numerals, generally. The scientific hypothesis format is used, which might sound too harsh or too cold. “Test the experience personally” and then seek corroboration . Do the homework, etc..

    I do see the freedom of other positions. As the hylozoic presentation of unity can be refuted by rugged individualism, or rejected by personalized feelings. May we find our personal freedom.
    Last edited by Bo Atkinson; 19th July 2018 at 12:20. Reason: small edit

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Hi wavydome,

    I'm browsing through the Laurency info that you put a link up for and i'm enjoying the perspective it puts across. Thank You!

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Hell again, wavydome. This thread was certainly never a place just for any one individual's views or experiences, at all. This is a discussion forum. There are a considerable number of lengthy and very well written posts mostly from 2013 where Ray, who was very familiar with and devoted to hylozozoics and a proponent of it, and had a very sharp intellect,went into great detail presenting interesting aspects of hylozoics with great eloquence and knowledge. He also presented much material from Leadbeater and Theosophy.

    The biggest area that we seemed to focus on disagreeing about was that I claim that an underlying metaphysics based on the concept of "objects" as the underlying thing reality is made of (which hylozoics is also based on) is in various ways quite inferior to a relational and contextual metaphysics. If you go to post #2649 https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...=1#post1146404, after the initial two paragraphs (which talk about free will) I present a summary of the inadequacies of a metaphysics based on the concept of "objects" as its most fundamental building blocks -- which nearly absolutely all of mainstream Western thought, and hylozoics, is indeed totally based on (at least before when quantum physics made it clear that if the physical world was made of objects, these are very strange objects indeed. For instance, every electron only has more or less probable locations, and can be literally anywhere in the entire universe, at any time.) In post #2649 I go on to try and explain how a relational and contextual metaphysics seems to be preferable, and truer to reality.

    I was very impressed by your statement that: "the East-West criticisms are severe and actually more condemning of the western cultures". Yes, indeed. To quote Krishnamurti, Christianity has been by far the most murderous and bloodthirsty religion of the past two thousand years. After all, they (the British, ultimately under the control of the Jesuits, I'm told) murdered at least several hundred millions in India in the nineteenth and twentieth (and eighteenth) century, and also strip-mined everything valuable or worthwhile out of India's soil and then left the Indians to die of starvation, or so they apparently hoped.

    I could go on and on about such inadequacies of the West, but it seems to me that the characteristic Western alienation from the environment ultimately has links to Western thought's and civilisation's notion that the basis of reality (which to the West is objects) is isolated and alienated.

    I'm a direct descendant of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and as far as I know what Lawrence Gardiner called the "dragon blood" of the original royal lines was in fact the DNA of Inner Earth humans. The latter appear to have initiated Indian and Chinese mysticism, and its more gentle and integrative view of essential reality, so maybe I'm biased as a result of that.
    Last edited by TraineeHuman; 20th July 2018 at 06:50.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Two days ago, in post 2731, you wrote:

    Quote My question is, why would anyone, or any being, not use the process of drawing astral energy from the universal astral plane?
    OK, your question was not for sharing or comparing experiences. Thanks for referring to your rules here. I am a descendant from a great, great grandmother, who was a native slave in Dutch Java, of that time. Best Regards.

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    Default Re: The Higher Self and transcendent experience, including OBEs

    Many alternative or "New Age"ish individuals will often boldly and eagerly rush to some mental idea -- a goal, or an affirmation, or a prayer or visualization, or a concept, or "positive conditioning" or "positive self-conditioning". (By the way, notice that conditioning, tragically, is really mostly just the mechanical (robotic) creation of extra desires for you to get even further trapped in.) And it seems these individuals will do this because somehow they believe this will ultimately have a quasi-magical effect, making their desired McGuffin or state of affairs materialize just as they demand. In their implicit belief system, this is even how "manifestation" invariably works.

    But in fact that normally doesn't work. At least, that is to say, it will only produce the reproduction or rehashing of what has already been there in the past. The (ordinary, thinking) mind, and all desires, are totally and inextricably anchored in the past. Notice also that every desire seems "positive" at the time we're ensnared by it. "Positive desires" enslave us to them just as much as "negative desires" do.

    Instead of this, what needs to be done is to leave it to the intuition, or "the spirit" (the higher soul), to work out all the details of and create something new and original that's radically better. Very few individuals know how to use the intuition in a truly accurate way at all, though very many (and psychic or New Age fairs are full of these, unfortunately) delude themselves with the conviction that they are exceptionally psychic and aware, and, it seems, that whatever their mind free-associates is precisely "the truth". However, those so far very rare individuals who can actually access some scraps of truth accurately through their intuition are masterful at accessing and holding and remaining consciously very present to total "emptiness" at any moment. Anything that's not "empty" on the inside belongs to the world of forms and therefore to the world of the thinking (or picturing, or symbolizing) mind.
    Last edited by TraineeHuman; 13th August 2018 at 06:31.

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