Review: Dream Yoga, by Samael Aun Weor

Review: Dream Yoga, by Samael Aun Weor

Book Review by Bob Peterson

The last time I went out to amazon.com to search for books on out-of-body experiences and astral projection, I came across this book: Dream Yoga: Consciousness, Astral Projection, and the Transformation of the Dream State. The title was intriguing. I've never really studied Dream Yoga, so this seemed like it might be a good introduction to the topic. Besides, I had to buy it for my OBE book collection anyway.

I almost didn't publish this review. I really don't like to slam other OBE authors for their work; it's just bad form. However, in this case the author died in 1977, so I know I won't hurt his feelings or impact his income. In this case, I feel I don't need to hold back. I have to be completely honest with you: This book is likely the worst book I've ever read on astral projection.

First, the author comes across as condescending, calling the average person "intellectual animals" and such:

"Normally, the consciousness within these intellectual animals mistakenly called humans sleeps profoundly; thus, the moments in which their consciousness is awake are seldom, very seldom. Yes, intellectual animals work, drive cars, marry, die, etc., with their consciousness totally asleep, and it awakens only in very exceptional moments." (page 6).

Second, although the author considers himself a Gnostic (although in no way related to the Gnostic Christians) he just jumps randomly from tradition to tradition without a sense of cohesion. For example, on page 22, he has a picture of a Tree of Life diagram from the Kabbalah, but it's thrown in the middle of a discussion on dreams, and without any explanation why. He jumps from Quetzalcoatl to Buddha to Christ, occasionally throwing out nonsensical references, like this:

"Let us never forget Padre Prado and Bernal Diaz del Castillo who, together, observed with delight the Anahuac priests in Jinn states." (page 90).

In many cases, it seems like the author is just making things up. For example:

"Any prophecy or announcement can especially occur on Wednesdays between 9:00 pm and 3:00 am." (page 134).

To make things worse, the language in the book is overly wordy and obfuscated. For example, take a look at this sentence:

"This makes us see the urgent necessity of understanding the profound meaning of all symbolism which should be deciphered in a very precise way in accordance to our development." (Page 108).

Does that make sense to anyone? It seems like every sentence is at least two to four times as long as it needs to be.

The footprint of the book is tiny to begin with; one of the smallest books I own on the subject. It has a reasonable number of pages, but the book could comfortably fit in your pocket. Plus, if the language was trimmed down to a reasonable level, it would be less than half the size.

In a few of my book reviews, I wrote that I was in complete agreement with the author. This book is the opposite: I disagree with pretty much everything the author says in this book. Take, for example, this quote:

"The wise Law of Contrary Analogies invites us to comprehend that if thirteen subjective and negative states exist during a hypnotic state for the projection of the double, likewise, another thirteen objective and positive states also exist during a healthy and natural projection of the double." (page 152).

Not only does he seem to be making up this "Law of Contrary Analogies," he is also saying that the use of hypnosis for OBE is a negative thing, for exactly thirteen different reasons! (He doesn't enumerate them or say why.) He's also saying there are exactly 13 healthy, natural ways to induce OBE without hypnosis, although he doesn't say what those are either.

Next, he goes on to talk about the astral body:

"The Astral Body is a body of an electronic, Solar nature. The Astral Solar Body has nothing vague, vaporous, or subjective. The Astral Solar Body is a body of bones and flesh; it is made out of the flesh from paradise, not from the flesh that comes from Adam." (page 153.)

I disagree completely; I tend to think of the astral body more in terms of our ingrained body image, as discussed in Fred Aardema's book. The astral body is, in my experience, subjective: You can experience it as a sphere of awareness just as easily as a human-shaped body.

The book gets more outlandish. The author talks about how the astral body must be built or created:

"This issue related with the building of the Astral Body has been, is, and shall always be an absolutely sexual problem...If sexual union of the phallus and the uterus is always necessary in order to engender a physical body, then it is also absolutely logical to state that the sexual act is indispensably necessary in order to engender the Solar Astral Body." (page 154).

So essentially he's saying that you need to have sex in order to build your astral body. Does that remind you of a cult leader or what? It's worse than nonsense, it's disinformation.

Next, he starts rambling about Sexual Hydrogen, element SI-12, developed within the human organism according to the musical scale, DO-RE-MI-FA-SOL-LA-SI. Any student who has taken a high school chemistry class (or music class) would laugh at that. It's nonsense.

I'm sorry, but I've never read a more ridiculous book on the subject, and I cannot recommend it.

19 August 2014

Ghost Hunting At The Monroe Institute

Ghost Hunting At The Monroe Institute

by Bob Peterson

A couple weeks ago, my wife Kathy and I spent a week at The Monroe Institute taking William Buhlman's OBE (Out of Body Experience) Intensive class. It was great fun, and I wrote about it in my previous blog, but there's more to the story.

Most people don't know this, but in addition to being an OBE author, I'm also a paranormal investigator. I started doing paranormal investigations for a group called MSPR (Minnesota Society for Parapsychological Research) in the early 1980s when I was still attending the University of Minnesota. This was long before the movie "Ghost Busters," which came out in 1984.

Today Kathy and I are in a Minnesota ghost hunting group called Nightweb Paranormal Investigations.

Before the OBE Intensive class, I had heard rumors that people "fly in" out-of-body from all over the world to visit the lab and the huge rose-quartz crystal that sits on the lawn of the complex. So I wondered: Can ghost-hunting equipment detect the astral body of an out-of-body experiencer? Could I detect any paranormal activity (or energy) near the crystal?

So Kathy and I decided to bring some of our ghost hunting equipment to the class. It wasn't much; just a couple voice recorders, a camera, and a K-2, that detects electromagnetic activity.

One day, during our afternoon break, we took the K-2 out to the crystal. We walked around, but didn't detect any electromagnetic anomalies.

When one of the TMI staff found out about all this, she asked us to visit the house she was renting, to do a mini-investigation. It turns out that she was renting one of the houses Robert Monroe had built on Roberts Mountain (he built three).

She sensed some interesting energy at the house. The energy was so strong that she couldn't sleep in any of the rooms. She smudged. She cleared. She was finally able to sleep in one particular bedroom in the corner of the house. The energy was not negative or ghostly; it was just so strong that it made it hard to sleep. Now she asked us to investigate.

So one afternoon, during our afternoon break, we grabbed our ghost hunting equipment and rode home with her.

It was surreal to walk around one of Robert Monroe's homes where he had so many OBEs described in his first book, the book that started my spiritual journey. It was a modest two-story home, now broken into two apartments. We were only allowed into the upper part.

We walked around the place with our voice recorders and K-2, trying to get readings. We didn't find any evidence of ghosts (so maybe the clearing had worked) but I could feel a very strange and powerful energy in that house. I couldn't detect any electromagnetic energy on the K-2, but I could feel powerful vibrations, especially in one area, but no intelligence behind it.

My honest opinion? I think Robert Monroe built that house on top of a powerful energy vortex. I haven't finished going over the evidence, so there may be more to report later. I would have loved to spend a night there, but there simply wasn't time.

Later in the week, a group of us were allowed to go into the OBE lab where many of their experiments are done. People have reported all kinds of paranormal activity there. Our K-2 unit registered what I'm assuming was lots of electromagnetic noise from the lab equipment, but when we got to the isolation booth--which is electromagnetically shielded by a Faraday cage--it registered nothing.

For several minutes, Kathy and I sat in the pitch black isolation booth, trying to make contact with any kind of nonphysical intelligence. There was nothing.

The idea of gathering paranormal evidence at The Monroe Institute is a good one; we just didn't have enough time to do it justice. We spent most of my time focused on the OBE class and its exercises, so we never had time to do further experiments.

I'm not giving up on the idea. Next time we go to The Monroe Institute, I want to bring more sophisticated equipment, like maybe a REM-POD.

05 August 2014