Tuesday, February 19, 2019

Review: Multidimensional Traveler by Khartika Goe

Multidimensional Traveler

by Khartika Goe

Today I'm reviewing the book Multidimensional Traveler: Finding Togetherness, or How I Learned to Break the Rules of Physics and Sojourn Across Dimensions and Time by Khartika Goe. What kind of name is Khartika Goe? Well, she's an upbeat young woman of Indonesian heritage. She's witty, intelligent, spiritual, and well-traveled (both physically and astrally!). She also had help writing this book from her friend Katy Kara.

Let me just say that this book started out fabulous, but by the end I was disappointed.

The book starts out with Goe's earliest "multidimensional travels," in other words, out of body experiences. She's unexpectedly pulled out-of-body and gets taught a few things by various non-physical beings. Things like:
"Never fear, for fear is the worst destruction of the self. We are always within you, never fear." (pg. 19)
and this:
"But every life is simply a lesson and a cycle. You have to see it as a mere lesson, quite like a classroom." (pg. 31)
Naturally, she doesn't understand what's going on, so she hides her OBEs from her friends. But through them she finds her calling, and she stresses the need to be of service:
"In order for you to embark on a journey that will unleash the greatest knowledge of the universe, you must make it your intention to be of service to humanity." (pg. 52)
Throughout the entire book, Goe stresses the importance of maintaining a positive attitude and "high vibrations." This is the one recurring theme of the book, and it's the biggest point I took from the book. For example:
"It's worth noting here that if your emotions and thoughts are not positive and your subconscious is not tamed after an out-of-body journey, you will retain little to no memory of the experience upon returning to your physical body." (pg. 59)
She occasionally gives some good pointers and helpful hints for the would-be out-of-body traveler. For example:
"An important component of this exercise relies on your ability to create scenarios and inner narratives that are actually possible, as opposed to those that are obviously fantasy...The key is to construct scenarios that make you feel lost in the moment and that drawn [sic] on all your senses. My closest friends have found that the most useful and successful scenarios for tricking the mind are those that incorporate real people from their daily lives, such as their annoying mother screaming at them during breakfast or their crush taking them on a date and kissing them under a tree." (pg. 98)
I think this goes back to a concept I called "The Fantasy Trap" in my first book: If you start playing "What if" and fantasizing scenarios while attempting to have an OBE, you'll likely get sucked into the fantasy and lose consciousness. That's how dreams start. But if you use "goal-directed" and planned scenarios, you're more likely to stay focused, which is key to achieving OBE.

She talks about hypnagogic hallucinations, although she doesn't call them that:
"As you are falling asleep and changing into your energetic body, at times you may hear snippets of different types of music in the background, for only a few seconds or possibly longer. This music should not be ignored, as it serves as a useful and accurate signal for detecting which dimensional existence your energy body is slipping into." (pg. 102)
Again, I'd say that's good advice, just because you want to maintain focus and not "lose yourself."

Goe gives several somewhat scary OBEs, but luckily, she keeps her head and reacts appropriately. For example:
"I quickly looked over my shoulder in search of the source of the pain, only to find the same woman I had seen earlier on the balcony of the house, staring sickeningly at me. I telepathically ordered her to let me go, to which she viciously declared that I was hers to keep." (pg. 132)
But she always manages to make it back safely to her body.

She describes several interesting OBEs in which she meets interesting people, and even seemingly travels to the future. One of the most interesting things I thought about the OBEs to "the future" was when a man told her:
"Currently, earth is much less populated than it was during your time. In fact, we learned that earth was most densely populated during the clouded period that you live in." (pg. 163)
That matched my own observations in a "Time Travel OBE" in which I was supposedly taken to the year 2049: I expected to see overcrowding, but despite that, I saw very few people (and no vehicles). Goe didn't give any year for her OBE. She was told "There is no year; we don't count by year anymore." I found that hard to believe.

About two-thirds of the way through the book, the narrative of the book seems to change. It kind of devolves into what sounds like a conspiracy theory. (I've met a lot of OBE fanatics; why does it always seem to draw the conspiracy theorists?) She starts talking about psychic "weapons" and "brutal technologies" designed to lower everyone's vibrations, steal our energy, and keep us inside the body. She talks about energetic leeches and the need to do energetic shielding exercises every night before bed.

Then she starts receiving lessons from a soul "collective" who calls itself "Togetherness." At that point the book degenerates into the same kind of narrative I disliked so much in Astral Projection as a Bridge to the Spiritual by Luiz Roberto Mattos. In other words, it was a series of her asking "My great being, can I ask one more thing?" followed by a spiritual discourse that would be too impossibly long for anyone to remember from an OBE, unless you have eidetic (photographic) memory.

She doesn't say how she's able to remember such large amounts of dialog. She just mentions near the beginning of the book that she used some special technique to recall it word for word, verbatim. Hmm.

In other words, her experiences at the beginning of the book seem genuine, but at the end of the book, they seem highly implausible, even bordering on paranoid. She dwells on the negative way too much, in my opinion, even while reminding us readers to remain positive.

The book was, however, very well written. She's a good writer and a good story teller. Goe's command of English was flawless, elegant and even flowery. I only found two or three tiny mistakes in the entire book, which says a lot. It seemed professionally written and edited. That made it mostly enjoyable.

As for the book's subtitle: Does she find togetherness? If you count the "collective" called "Togetherness" then yes, otherwise No. Is she breaking the laws of physics? No such thing, as far as I'm concerned. Did she sojourn across dimensions and time? Well, maybe.

The book is 263 pages, so there's a good amount of content. Unfortunately, there was almost nothing in there for OBE techniques, except for a one-page appendix in which she says to keep your vibrations high and do the energy shielding exercises and such.

I'll give it 3 stars. It's entertaining, but I've read better: it just wasn't satisfying.

Bob Peterson
19 February 2019

Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Becoming the Ideal Candidate for OBEs - Part 2

Becoming the Ideal Candidate for OBEs - Part 2


by Bob Peterson
Here is the second half of the previous blog article. Enjoy! If you missed part 1, here's a link: Becoming the Ideal Candidate for OBEs - Part 1.
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Develop Synaesthesia: Bleed-thru of the senses
People who use hallucinogenic drugs like LSD, psilocybin, or cannabis often “hear” colors or “see” shapes in sounds. The technical term for when the senses bleed together like this is synaesthesia, and it’s not confined to hallucinogenic experiences. I bring this up because according to scientists, there’s a high correlation between people who experience synaesthesia and people who rate high on the Tellegen Absorption Scale.

What I’d like to suggest is that while you listen to music, try to visualize its ups and downs. Some music apps made for phones and computers have a “visualization” mode that changes colorful patterns on the display with the music. Close your eyes and try to do that in your head. Again, I’ll talk more about that in chapter 53.

Visualizing music is like practicing or developing a kind of self-induced synaesthesia, which increases your level of absorption to more easily achieve OBEs.

Play Video Games
Scientists have known for a long time that people who play video games tend to have more OBEs. That’s because video games train you to change your focus from the body’s five physical senses to a computerized experience, an alternate “story of experience,” which is a subject I’ll cover in the next chapter. The same goes for virtual reality (VR) apps and games, or drones that feed real-time video data to a VR mask.

Engage in Creative Activities
People who have mystical experiences are often more creative. So one of the things you can do to bolster your creativity is to draw, doodle, or paint (without a template). If you’re more auditory than visual, you can try to compose music. Another exercise is to make up gibberish nonsense sentences.5 In my book Answers Within I give lots of different exercises designed to teach you how to get your subconscious to communicate, and since the subconscious is usually the source of creativity, many of them are helpful exercises for OBEs as well. For example:
  • Ask yourself, “If I was a guru on top the mountain, (or the Dalai Lama, Jesus, or some other wise person), how would I answer this question?”
  • Ask yourself, “What is love?” and try to make up a “wise answer.”
  • Ask yourself to “Say something wise” and think up the wisest thing you can imagine.
  • Go on a “metaphor walk” and ask yourself the “meaning” of the things you see. For example, “What’s the meaning of this street light?”
  • Look at people and try to guess their story: “Where did she grow up?” “What’s his favorite sport?” “What will she be doing when she’s 85 years old and what will she look like?”
Keep a Dream Journal
People who keep a dream journal are more prone to having (and remembering) out-of-body experiences. When you keep a dream journal, it trains your brain to retain a small thread of awareness during sleep. It learns to pay attention to what happens (your "story of experience") while you're dissociated from your body, and to carry those memories across the boundary between waking and sleeping. (More details in this blog article: Why Keeping A Dream Journal Helps OBEs.)


Lose Some Weight
If you’re overweight, it might help to trim up and lose some weight. I’ve always had better luck when my weight is down. I’ll go into more details about that in chapter 70.

If you’re a left-brained logical thinker like me, it may seem unproductive, tedious, uninteresting or unappealing to spend hours engaging your creative mind, daydreaming, reading, playing video games and such, but they will make you a better candidate for OBEs.

Don’t do any of these exercises halfheartedly or they simply won’t work. A single event, like reading a novel, may exercise the right neural pathways, but it won’t rewire your brain unless you do it repeatedly. It’s a lot like physical exercise: you won’t develop strong muscles by going to the gym (or biking, hiking, etc.) once a month. You’ve got to develop a habit and keep at it. Every time you do it, the neural pathways get stronger, making you a better and better candidate for OBEs. And of course, you also need to give it some time to take effect. Experts say it takes 21 days to form a habit.

Whether you’re naturally a good candidate for OBEs, or became one with these exercises, that may still not be enough to attain them because you still need to tweak your brain to make it happen. First, we need science to tell us what happens to the brain during an OBE, then we can develop exercises to replicate that. That’s the subject of the next chapter.

22 January 2019
1 What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About Compassion, Carolyn Gregoire, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-neuroscience-can-tea_n_5268853
2 Out of Body Experiences, Robert Peterson, Hampton Roads Publishing, 1997, pg. 40.
3 Seeing Myself, Susan Blackmore, Robinson, 2017, pg. 117.
4 Lessons Out of the Body, Robert Peterson, Hampton Roads Publishing, 2001, pg. 221.
5 How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain, Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman, Penguin Random House, 2016, pg. 124.