Mirth

Mirth

 by Robert Peterson

Last night Kathy and I went to the Phoenix Exploration of Consciousness meetup.com group for the third time. This is a great group of people. For the first hour, they just eat and socialize. After that, they do a group meditation, and often it's with binaural beat technology, typically the Monroe Institute's hemi-sync technology. The goal is to induce Monroe's "focus level" experiences.

I've never had much luck with the hemi-sync courses, and I've never taken a class at the Monroe Institute. It's probably because focus level experiences have never been my primary goal in meditation, which has always been out-of-body experiences. Typically, the instructor or guide's voice does more to interrupt my journey than to guide me there. Nonetheless, I've been using the meetup as a chance to do some meditation and connect with friends.

The group meets at 7:00pm, socializes and snacks for about an hour, then everybody plugs their headphones into splitters and FM receivers, and goes through the hemi-sync meditation.

Last night I did not have an OBE, but I did get some interesting results. I was meditating, eyes closed, staring into the blackness in front of me. I was trying my best to ignore the voice on the recording, and do my own thing. I had visualized a vertical slit in the fabric of the blackness. It was kind of like a one-dimensional doorway, and I was trying to narrow my consciousness to the point where I could fit through that narrow slit-doorway.

Unexpectedly, the doorway started to bend so that it was no longer a straight line. It bent into a semicircle. I wasn't consciously manipulating it, so it surprised me. Then the slit, now a semicircle, formed the outside profile of an eyeball. Slowly, my visualization panned back and I could see more of the eye. At the same time, it rotated so it was looking right at me. Somehow, it seemed alive.

They say the eyes are the windows of the soul. As I looked at the eye, it seemed without gender; like a young child's eye. I saw so many things in that one eye: innocence, joy, laughter, boundless energy, playfulness, unconditional love. The best word I could come up with was: mirth. In this child's eye I saw unbridled bubbly mirth. But who was the owner? What child was this, and why was I seeing it now during my meditation?

To answer those questions, I wanted to see more of the child's face. I wanted to pan out to see more. As I backed up, I started to see a mischievous smile. Then I had an intuitive understanding: I was not seeing a child. I was seeing God! Or maybe a representation of God.

The realization hit me: I could never see all of God from this human form because God encompasses all of creation. I could only see as much as God cared to reveal to me.

Then I also realized: God has all this unconditional love, all this boundless energy, all this mirth. We all exist in the eye of God, and God has nothing but love for us. There is no angry, vengeful, judging Old Man with a long white beard. The seriousness and heaviness is all in the eyes of mankind. It's all child's play.

21 Feb 2013

Spiritual But Not Religious 

by Robert Peterson

Okay, I know this blog article may offend some people, especially religious people. If you're defensive about your religion, stop reading right now. 

On Monday, a facebook friend posted a photo of an iceberg. Above the surface, the iceberg showed one word: love. Below the surface were many words with negative connotations: Hate, greed, bigotry, misogyny, submission, homophobia, anachronism, indoctrination, child abuse, repression, genocide, slavery, murder, racism, fear, and lies. 

The photo didn't bother me. I interpret it this way: Many of the "religious right" purport to love everyone on the surface, but beneath the surface they harbour many of those negative traits. Jesus taught us to love. In fact, love is integral to the only two commandments he gave us: (1) love God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind, and (2) love your neighbour as yourself (Matthew 22:37). Yet many so-called Christians are more focused on discriminating against gay people or other groups than they are focused on God. But that's not what this article is about.

The facebook friend I mentioned obviously interpreted the photo differently because what he posted with the photo was:

Why there's a growing population of "spiritual but not religious" group.

And that really bothered me.

If I understand him correctly, he's saying that the group "spiritual but not religious" is growing because they have love on the surface but all these negative things on the inside? Boy, did he ever get it wrong.

Fighting the urge to speak my mind, and trying my hardest not to start a religious name-calling fistfight, I posted a simple reply to his statement:

No, it's because people are starting to see the truth and the truth doesn't fit the old religious paradigms.

Today, people in general are more scientific. As much as they are mostly still in the dark regarding religious topics, they at least have a better understanding of basic science, physics and anatomy. Science had trained them to look at things analytically, and some are starting to look at their religion with the same critical eye. And what they're seeing often doesn't jibe with what religious authorities are teaching. As much as they're told to "have faith", many don't accept religious stories blindly anymore. Nowadays you question when your thirteen-year-old daughter turns up pregnant and claims she wasn't having sex. You're skeptical when she gives you some wild story about an angel named Gabriel who allegedly said she's been selected by God to give birth to a special boy whose name means God Is With Us. You question that "miracle" a little bit more than you did two thousand years ago and wonder if it's covering up a deeper truth.

When the scientific method is applied to religion, you start to see through the misinformation. You can either ignore the evidence and desperately cling to the belief that people were better observers two thousands of years ago, or take a closer look. When you find a discrepancy, your choices are to lose faith, white-wash the data to fit your beliefs (as so many scientists today do), or to do your own homework. Sadly, out of laziness, most people take the first option, leaving us with a Godless society. But the evidence of God, the afterlife and a spiritual realm are abundant if you look for them.

It's only in the last 300 years or so that people have been free to share their own theories and observations, whether spiritual or scientific. Before that, you'd typically be excommunicated, condemned as a heretic, burned as a witch or otherwise tortured and executed (unless everything you said about your experiences perfectly matched the religious dogma of the dominant religion, in which case they made you a saint).

Case in point, Giodano Bruno, who was burned at the stake for insisting on something we now know is scientific fact: that the Earth travels around the sun. Better known Galileo Galilei said the same thing, and was also condemned as a heretic, forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.

Organized religion has done more to quash scientific discovery than any other force on the planet, but tragically, it's done even more to quash religious discovery. It's systematically destroyed anyone who dares to share what they've learned through their own personal experiences and communion with God.

Isn't it ironic, then, that all the world's great religions were born from the religious observations--based on personal experiences--of people who contradicted their culture's prevalent religion? Great religious leaders like Jesus Christ, Moses, Mohammad, Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, Zoroaster, Patanjali and the like, all followed the same pattern. They all meditated. They all communed with God. They all had religious experiences. They all went through the door and saw the other side. They all fought the religious paradigms of their culture and were brave enough to tell people what they saw. Some, like Jesus Christ, got killed for it.

After their deaths, their disciples took over. Full of good intentions, they spread the word. Not the original, but a twisted version of their master's words, morphed into self-serving political organizations. Without going through the door themselves, they tried to interpret the light coming through the keyhole, and make definitive statements about what is on the other side. Without that direct communion with God, they were lost trying to put physical interpretations on nonphysical events. And in most cases, they failed miserably. So they focused on herding their sheep rather than on God.

We all know why organized religions suppress the religious experiences of their followers: because at the core, they're political organizations. Maintaining power, control and self-preservation are more important to them than "the truth." But you know what? The truth has a way of getting out, despite their best efforts to hide it or keep it for themselves.

As technology advances, religious experiences are becoming more commonplace. Modern medicine has saved thousands from the brink of death, and these survivors have incredible stories to tell about what they saw in their Near-Death Experiences. And their observations don't fit the old religious paradigms.

At the same time, more people today are meditating, going within, becoming self-aware, learning to induce out-of-body and other mystical experiences. They're learning new techniques and sharing what they find. More importantly: they're developing their own personal relationship with God.

What they're finding is that their relationship with God and Spirit have very little to do with the religious organizations: the churches, synagogues, mosques and temples, and the people who control them. I believe God is within everyone's grasp and you don't need organized religions to show you the way. The information is out there. Maybe too much, in fact. Information--both good and bad--is available at our fingertips on our cell phones, tablets and computers through the Internet.

A hundred years ago, you never questioned your doctor. Today it's absolutely essential. People need to take personal responsibility for their health and question everything, not because health care is getting worse, but because the information--and misinformation--is getting out of control. 

It's the same way with priests, rabbis, imams and gurus: people must take personal responsibility for their spirituality, their religion and their relationship with God. They need to start questioning time-honoured religious traditions. If for no other reason, because knowledge trumps faith.

To aid them on their journey, the technology is also improving. Now, ordinary people--not just the religious fanatics--are employing Ganzfeld setups, mind machines, flotation tanks, infra-liminal technology, biofeedback, neurofeedback, and hemi-sync to explore the outer reaches of the mind. And what they're finding isn't much like what you find in the pages of the Bible, Talmud, Koran, Avesta or Bhagavad Gita.

That is why more people are becoming "spiritual but not religious."

There's nothing "supernatural" in this life. Nothing is defying the laws of physics. Any theories about reality must make room for everything we experience, both religious and scientific. A science that denies religious observations is just as absurd as a religion that denies the observations of science. Experience is experience and truth is truth.

I like to think that eventually, science and spirituality will meet in the middle. I hope that through direct observations like out-of-body experiences, they will both arrive at a unified view of reality that includes God and spirit as well as physics and biology.

I like to think that one day, we can all directly experience God and see things as Jesus and the others did. And I look forward to that day.

08 Feb 2013

 

What's In A Name?

What's In A Name?

By Robert Peterson

Does having the name Robert increase your ability to have out-of-body experiences? For some reason, many of the people associated with out-of-body experiences have the name Robert. Some have speculated (in jest) that it's because "Robert" actually contains the letters OBE: R-OBE-rt.

Robert Monroe is probably the most famous OBE expert of the 20th century. He founded the Monroe Institute and wrote three books on the subject: Journeys Out of the Body, Far Journeys and Ultimate Journey.

Robert Crookall studied OBEs for many years and wrote many books on the subject, including The Study and Practice of Astral Projection and Out of Body Experiences: A Fourth Analysis.

Let's not forget our favorite Aussie, Robert Bruce, who wrote Astral Dynamics and Mastering Astral Projection.

Robert ("Bob") Moser wrote a book called Mental and Astral Projection.

Robert Cornelius has an OBE book Astral Projection: Break Free in 16 Different Ways.

Then there are my (Robert Peterson's) books, Out of Body Experiences: How to have them and what to expect and Lessons Out of the Body.

Robert Bushman compiled a comprehensive OBE bibliography at http://obebibliography.info/

And let's not forget Robert Moss, author of books on lucid dreaming and shared dreaming like Dreamgates and Conscious Dreaming.


Okay, there are lots of OBE books out there. I own more than 150, and that's just books on out-of-body experiences. It doesn't include the many books I own on peripheral topics like Near-Death Experiences (NDEs), Lucid Dreaming. That's just OBEs. So yes, there are plenty of famous OBE authors who aren't named Robert: William Buhlman, Fred Aardema, Albert Taylor, Graham Nichols, Sylvan Muldoon, Oliver Fox (Hugh Calloway), Ophiel (Marcel L Forhan), Joe Slate and many many more.

I suspect it's all just a coincidence. But then again, many of us believe there are no such thing as coincidences.

Answers Within: Contacting Your Inner Voice

Answers Within: Contacting Your Inner Voice

by Robert Peterson

“The answer lies within.” We hear it from the loftiest spiritual teachers to heavy metal bands like Dream Theater, but how do you do it? Often shrouded in mystery, it's had many names: clairaudience, second sight, and intuition. In its stronger forms: talking to angels, spirit guides, or your inner voice. Whatever you call it, it's a skill you can learn, and its roots lie in the subconscious.

But only crazy people talk to themselves, right? Wrong. Psychologists have known about the unconscious mind since Friedrich Schelling coined the phrase in the 1800s. Whether we like it or not, it always influences us. Many think the subconscious is a dark, murky place; the cesspool of our minds, but experience shows it's a direct connection to what New Age people call the Higher Self, which has a world of psychic information, guidance, and spirituality.

The biggest obstacle to inner voice communication is conditioning: we're taught from day one to focus on our five senses, and that everything else (what's inside) is unimportant or untrustworthy. So the first step is to undo all that negative programming.

The next step is to learn to turn your attention inward, and maintain that link throughout the day. The trouble is, we're usually given vague (or worse, incorrect) instructions. It's often described as one-way communication steeped in mysticism or religion: perform a ceremony, cast a spell, recite a prayer and hope for the best. But the communication flows both ways; we just don't realize it because our brains have complex noise filters to keep “what's not important” from bubbling to the surface. It's like hearing a whisper in a rock concert; the signal is too weak to hear over the noise.

Meditation is only part of the equation. It helps dismiss some of the musicians, guitars and screaming audience from our inner auditorium of everyday life, but we still have to listen for the whisper.

In chapter 10 of my first book, Out of Body Experiences: How to have them and what to expect, I described my inner voice and how I talk to it. I've received almost as many emails about that as my OBEs. I've been reluctant to comment because I was afraid treating the subject too lightly would do more harm than good; messing with people's minds is not to be undertaken lightly. Instead, I spent years working on a new book, Answers Within: How to Use Your Inner Voice for Wisdom, Spirituality and Psychic Awareness, that I published in 2012. Here are some tips and techniques from the book:

• Play “the wisdom game.” Make time to ask yourself philosophical or religious questions and pretend you're the guru. Pause your inner dialog to get stray thoughts; take the first ideas that pop into your mind and morph them into “wise” answers.
• Choose a “protocol question” you can ask yourself to get into the right frame of mind. Pick a question that will make you dig deep inside for the answer. Mine is “What is love?”
• Take walks and try to see everything around you as a spiritual metaphor, and tell yourself its deeper meaning.
• Expand the game: Instead of philosophical questions, ask yourself to just “Say something wise” and make up answers.
• Each morning, give yourself a spiritual lesson for the day. Just make something up. Make every day a spiritual learning experience.
• Throughout the day, ask yourself to comment on what's happening; check it against the lesson you gave yourself.
• Increase psychic sensitivity by being love-based and non-judgmental.
• Ask about other people's lessons. Learn from what other people are going through, but don't mistake their lessons for yours.
• Don't doubt yourself. Gain confidence through verification.
• Recognize the voice of fear. Pay attention to impressions accompanied by a detached feeling of peace and calm. Discard impressions accompanied by fear, negativity or strong emotions.
• Use music and books to increase inner voice vocabulary.
• Keep a “running question mark” in your mind. Try to remain open to messages from your inner voice throughout the day and in every situation.
• Keep playing and eventually you'll start getting “answers” without questions.

Learning to talk to your inner voice is an invaluable tool for spirituality and psychic development. Making it fun and being persistent are key.

15 January 2013

Affirmations and OBEs

by Bob Peterson

A lot of people talk about affirmations and their importance to out-of-body experiences, but how important are they? In my opinion, very important. I'm not alone. In his groundbreaking book The Projection of the Astral Body, OBE pioneer Sylvan Muldoon, wrote:

"Recall the fundamental law of astral projection: when the subconscious will becomes possessed of the idea to move the body (coinciding bodies) and the physical body is incapacitated, the subconscious will moves the astral body out of the physical."

In other words, if your body is under sleep paralysis, and your subconscious wants to move, your astral body will move away from the physical.

What I've found is that I can consciously try to induce an OBE for hours and get nowhere unless I'm in the right state of mind. But my subconscious can take me out-of-body easily, quickly and efficiently whenever it's motivated to do so. So one important tool for inducing OBE is motivating the subconscious.

It is very easy is it for your subconscious to pull you away from your body, because it's done it your whole life: it pulls you out of your body every night during sleep. Typically, you just hover above the body, watching the illusion of your dream hallucination, and you're completely unaware of the OBE because you're unconscious.

It pulls you out-of-body as soon as you fall asleep. In fact, your subconscious waits passively until it believes your awareness is completely extinguished, then it pulls you out. If you keep your conscious mind completely, totally, utterly blank (quiesced), your subconscious can be fooled into thinking that you're unconscious. Your mind has to be quiet and inactive enough that your subconscious can't tell that you're still aware. Once it pulls you out of your body, you can wrestle conscious control away from it, and voila: you're out of the body.

How do I know this? I've seen it firsthand. I've done it successfully. I've also tried to wrestle control from it too early, with interesting results. My subconscious (which I become very aware of) acts very surprised by this rude intrusion into its normal dealings, as if to say "WTF? How did he manage to slip through?" Then I get forcefully slammed back into my body: wham! Apparently it doesn't like me interfering with its nightly falling asleep routine!

Despite experiences like this, your subconscious can be trained, and it can help you with your OBEs. Not during the falling-asleep process, but during your "normal" OBE practice sessions.

So how do you program your subconscious to give you conscious OBEs? The same way you program your subconscious for anything:

• Use hypnosis
• Change your inner dialogue
• Use Affirmations

I've mostly been resistant to hypnosis my whole life, so it doesn't work for me. Consequently, the OBE hypnosis tapes and CDs don't work on me.

Changing your inner dialogue is a complex subject, and this article's already getting too long, so I'm not going to cover it here.

That leaves affirmations. Affirmations are similar to your inner dialogue. You silently say them to yourself. And while doing it may seem silly, your subconscious hears those inner thoughts and reacts accordingly. So here are some tips on affirmations:

Make affirmations simple

Your subconscious communicates in many ways, but it's not designed for language interpretation or complex linguistic analysis. So a long sentence will just confuse it. Long sentences will just be ignored and do you no good. Imagination and visualizations are better.

Make affirmations positive

Your subconscious is very literal. It will interpret negative sentences negatively. For example, if you affirm "OBEs aren't difficult" your subconscious might only notice two words: "OBEs" and "difficult", and you've just made your job harder. On the other hand, if you affirm it in the positive, your subconscious will interpret it the way you want: "OBEs are easy."

Less is more

Don't try to give yourself too many affirmations at once. One per day (or maybe two) is all it takes. If you start rambling to yourself in a long discourse, your subconscious is going to get confused. Don't say to yourself, "OBEs are easy. I have them all the time. It comes naturally. I want to have OBEs. I slip easily out of my body. I become conscious while I'm asleep..." because it's too much information for your subconscious to handle. Just pick one simple sentence per day. You can use a different affirmation each day.

Do affirmations when you first wake up

When you first wake up, your subconscious and conscious are more closely in communication than at other times of the day. In fact, the groggier you are, the better. Use that to your advantage.

Do affirmations several times throughout the day

Your subconscious is programmed by repetition. Each time you repeat the affirmation to yourself, the more it becomes ingrained. But do NOT just repeat an affirmation twenty times, then let it go for the rest of your day. You have to repeat, but at different times. It's better to affirm once or twice, then do something else and repeat it again later.

For example: When you first wake up in the morning, before you sit up in bed, affirm "I leave my body". Then sit up in bed and say it again to yourself. Then visit the bathroom. When you're finished, affirm it again. Then, go get that first cup of coffee, and while you sip, affirm it again. Affirm it at every meal. Every bathroom break. You get the idea: make it a habit throughout the day. In a way, you're changing your beliefs about yourself.

A picture is worth a thousand words

Your subconscious is much more comfortable with pictures than words. It's much better to do your affirmation as a visual image than a bunch of words. So when you affirm "I leave my body" it's more effective to visualize yourself leaving your body. The idea of leaving your body is much more potent than the words. The words pale by comparison.

Your subconscious is literal, so be careful

When I started using affirmations, I didn't know what I was doing, so I made mistakes. For example, I once used an affirmation like "I can easily slip away from my body." That affirmation seems innocent enough, but I had a core belief that interfered. I had read somewhere that OBEs can happen easier when you are sick: when your body is weak, it has less hold on you, and your subconscious is more apt to pull your astral body out in order to recharge. So my subconscious interpreted this simple affirmation as "I want to get sick, so slipping out-of-body will be easier" and the net result is: I got sick. And this happened multiple times until I figured out what was going on.

The bottom line is: be careful how you formulate your affirmations and make them positive, associating them with healthy, normal behavior.

The Self-Questioning Trick

The self-questioning trick is something I developed for remembering my dreams, but I soon discovered it works for any affirmation. I wrote about this in my latest book, Answers Within. Basically you do this: (1) Affirm what you want, (2) Visualize yourself happily attaining your goal. (3) Ask yourself, "Is that what I really want?" (4) Tell yourself, "Yes, that's what I want." Then repeat these steps at least three more times.

So in the beginning, I learned to remember my dreams by doing this: (1) I'd say to myself, "When I wake up, I'll remember my dreams." (2) I'd imagine waking up and happily recalling my dreams. (3) I'd ask myself, "Is that what I want?", (4) I'd tell myself, "Yes, that's what I want." And I'd do this four or more times.

When I adapted it to OBEs that became, (1) "I have OBEs." (2) Imagine myself leaving my body, (3) "Is that what I want?", (4) "Yes, that's what I want."

Doing versus Wanting

A lot of spiritual teachers warn against stating wants. One theory is this: If you affirm "I want to have OBEs" your subconscious will act on the primary verb in the sentence: You will "want" more effectively. You won't have any OBEs, but you sure will "want" them better.

But if you affirm "I do OBEs" your subconscious will act on the verb "do" and actually help you do the OBEs, not just wanting them.

Avoid the "Wish Trap"

This is similar to the issue of "wanting" above. You should avoid affirm term "I wish" because that is loaded with connotations that your subconscious will interpret literally. If you affirm "I wish I had OBEs" you are implying to your subconscious that you do not currently have them. Even if it's true, don't do it. Your subconscious can interpret this as "OBEs are lacking in my life: I don't have any OBEs" which is the opposite of what you want. So always affirm their presence, not their absence.

Conclusions

OBE affirmations program your subconscious, and that, in turn, makes them more frequent in your life. You probably won't see immediate results. In fact, it may be weeks or months before you make any progress, so be patient and keep your subconscious motivated.

09 January 2013

Explorations In Consciousness

Explorations In Consciousness:

A New Approach to Out-of-Body Experiences, by Frederick Aardema

Review by Bob Peterson

I just read the book Explorations In Consciousness by Frederick Aardema. To be honest, I enjoyed this book more than many I've read in recent years. It was thoroughly enjoyable. One of the reasons I liked it so much is just because of the author's approach. It really makes you think. Hard.

You can tell from his writing that he's been out "far". I dare say "farther" than most OBE authors. The author's experiences not only take you to the far reaches of the OBE, it also paints a fairly accurate picture of how things work "out there".

The author spends a fair amount of time talking about experiments he did trying to gain veridical evidence that the experience is "objective" and not merely a subjective experience. Like my own experiences, his level of success was far from ideal, but that ends up being a springboard for far-reaching theories of perception and why these types of experiments often fail.

He talks about the "personal field" where perceptions are entirely subjective, and "collective fields" where perceptions are objective: the idea of concensus realities that may be shared between people (whether alive or dead). In a previous blog article I wrote, I talked about the difference between Lucid Dreaming and OBE being primarily whether the subject is hallucinating (personal field) or not (collective field). But really, that's a matter of perception.

That leads us to question how perception works in the physical world. When you think about it, what is "real"? It REALLY messes with your mind. After all, all you have to base your opinions about "reality" are sense perceptions from your physical body, right? These sense perceptions are just electrical impulses fed from your eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and touch receptors. The electrical impulses are then interpreted by your mind into a cohesive whole. That whole is your "world" and it's entirely created inside your mind.

For example, you may see a lamp sitting on a table, but really "lamp" and "table" are just convenient categories inside your mind based on senses that can easily be fooled or tricked.

The senses are not all that accurate either. It's "survival knowledge". You perceive pleasure and pain, hot and cold, threats and non-threats. Your mind categorizes them all neatly into convenient boxes: a lamp goes into the "light fixture" box, and thus obtain certain attributes (helpful, not a threat, often yields light, etc.) But in fact, the perceived object is just a collection of atoms, and atoms are just energy balls: huge amounts of empty space. There are very miniscule protons and neutrons orbited by electrons, but it's mostly just space. That "space" information isn't important to your survival in the physical world, so it's completely ignored, overlooked.

So while you're awake, your mind interprets data coming in from your physical body's senses to create an impression--a summary within your mind--of what you call "the real world". In an out-of-body experience, you take away those physical senses, and your mind is forced to create another cohesive whole, a framework for your existence. Since the data coming in is not physical, the framework sometimes doesn't make sense.

Now consider this: In reality, there is no astral body, but only a body-image created by your own mind, and it's there because you're so used to that type of physical framework. Your mind creates it out of force of habit.

Since there's no "real" astral body, there are no astral eyes or astral photon receptors. In other words, you're not really "seeing" but your mind interprets your experience that way out of habit. Your mind creates your astral world--merely an interpretation of your mind--as much as it creates your physical world.

That leads to a discussion of "the contextual nature of perception". If your world is literally created by your mind's interpretation of all this sense data (whether from physical senses or non-physical senses), then the act of  directing your attention--changing your focus--literally changes your world.

Now add this to the mix: I think it was parapsychologist Susan Blackmore who made the famous observation "Who said you're in the body anyway?"  You're not really in the body at all. It's just that the focus of your attention is primarily on your body's senses.

In reality, your conscious awareness extends far beyond the body. Famous studies in remote viewing (e.g. Joe McMoneagle, Russell Targ, etc.) have shown that if you direct the focus of your attention "enough" away from your physical body to a remote location, you can gather data from those remote locations. And it's all done while "in" the body. It's just a matter of how much you can learn to redirect your attention and train your mind to interpret the nonphysical data.

Toward the end of the book, Aardema also gives a step-by-step breakdown of how to induce an OBE. I didn't find it that much different from how I induce my own OBEs; it's just that he goes into meticulous detail of what happens (and what needs to happen) at each step. This approach can be very helpful to someone with an analytical mind like me. Some, however, may not find it very practical because it reads more like a text book. It's like an instruction manual for putting together a piece of furniture: way down into the nuts and bolts, which is great for some, but it definitely might lose some people. It may very well go over a lot of people's heads. Still, this level of detail is great and shows the depth and quality of the author's experiences, and how much time he's spent analyzing what's really going on.

This is one of the best OBE books I've read in many years and I highly recommend it.

04 January 2013

OBE and Time Travel

by Bob Peterson

In the Questions and Answers section of my second book, Lessons Out of the Body, I wrote that I had never had a time-travel OBE. In the same year the book was published, 2001, that changed. Sigh.

The truth is, I never believed in time travel. It seems like a bogus concept; too far afield, even for me. My skepticism was off the charts. Then it happened to me. Too many times I've heard myself say: I'd never believe it if it hadn't happened to me, and I'd never expect anyone else to believe it either way.

It was Saturday, 21 Apr 2001. I put the dogs outside early, then climbed back into bed to make an OBE attempt. I found the properly state of mind pretty easily and slipped out. I floated out of the bedroom and did some minor casual gliding just to experience weightlessness. I affirmed how real the experience felt; my consciousness was very clear.

I didn’t have any particular goals in mind. As I assumed a standing position, a kind of door formed in front of me. It wasn’t like a physical door, but I perceived it to be some kind of portal or tube. A very subtle thought was sent to me: “Let’s go.” As I stepped toward the door I asked, “Where am I going?” As I passed through the door, a disembodied voice replied, “To the year 2049.”

As I felt myself whooshed away, I thought, Yeah, right. I was even pretty skeptical about time travel but I try not to judge my experiences until I'm back in the body.

I found myself in a big city. There was no helper in sight. Whoever or whatever had brought me here was now gone. I assumed I was in Minneapolis, but I didn’t recognize anything, so there was no hope for finding any kind of validation. I decided I should go to a place I might recognize.

I willed myself to the area where I grew up and found myself on the corner of Lowry Avenue and Polk street in Minneapolis. The neighborhood was recognizable, but things had changed. I decided I wasn’t going to trust that I had traveled in time, so I decided to find proof. I wanted to find a calendar or some kind of computer screen that would have the date on it. With that thought in mind, I started walking east on Lowry toward Central avenue. I walked into a few businesses and tried to look at their computer screens. The computers looked old, like the basic design hadn’t changed much in 48 years. I wondered if maybe they were using these really old computers for some strange reason. It struck me as odd; didn't the technology advance? Or were these people using old computers because that was their only option?

Was there a manufacturing problem or hardship that had forced everyone to use antiques for their computing power?

I couldn’t find any calendars or dates anywhere for a long time and when I did, the numbers seemed fuzzy. I was either having a hard time perceiving them or my consciousness was not as clear as I'd like it. I found one reference to 1994 and another to 1996. Very strange indeed, since this was 2001. I didn't trust my perceptions, and went back outside to find better validation.

I continued to walk toward the intersection of Lowry and Central Avenue. When I got there, a found a huge concrete walkway had been erected over the road. The road--what is today Central Avenue--looked like some kind of mini-freeway. It had concrete walls to keep pedestrians out, but it was too small to be a freeway by today's standards. It looked like some kind of strange single-lane mini-freeway. I wondered if it was for bicycles or motorcycles, or some kind of miniature mass-transit. Or perhaps it was some kind of automated transportation system for small people-sized vehicles.

That should be easy to tell, I thought, if there were any vehicles. I looked around and didn’t see any vehicles anywhere. No cars or motorcycles parked anywhere. Very strange.

I continued to explore. There were people milling about the area, and they looked normal in every respect, but there were very few of them. That struck me as odd too. I expected the year 2049 to be crowded with lots of people, but instead, the place looked almost abandoned, with only a few people out walking. I wondered, “What happened to all the people?” I had been reading Bruce Moen’s third book, Voyages Into the Afterlife and he had predicted that some great disaster will cause the majority of people on Earth to die. I really didn’t buy into what Bruce was saying, but now I wondered if I was seeing proof. Or was it a manifestation of subconscious fears generated by the book? Hard to say without any validation. If I could only find proof of what year it was...

I wandered into what appeared to be a drug store so I could see what calendars they were selling, but my consciousness started to deteriorate. I was losing lucidity and tried to make myself more alert.

I couldn’t find any calendars in the front of the store, so I wandered to the back. In a back room, I passed by two women sitting at a small table, one blonde and one brunette. As I walked by, the blond’s head turned slightly toward me. Now that was odd. I stopped and turned to look at her, and she seemed to be looking directly at me. That was odd; I’m usually invisible to physical people during my OBEs.

Looking around, it appeared that she was apparently giving some kind of psychic reading to the other woman. She had Tarot cards spread out on the table. I walked back to her and bent down close to her face. I asked, “Can you see me?” She slowly nodded yes, as if afraid to speak and appear, from her client's point of view, to be talking to thin-air. I asked, “Are you psychic or something?” This time she spoke: “Yes.”

Then my consciousness disappeared altogether and I woke up in bed.

I didn't know what to make of this experience, and I'm still just as baffled by it today. I've never believed in time travel, and there are very few credible reports in the OBE literature. It's definitely an area worth exploring, but unfortunately, I've never had another OBE quite like it.

2012 December 19