The Test

The Test

by Bob Peterson

For today's blog, I decided to re-publish one of my favorite chapters, 15, from my second book, Lessons Out of the Body. Few people have the book and I think it's out of print. Enjoy. Bear in mind that this was written around the year 2000, so my writing isn't as polished.

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What's today's lesson? I asked my inner voice.

Today, wherever you go, imagine that you are

surrounded by angels who help you, guide you and protect you. 

They are really there, you know.

After getting a job and moving back to Minneapolis in October of 1996, I felt like I was back where I belonged. Once again, I resumed my OBE experiments. This time I was more daring. Here is an OBE from May 1999.

Kathy and I were at her mom’s cabin in northern Minnesota. After Kathy got up this morning, I decided to do some OBE stuff. I’ve been reading Sophy Burnham’s book The Ecstatic Journey and it made me want a transcendental God experience. I figured an OBE would be the perfect way to try it. I began to focus on swaying. I went deeper and deeper until I started getting hypnagogic images. One image was of a building, so I started focusing on the image of the building to the exclusion of everything else. As the image became clear, the swaying increased. The buzzing began, and I whooshed up and out of my body.
My first thought/intent was, “I want to experience God, enlightenment, etc.,” but I didn’t know exactly how to do that. My first attempt was an appeal to my oversoul/higher self or to any invisible entities who might be with me, and to God, but nothing happened.

So I started focusing on raising my vibrations, and as I did, I started floating up into the air. It was a beautiful, warm, spring day and the air smelled sweet and fresh. I felt alive, and I kept floating up. My heart filled with joy and love and I felt no restrictions, no limitations, no gravity. There was absolute clarity. I was very conscious, very aware, very alive.

Joyously, I whooshed from one far-away place to the next. With my new found freedom, I whooshed into Minneapolis buildings (75 miles away), through them, and out the other side. I whooshed into residential areas, into people’s houses and right through them. I remember pausing at the top of someone’s wall near a vaulted ceiling. I looked down to see the occupants inside. Then I whooshed on again.

At some point, I stopped and thought, “Too bad the government won’t pay me to do OBE work. I could spy on people, look for drug dealers or what not. I can fly into any home and any building. This is great!”

I whooshed through the side of an apartment building, and down through the hallway. I whooshed downstairs and saw a woman leaving the apartment building through the front door, and I whooshed right past her, passing her on her right side. Then I stopped and stood on the grass outside, looking at the beautiful spring day.

I believe that we are constantly surrounded by angels/astral helpers who are willing to assist us in our spiritual growth, whether we are in or out of the body.  In my OBEs they are almost always invisible. Many times, I’ve felt their gentle hands helping me out of my body after I had induced the proper state. Now I appealed to one of these invisible helpers for a Christ-consciousness experience, but nothing happened. Then suddenly my heart was filled with joy and I rose up into the sky. As I did, I thought about the problems I used to have with flying when I first started having OBEs (described in my first book.) I also wondered why I wasn’t getting a “God” experience. Then I heard a voice say, “First you must fully realize your freedom."

As I continued to rise into the sky, I thought about my “master” experience (see Chapter 4) in which I was taken to a high church steeple and I understood that a major step in my spiritual progress would be to jump from that height with total confidence. That was the freedom the voice spoke about. The freedom from “what ifs” and fear. As long as I held on to my doubts, I wouldn’t be free enough to experience God. I would be tethered by my own self-imposed leash. I needed to let go. I vowed to work on it.

By now, I was several thousand feet in the air and I stopped and let myself drop with total confidence. I whooshed to the ground, flying joyously once more.  There were no doubts or fears. When I landed, I didn’t know where I was. Was it some unfamiliar part of Minneapolis or a different city? I broadcasted a thought to these invisible helpers, “Okay, I want to learn my freedom.”

Just then, an invisible helper gently took hold of my feet. I was pulled backwards by my feet, then lifted tens of thousands of feet into the sky, feet up and head down. Although I was hanging by my feet at least twice as high as the average passenger jet, I wasn’t afraid; I was playful. “Sure. Now you’re going to just drop me, right?” I joked toward the helper. And it did! Head down, I started plunging to the Earth at high speed. Ironically, as I fell from the sky, I remembered an obscure song, “High Speed Dirt,” by the heavy metal band Megadeth:

"Do it if you dare, Leaping from the sky
Hurling thru the air, Exhilarating high
See the Earth below, Soon to make a crater
Blue sky, black death, I'm off to meet my maker!"

There was no fear; I was completely confident.

Then, as I plunged, I wondered if I had been away from my body too long. As I thought of my body, I was refocused there and came to. I didn’t end the OBE out of fear. I had passed the test.
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Bob Peterson
07 Aug 2018