I believe that normal dreams are the outside shell of deeper inside experience. The interior reality is clothed in dream images as, when we are awake, it is clothed in physical ones. Dream objects and physical objects alike are symbols by which we perceive – and direct – an inner reality that we do not seem able to experience directly. In certain states of consciousness, particularly in projections from the dream state, we achieve a peculiar poise of alertness. This lets us briefly examine the nature of our consciousness by allowing us to view its products – the events and experiences that it creates when released from usual physical focus.
Consciousness forms its own reality, physical and otherwise. I think there is a “mass” dream experience, however, as there is a collectively perceived physical life and definite interior conditions within which dream life happens. Only inner experimentation will let us discover this interior landscape. Perhaps one day we will move freely within it, alert, conscious and far wiser than we are now.
It is a dimension native to consciousness, I believe, at whatever stage of being, physical or nonphysical. We have our primary existence in it after death and spend a good deal or physical time wandering through it, unknowingly, in sleep. Clues as to our creativity and the nature of our existence can be found there and from it emerges the organizational qualities of normal consciousness as we know it.
I do not believe that there are any more dangers facing us in the interior universe than there are in the physical one. We should explore each world with common sense and courage. The interior universe is the source of the exterior one, however, and traveling through it we will encounter our own hopes, fears and beliefs in their ever-changing form.
You will sometimes automatically translate this reality into physical terms. Such images will be hallucinatory, but it may take awhile for you to distinguish their true nature. It must be understood, however, that all physical objects are hallucinatory. They may be called mass hallucinations.
There is constant translation of inner reality into objects in the waking state and a constant translation of ideas into pseudo-objects in the dream state. Within a certain range of dream reality, ideas and thoughts can be translated into pseudo-objects and transported. This is what happens when you adopt a pseudo-form in projection, though I am simplifying this considerably.
When you travel beyond a certain range of intensities, even pseudo-objects must vanish. They exist in a cluster about, and connected to, our own system. The lack of these, obviously, means that you have gone beyond your own camouflage system. If it were possible, you would then travel through a range of intensities in which no camouflage existed. Then you would encounter the pseudo-camouflage of the next sytem. This would or would not be physical matter, according to the system. You would then encounter the heart of the camouflage area. The completely uncamouflaged areas at the outer edges of the various systems should remind you of the undifferentiated areas between various life cycles in the subconscious. This is no coincidence.
As a rule, you see, there is little communication within the uncamouflaged areas. They act as boundaries, even while they represent the basic stuff of which all camouflage is composed. (Without the camouflage, you would perceive nothing with the physical senses.)
The sentence is really meaningless, however, because the physical senses are themselves camouflage. There would be nothing to translate. It is only the inner senses that will allow you to perceive under these circumstances. Theoretically, if you can bridge the gap between various reincarnations, then you can bridge the gap between our system and another.
Once more: The undifferentiated layers are composed of the vitality that forms the camouflage of all systems. Such an area is not really a thing in itself, but a portion of vitality that contains no camouflage, and is therefore unrecognizable to those within any given system. We are in touch with infinity in such areas, since it is only camouflage that gives us the conception of time.
Now, during some projections, you may be aware of nothing as far as surroundings are concerned. There will only be the mobility of your own consciousness. If this occurs, you will be traveling through such an uncamouflaged area. You could then expect to encounter next a more differentiated environment, that seems to become clearer as you progress toward the heart of another system.
The completely uncamouflaged layer would be rather bewildering. You might automatically be tempted to project images into it. They would not take, so to speak, but would appear and disappear with great rapidity. This is a silent area. Thoughts would not be perceived here, as a rule, for the symbols for them would not be understood.
If a certain intensity is reached, however – a peak of intensity – then you could perceive the spacious present as it exists within your native system. You could, from this peak, look into other systems, but you would not understand what you perceived, not having the proper root assumptions. I have used the idea of neighboring systems for simplicity’s sake, as if they were laid out end to end. Obviously, such is not the case. The systems (of reality) are more like the various segments of a tangerine, with the uncamouflaged boundary areas like the white membrane between the tangerine sections.
The tangerine, then, would be compared to a group of many systems, yet it would represent in itself but one portion of an unperceived whole. The tangerine would be but one segment of a larger systems. You can see, then, why some projections would lead you in a far different direction from our linear sort of travel and why time as we know it would be meaningless.
Nor do such projections necessarily involve journeys through space as we know it. There are systems, vivid in intensity, that have no existence in physical reality at all. It is now thought, I believe, that time and space are basically one, but they are both a part of something else. They are merely the camouflage patterns by which we perceive reality. Space as we perceive it in the dream state comes much closer to the reality.
Projections within our own system will, of course, involve us with some kind of camouflage. If none is present, you will know you are out of the system. The dream universe is obviously closely connected with our own, since pseudo-objects are present. Even there, we are to some extent free from the space-time elements of our own system. Within the dream state, then, we are in the ‘outward’ areas of the physically oriented universe.
One point: There are other systems all about and within our own. The undifferentiated areas move out like spirals, through all reality. Little resistance is encountered within them. They represent inner roads that connect systems, as well as divide them. The traveler must leave his/her own camouflage paraphernalia behind him/her, however, or he will get nowhere.
It is possible, theoretically, to travel to any system in this manner and bypass others, you see. Such a traveler would not age physically. His/her body would be in a suspended state. Only a very few individuals have traveled in this manner. Most of the knowledge gained escapes the ego, and experiences cannot be translated by the physical brain.
However, it is possible to travel under such circumstances and some of the data would be retained by inner portions of the self. In a creative individual, some of this information might be symbolically expressed in a painting or other work of art.
Each brushstroke of a painting represents concentrated experience and compressed perceptions. In a good painting, these almost explode when perceived by the lively consciousness of another. The observer is washed over by intensities. The excellent work of art recreates for the observer inner experience of his/her own, also, of which he/she has never been aware. As you know, paintings have motion, yet the painting itself does not move. This idea should help you understand experience in terms of intensities and projections of the movement of consciousness without necessarily motion through space.
True motion has nothing to do with space. The only real motion is that if the traveling consciousness.
Root assumptions represent the basic premises upon which a given existence is formed. These are the ground rules, so to speak. Your physical mechanisms are equipped to function in such a way that reality is perceived through the lens of particular root assumptions, then. Using the physical senses, it is almost impossible for you to perceive reality in any other way.
Physically speaking, you will find nothing to contradict these assumptions, since they are all that you can experience or perceive physically. These root assumptions are the framework of the camouflage system. As you explore other realities, you almost automatically interpret such data in terms of the root assumptions of your own system.
This highly falsifies such information. The inner senses are not bound by those assumptions, however. This is why so many psychic or subjective experiences seem to contradict physical laws. You must learn the ‘laws’ that apply to other systems.
The root assumptions that govern physical reality are indeed valid, but within physical reality alone. They do not apply elsewhere. There is a natural tendency to continue judging experience against these assumptions, however. With experience, the habit will lose much of its hold. Inner experience must be colored to some extent by the physical system, while you exist in it. In order for such data to rise to conscious levels, for example, it must be translated into terms that the ego can understand, and translation is bound to distort the original experience.
The whole physical organism of the body has been trained to react to certain patterns, these based on physical root assumptions. The nervous system reacts definitely to visual block images. Such images are received through the skin, as well as through the eyes. The whole system is highly complicated and organized. This is obviously necessarily for physical survival.
The organization however is, biologically speaking, artificial and learned. It is no less rigid for that reason. This organizational structure of perception can be broken up, as recent LSD experiments certainly show. This can be dangerous, however. The fact that this does occur shows that the systems of perception are not a part of over-all structure biologically, but learned secondary responses. It is disturbing to the whole organism, however, to break up the strong pattern of usual perception. Inner stability of response is suddenly swept away. Changes that are not yet known occur within the nervous system under these circumstances, both electromagnetic and chemical.
The inner senses alone are equipped to process and perceive other reality systems. Even the distortions can be kept at a minimum with training. Indiscriminate use of the psychedelic drugs can severely shake up learned patterns of response that are necessary for effective manipulation within physical reality; break subtle connections and you disturb electromagnetic functions. Ego failure can result.
Development of the inner senses is a much more effective method of perceiving other realities, and, followed correctly, the ego is not only stronger but more flexible. Even consciousness of physical reality is increased. Such development becomes an unfolding and natural expansion of the whole personality.
These root assumptions are so a part of your existence that they cloud your dreams. Beneath them, however, portions of the self perceive physical reality in an entirely different fashion, free of the tyranny of objects and physical form. Here you experience concepts directly, without the need for symbols. You have knowledge of your ‘past’ personalities and know that they exist simultaneously with your own.
The practice of psychological time will allow you to reach these portions of the self. The ego is not artificially disorganized by such practice. It is simply bypassed for the moment. The experience gained does become a part of the physical structure, but there is no massive disorganization of perception, since the ego agrees to step aside momentarily.
It is not bombarded, as with the drug experiments, and forced to experience chaotic and frightening perceptions that can terrify it into complete disorder. Survival in our system is dependent upon the highly specialized, focused, limited but specific qualities of the ego. It should not be rigid. Neither should it be purposely weakened.
The root assumptions upon which physical reality is formed represent secure ground to the ego. We always operate with the ego’s consent. It interprets the inner knowledge gained in its own way, true, but it is immeasurably enriched by so doing.
The ego can exist only within the context of these assumptions. The primary dream experience is finally woven into a structure composed of these assumptions, and it is these you remember. These serve you as basic information but the information is in symbolic form. Objects, you see, are symbols. Dream objects are often symbols of realities that the ego could not otherwise perceive.
We agree to accept certain data in the physical universe. We agree to form this into certain patterns, and we agree to ignore other data completely. These now, called root assumptions, form the main basis for the apparent permanence and coherence of our physical system.
In your journeys into inner reality, you cannot proceed with these same root assumptions. Reality, per se, changes completely according to the basic root agreements that you accept. One of the root agreements upon which physical reality is based is the assumption that objects have a reality independent of any subjective cause and that these objects, within definite specific limitations, are permanent.
Objects may appear and disappear in these other systems. Using the root assumptions just mentioned as a basis for judging reality, an observer would insist that the objects were not real, for they do not behave as he/she believes objects must. Because dream images may appear and disappear, then, do not take it for granted that they do not really exist.
There is a cohesiveness to the inner universe and to the systems that are not basically physical. But this is based upon an entirely different set of root assumptions and these are the keys that alone will let you manipulate within other systems or understand them. There are several major root assumptions connected here and many minor ones:
Energy and action are basically the same, although neither must necessarily apply to physical action.
All objects have their origin basically in mental action. Mental action is directed psychic energy.
Permanence is not a matter of time. Existence have value in terms of intensities.
Objects are blocks of energy perceived in a highly specialized manner.
Stability in time sequence is not a prerequisite requirement for an object, except as a root assumption in the physical universe.
Space as a barrier does not exist.
The spacious present is here more available to the senses.
The only barriers are mental or psychic ones.
Only if these basic root assumptions are taken for granted will your projection experiences make sense to you. Different rules simply apply. Your subjective experience is extremely important here; that is, the vividness of any given experience in terms of intensity will be far more important than anything else.
Elements from past, present and future may be indiscriminately available to you. You may be convinced that a given episode is the result of subconscious fabrication, simply because the time sequence is not maintained, and this could be a fine error. In a given dream projection, for example, you may experience an event that is obviously from the physical past, yet within it there may be elements that do not fit. In an old-fashioned room of the 1700’s you may look out and see an automobile pass by. Obviously, you think: distortion. Yet you may be straddling time in such an instance, perceiving, say, the room as it was in the 1700’s and the street as it appears in your present. These elements may appear side by side. The car may suddenly disappear before your eyes, to be replaced by an animal or the whole street may turn into a field.
“This is how dreams work,” you may think. ‘This cannot be a legitimate projection. ‘Yet you may be perceiving the street and the field that existed ‘before’ it, and the image may be transposed one upon the other. If you try to judge such an experience with physical root assumptions, it will be meaningless. As mentioned earlier, you may also perceive a building that will never exist in physical reality. This does not mean that the form is illusion. You are simply in a position where you can pick up and translate the energy pattern before you.
If another individual under the same circumstances comes across the same ‘potential’ object, he/she can also perceive it as you did. He/she may, however, because of his/her own make-up, perceive and translate another portion of allied pattern. He/she may see the form of the man/woman who originated the thought of the building.
To a large extent in the physical system, your habit of perceiving time as a sequence forms the type of experience and also limits it. This habit also unites the experiences, however. The unifying and limiting aspects of consecutive moments are absent in inner reality. Time, in other words, cannot be counted upon to unify action. The unifying elements will be those of your own understanding and abilities. You are not forced to perceive action as a series of moments within inner really, therefore.
Episodes will be related to each other by different methods that will be intuitional, highly selective and psychological. You will find your way through complicated mazes of reality according to your own intuitional nature. You will find what you expect to find. You will seek out what you want from the available data.
In physical experience, you are dealing with an environment with which you are familiar. You have completely forgotten the chaos and unpredictable nature it presented before learning processes were channeled into its specific directions. You learned to perceive reality in a highly specified fashion. When you are dealing with inner, or basically non-physical realities, you must learn to become unspecialized and then learn a new set of principles. You will soon learn to trust your perceptions, whether or not the experiences seem to make logical sense.
In a projection, the problems will be of a different sort. The form of a man/woman, for example, may be a thought-form, or a fragment sent quite unconsciously by another individual whom it resembles. It may be another projectionist, like yourself. It may be a potential form like any potential object, a record of a form played over and over again.
It may be another version of yourself. We will discuss ways of distinguishing between these. A man/woman may suddenly appear, and be then replaced by a small girl/boy. This would be a nonsensical development to the logical mind; yet, the girl/boy might be the form of the man’s/woman’s previous or future reincarnated self.
The unity, you see, is different. Basically, perception of the spacious present is naturally available. It is your nervous physical mechanism which acts as a limiting device. By acting in this manner it forces you to focus upon what you can perceive with greater intensity.
Our mental processes are formed and developed as a result of this conditioning. The intuitive portions of the personality are not so formed, and these operate to advantage in any inner exploration.
We are basically capable of seeing any particular location as it existed a thousand years in your past or as it will exist a thousand years in your future. The physical senses serve to blot out more aspects of reality than they allow you to perceive, yet, in many inner explorations you will automatically translate experience into terms that the senses can use. Any such translation is, nevertheless, a second-hand version of the original – an important point to remember.
Now, there are ‘objective’ realities that exist within the astral system. There are more than your own thought forms, in other words. Your own thought-forms can be definite aids when you are in the proper mental condition, and they can impede your progress if you are not. For example, a man in a desperate frame of mind is more apt to emphasize the unpleasant aspects of the news and to see bitterness rather than joy in the faces of those he/she meets. He/she will ignore a contented child playing on one side of the street and notice, instead, a dirty ragged child, even though he be further away. So your frame of mind when projecting will largely determine that kind of experiences you have.
The original intensity behind the construction determines its duration. Left alone, any such construction will eventually vanish. It will leave a trace, however, in electromagnetic reality where it can then be activated by anyone when certain conditions are met or are favorable.
Denying energy to such a construction can be like pricking a balloon. Then all attention must be taken from it, for it thrives on attention.
Projections actually involve a change of atomic structure. Consciousness simply changes its form. When projection is first accomplished, there is a strong charge of adrenaline in the body and high activity of the thyroid gland. There is a charge of sexual hormones which are also utilized in projection.
After projection is accomplished, however, there is a marked decline in chemical activity and hormone action, a drop in body temperature and a drop in blood pressure. The rapid eye movements noted by dream investigators cease entirely. The eye muscles are not used. The normal muscular activity that usually occurs in sleep vanishes. The physical body is in a deep trance state. The trance may also be masked by sleep, if the projection happens from a dream threshold.
According to the intensity of the projection and to the systems visited, the body may become more or less rigid when consciousness returns to it. This is a subtle difference in the way sugar molecules are utilized. Momentarily, the body uses less sugar. However, the sugar is important in fueling the consciousness on its journey. It also aids in connecting the consciousness to the body.
In other words, there is indeed a connection that is and must be partially physical, between the body and the traveling consciousness, and it is based upon a certain sugar molecule in a form not normally seen. Before conscious projections I would therefore recommend that you take a small amount of starchy or sugar food. A small snack before bed is a good idea from this viewpoint. Alcohol is of some benefit, though not to any great degree. Excellent results can be achieved in a dream-based projection during the day, in a nap.
Certain chemical changes must come about in the physical organism before projection can occur. Were it not for those, we would still be imprisoned within the corporeal image. You know that dreaming has a definite chemical basis, that chemicals built up during period of waking experience are released through dreams. Not only are these released, but they form a propelling action that allows energy to flow in the opposite direction. As chemical reactions allow the body to utilize energy and form physical materializations, so the excess built up becomes, then, a propelling force, allowing action to flow in what we would call subjective directions.
This same chemical reaction must also occur, only more strongly, before a legitimate projection can occur. This is one of the main reasons why deliberate projections are not more numerous. Usually the chemical access is used in normal dreaming. In periods of exuberant energy and well being, a more than normal excess accumulates. This can trigger a projection. In periods of momentary indisposition, however, the dreaming process may be blocked and the chemical excess accumulated. Again, a good time to try projection.
These chemical excesses are a natural byproduct of consciousness that is bound up in physical materialization. The more intense the characteristic experience of reality, the greater the chemical excess that is built up. Consciousness itself, when physically oriented, burns up the chemicals. The more intense the individual, the hotter the fire, so to speak, and the greater the chemical excesses released.
Released they must be, or the organism would not survive. Periods of intense activity may also generate this additional chemical propellant. Although this is generated through activity, it is released, making projections possible, in alternating periods of quietude and rest. There must be a disciplined focus, therefore, of this propellant. Periods of heightened sexual activity of a strong and deep nature will help. Periods of no sexual activity will also help, however. On the one hand, the chemical excess is built up as a result of great intensity, and in the latter case it is built up because psychic and sexual release has not been granted.
Eggs and asparagus are helpful as far as diet is concerned. I am obviously not suggesting a whole diet of eggs and asparagus. These plus fish oils are beneficial, however, but not when taken with acid foods.
I still suggest a more thorough examination of your dreams for many of them contain spontaneous projections. They are most apt to occur in the early hours, between 3:00 and 5:00 A.M. The body temperature drops at such times. Five in the afternoon is also beneficial from this standpoint. The drinking of pure water also facilitates projection, although for obvious reasons, the bladder should be empty. The north-south position is extremely important, and, indeed, is a necessity for any efficient dream recall. Energy is most easily utilized in this position for one thing, and this cuts unnecessary restrictions to a minimum.
There is vast difference between ordinary dreams and projections, whether or not the projections occur from the dream threshold. Dreams are constructed and sent upon their way. As you know, they maintain an independence within their own dimension.
Projections involve many more aspects of the whole self and are a mark that the personality is progressing in important ways. The inner senses are allowed their greatest freedom in projection states, and the self retains experience that it would not otherwise. When this knowledge becomes apart of the ordinary waking consciousness, then we have taken a gigantic step forward.
An almost automatic determination must be established, however, if conscious projections are to be anything but rare oddities. With some, the problem is somewhat different than it might be with others. These chemical excesses are used up, for one things, in creative work. You do this automatically. It goes without saying that your own work will gain immeasurably through the extended experience of projection. The yoga exercises allow you to draw an abundance – indeed, a superabundance – of energy. This energy, also, in chemical excesses that can be utilized in projections, without drawing energy away from your other work.
The expectation and knowledge that you are a part of all energy will allow you to realize that all the energy you require will be given. Your attitude toward what is possible determines what is possible for you in very definite terms.
Now, there are also electromagnetic changes (during projections) that can be perceived with instruments. Certain electrical fields will make themselves known under these conditions. The fields have always existed, but they will become apparent to physical instruments only when they are being crossed – in other words, at the very act of projection.
Other hints: A cool body temperature but with room temperature between 73.8 and 75.9 High humidity is poor. The colors of a room is important. Cool colors are best. Too warm colors are detrimental, being to closely allied with earthly conditions. In your climate, October, February and March are best. August can be beneficial, according to the weather. Too warm weather is detrimental.
Or seem to waken – in the middle of the night, try to get out of the body. Simply try to get out of bed without moving the body and go into another room.
This is a pleasant and easy method. With some experience you will discover that you can maintain control, walk out of the apartment and outside. You may then attempt normal locomotion or levitate. There is little strain with this method. Keep it in mind so that you are alert to the initial favorable circumstances. You may be half awake. You may be in a false awakening. The method will work in either case. You can, if you want to, look back at your body.
You must want to do this, however. Often, you do not want to see the body by itself, so to speak, and so choose methods that make this more difficult. Just this one exercise will sharpen your control greatly. It is an ABC. This experience is also less startling to the ego than a more abrupt projection, and the ordinary nature of the activities – walking into the next room, for example – will be reassuring. You are more calm in your own surroundings.
Now it is possible for someone within the body to perceive someone who is not, but it is not usual. The perceiver must be a person of strong psychic abilities or the projecting personality must be driven by high emotional intensity to make himself/herself known.
There are some notes I wanted to give you concerning dreams in which you feel certain you are normally awake. When these dreams are unusually vivid, then the ego is aware and participating, but generally it is not using its critical faculties. As you know, you can become critically alert, but when you do so, you realize that you are not in your normal waking condition.
In awake-seeming dreams you are indeed awake, but within a different psychological framework , indeed, within a different framework of reality. You are operating at a high level of awareness, and using the inner senses. These enable you to perceive an added depth of dimension which is responsible for the vividness and sense of exhilaration that often occurs within the kind of dream. The next step, of course, is to allow the ego to awaken its critical faculties while within this state. You are then able to realize that while you are indeed awake as you seem, you are awake while the body is asleep.
When this occurs, you will be able to use your normal abilities in addition to those of the dream condition. You will be certain of your identity, realize that the physical self is sleeping or in dream state and that the inner self is fully awake. This represents a definite increase in the scope of consciousness and a considerable expansion over the usual limitations set by you upon yourself.
Only then can you fully begin to manipulate the conditions that exist and communicate this knowledge that you receive to the ego. For the time, you see, the ego becomes a direct participator in such experience, at least to a degree.
Almost all; of our dream experiences do involve projection of one kind or another. These vary in intensity, type and even duration as any other experience vary. It takes a good deal of training and competence to operate with any real effectiveness within these situations.
All in all, the intellect plays some part, but the intuitional qualities are most important. There are chemical changes, also, that occur with the physical body when projections happen, and electromagnetic variations. These vary according to the form in which the projection occurs.
The projected form does make some impression upon the physical system. It is possible for it to be detected. It is a kind of pseudo-image, materialistically speaking, but it has definite electromagnetic reality and chemical properties. Animals have sensed such apparitions. They react to the chemical properties and build up to the (perception of) the image from these.
These chemical properties are more diffused in such an apparition than in a physical form, however. The chemical composition of a storm, perhaps, will give you an idea of what I mean. They cause small disturbances in the physical system. As a rule, they are not solid, in the same way that clouds are not solid, and yet they have shape and to a certain extent, boundaries and movement. They definitely have a reality, though you cannot usually perceive it with the physical senses.
Perhaps this diffused quality is the important difference(from your point of view) between an apparition and a physical form. There is an atomic structure, but in some ways it is less complete than the physical one. There is always a minute difference in the body’s weight when the individual is projecting.
Whatever information I can give you will be of great practical benefit. I do not want you traveling about unless you know what you’re doing. Again I want to mention the matter of subconscious fabrications. Initially particularly, you will meet with them. You must remember that you are wandering in completely different dimensions, and the rules with which you are familiar simply do not apply.
You may, then, encounter images that are subsciously formed, quite valid images that belong in another dimension; or constructions created by others in other systems. For any control at all, you must learn to distinguish one from the other. Again, if you meet a disturbing image, you must first will it to disappear. If it is a subconscious construction of your own, it will vanish. But if you do not will it to disappear or realize its nature, then you must deal with it.
I have told you that the form in which you are traveling can be a tip off to you. If your levitation experience seems to carry you outside of the solar system, then you know that you are in the third form and that your abilities for the time are almost limitless, comparatively speaking. Any image you see here must be accepted. It does no good to call these forms hallucinations, for they are no more hallucinations than the chair in which my wife Dorian now sits. Respect physical reality. ‘Whether or not the automobile is a sensory hallucination, it can kill you.’ And I tell you that whether or not these projection images are hallucinations, they can be dangerous and you must respect the reality in which they exist. I want to be sure that you realize that some of these constructions will belong to other systems. You are safe as long as you do not meddle. You may explore, and freely, and that is all.
Now, here are my instructions. You may induce a medium trance in whatever way you choose. On occasion, this will be almost spontaneous, as you know. For best results in the beginning, make a projection attempt when you feel slightly drowsy, but pleasantly so. When you have induced the trance state, then begin to examine your own subjective feelings until you find recognition of the inner self.
This involves a recognition of yourself as distinct from the flesh fibers in which you reside. Then, begin to imagine this inner self rising upward. You should experience at this point an internal sense of motion. This motion may be from side to side as you gently shake yourself loose.
It may, instead, be a rushing upward. Whichever motion you experience, there will be a moment when you feel your identity and consciousness definitely withdrawing from the physical organism. Before you begin the experiment, the suggestion should also be given that the physical organism will be well protected and comfortable.
When you feel you consciousness withdrawing, the first step is this: Forget the physical body or what you are to do with it. Will yourself out in a quick motion. There is no need to experience the hallucinations mentioned by Fox ( in his book, Astral Projection). If the projection is a success, you will instantly lose contact with the body using this method. You simply will not be in it.
It will be far from lifeless, of course. Its maintenance is being controlled by the consciousness of the individual cells and organs of which I have spoken. I will give you alternate methods of projection, but I will be concerned now with what you can expect the first few moments after leaving the body.
Once you are out of the body, then you are dealing with a different kind of reality, but the experience is as valid as any other. You may or may not have the sensation of traveling through doors or windows. This is dependent upon the kind of projection involved. The molecular structure of the projecting self is of a different nature than that of the physical body. There is no change in the physical nature of the door, for example. The molecular structure of the traveling self changes.
There is no danger of not returning to the body, generally speaking. If in your projection you seem to be flying past treetops, then you are doing so…. You can meet and speak with others on some of these excursions. It is possible, with training, to arrange such meetings. For any kind of scientific proof, of course, this would be a necessary preliminary.
Remember that I told you, you may visit not only the past, present or future as it exists or will exist in your terms, but you may also visit realities that never existed physically. In our Blogs, I mentioned that intensity regulated the ‘duration’ of experience. Now, many events that were only imagined never took place physically, yet they exist. They simply are not a part of your definition of reality. You may, therefore, visit a museum that was planned in the sixteenth century but never built. Such a museum has a reality as valid as the house in which you live.
I have been speaking of projection from the trance state. Projection from a dream is something else again, and when executed successfully, you have a fine example of the self as it changes the focus of awareness. Here the critical consciousness can be fully alert while the body sleeps. Spontaneous. Unrecalled projections of this kind happen often. It is beneficial that they be carried out by the conscious wish of the projector. You learn, therefore, to manipulate your own consciousness and to experience its mobility. Quite simply, such projections allow you practice in dealing with realities that you will meet when you no longer operate in the physical system.
You remember that I listed briefly the three forms used during projections. In the first form, you usually use certain inner senses. In the second form, you use more of these, and in the third form you attempt to use all of them, though very rarely is this successful. You should notice the overall form of perception that you seem to be using. You automatically shield yourselves from stimuli that are too strong for your own rate of development. This kind of balancing can lead to an unevenness of experience, however, in any given projection.
As you know, it is almost impossible for you to be aware of the full perceptions possible, for the ego would not stand for it. Often, even in simple dreams, however, you will feel concepts or understand a particular piece of information without a word being spoken. In some projections, you will also experience a concept, and, at first, you may not understand what is happening. In these, you experience as actual the innermost reality of a given concept.
Dorian ( in the dream the night before) was in the third form, and she did project beyond our solar system. This was still a projection within the physical universe, however. She was given information that she did not remember. When you explore the inside of a concept, you act it out. You form a temporary but very vivid image production. If Dorian’s experience had been only this, it still would have been pertinent, for when you understand a concept in such a way the knowledge is never forgotten. It becomes part of your physical cells and your electromagnetic structure.
I want to make this clearer, however. Suppose that you suddenly understand the concept of oneness with the universe, and that this inner sensing of concepts is to be used. You would then construct dream images, a multitudinous variety of shapes and forms meant to represent the complicated forms of life. You would then have the experience of entering each of these lives. You would not think of what it was like to be a bird. You would momentarily be one. This does involve a projection. A normal projection would involve one of the three body forms.
Some experience, then will be simple attempts to use the inner senses more fully. They may appear to be projections, and as we go along, I will tell you how to distinguish between them.
You will be able to look back and see your physical body upon the bed on some occasions, and in other cases you will not be able to do this. In the first body form, for example, you can look back and see the physical body. If you project from this form into the next, in order to intensify the experience, then from this second form you will not see the physical one. You will be aware of it, and you may experience some duality. In the third form, you will no longer be aware of the physical body, and you will not see it.
In the third form, your experiences will be most vivid. They may involve you in other systems beside our own, and you will have little contact with the physical environment. For this reason, projections in the third form are the most difficult to maintain. There are dangers that do not exist when the other two forms are used.
Using the third form, there could be a tendency for you not to recognize your own physical situation. It would be difficult to carry the memories of the present ego personality with you. This third form is the vehicle of the inner self. The disorientation that it feels is the same that it will feel when the physical body is deserted at the point of death. This disorientation is only temporary, and when at death the form is severed from the physical body, then all the memories and identity within the electromagnetic structure become part of the inner self. This form is sometimes used for purposes of instruction, however, or to acquaint the whole personality with the circumstances that strongly affect it.
Most of your projections will be in the first and second form, in any case. Usually you will project from the physical body into the first form and then, perhaps, into the second. Occasionally, this will happen and you will not know it, despite all your attempts to ascertain your circumstances.
There are ways of knowing when you switch forms, of course, and we shall see that you get this information. You should have several projections within the first and second forms in the following months if your development continues at present rate.
I want to mention the difference in experience and sensation between projections from a dream state and those from the trance state and also what I call awake-seeming dreams, for there are many things here that you do not know, and they are fairly important.
