A few paradigm shifts since last week.
1. For some reason it seems I had the idea the still mind evolves into a superior "silent mind" in which no thought provocations arise. Perhaps this is achievable in an OOB state but after years of striving for perfect "silence" using all kinds of mechanisms in the here and now it seems to not be a good use of effort. The "still mind" will suffice.
2. I have been consuming more literature on astral projection / the OOB state recently. I have been reading through Robert Monroe's original book on OOBEs and browsing some posts and guides by people who claim to be able to have OOBEs. I have been reading these with a good mix of openness and skepticism. Many of the ideas challenge well established notions. For example, one person claims to have interacted with aliens, been tackled by astral projecting secret service agents, etc. It may be in this higher reality there are deceptions there too.
3. It seems I got the idea (from one of the Buddhist sutras somewhere) that it was necessary to master jhanas 1-4 to achieve enlightenment and the OOB state was of secondary importance. It seems I also developed some unclear ideas from reading mystical literature; for instance, the concept of the "unitive state" or "spiritual marriage" as a state in the here and now as the highest goal.
4. Reading Monroe's account - and the accounts of others who have had OOBEs - it seems many of them have them with no prior preparation or meditation experience. I do not have a good narrative here and am honestly losing interest in creating one; it is what is. Monroe writes he had a nonexistent interest in religious questions prior to his experience; he experienced his first OOBEs just from relaxing deeply.
5. Monroe's account testifies to the reality of the nonphysical, and on the survival of the spiritual after death. At the same time, it emphasizes the importance of trying to achieve this experience while alive, so one can be prepared for the end.
6. From Evelyn Underhill, Gurdjieff, and similar writers I had the idea that those who experience OOBEs have been through the "mystical way." For example, they have gone through a process of metanoia (the transformation of the mind and emotions) - also called "purgation" in monastic literature - and the dark night of the soul, etc. Reading some of the accounts of people who have been OOB, it seems many have these experiences at an extremely young age with no prior preparation. So, this undermines all these neat narratives of how the mystical life works or develops. Though I do not lament my years of training and study and discipline, it is a paradigm shift.
7. Stopped meditating sitting. Meditating now lying on the back in bed, and orienting most sessions now to begin about an hour or two prior to sleeping. Focusing mostly on bodily motionlessness.
8. It seems the goal may be to reach what is called "sleep paralysis" and then "pull" oneself or "roll" oneself out of the body. I have never experienced this state of paralysis before, though I have felt the limbs and body parts "tingle" or change as you remain motionless for long periods.
9. It seems being still for 1 hour is not a long enough time. This is what I have been doing and it may not be enough. I have been trying to find people giving time frames to give a better perspective. Some people claim paralysis can happen within 20 minutes, others say 1 hour or more.
10. The paralysis / OOB state may have something to do with sleep phase (unclear). One writer is absolutely vehement it only happens during "phase 2" (?) of sleep. So what he writes is one should take a nap in the afternoon (uses your "phase 1" of sleep) then go back to bed with the bodily motionlessness practice to provoke the OOBE. I don't nap often but I may try to get an hour or two less of sleep one of these nights and give it a try.
11. It seems I should expect blindness and a lack of other senses, strong sexual desire, and a difficulty separating from the physical body if I can provoke an OOB state. It seems sight and the other senses "develop." I should also expect, apparently, not to remember the experience and that for this reason I should write it down.
12. It seems the experience of being OOB (I am writing as someone with no experience of it) gradually results in a development of senses in the "astral" body but then after sufficient time elapses it shifts into a wholly different experience as a formless being.
13. It seems sex in the physical world is a shadow version of intimate contact in the nonphysical world.
14. It seems OOB experiences take on two forms: one in which one has the experience of separating from the body and finding oneself in the present environment; and one in which there is no experience like this and in which one just finds oneself spiritually in a wholly other place. This distinction really clarifies a lot and helps make it a lot less confusing.
15. Dreams, it seems, are in fact the lowest plane of the spiritual world and each night pretty much everyone visits the spirit world though they do so in a "drunk" or "unconscious" state. This is honestly a huge understanding to have in our world of 2019. Dreams are usually dismissed as oddities or events of moderate psychoanalytical interest but not much else. It seems that our distant ancestors, before the rise of technology, may have been quite active while asleep - which would explain much of the folklore around shamans, medicine men, etc - and with the advent of technology and materialism we lost this understanding.
16. Lucid dreams seem to be a "created" reality (no experience with these either) but are still illusions. The out of body state is an interaction with a "real" world (?) though the concept of real changes quite dramatically here...
17. Reflecting back on all this it is quite an extraordinary journey to come to this. It is indeed true the "straight and narrow path" is found by few and that "human beings are not supposed to find the spiritual path." Being born in the world one has no idea; the idea of there not being a spirit, atheism, materialism, etc, could be just as plausible as there being one from normal understanding. All the established religions with their corrupt priesthoods also lead one astray. Enlightenment itself could have been many things for all one knew and one might imagine it could have nothing to do with the "fantastic."
18. I think of all those philosophers I read over the years who got side tracked thinking about other topics (economics, politics, etc...) missing the real goal of philosophy; or of Kant who thought there was no way one could have definitive knowledge of the spiritual one way or the other. I have to say I am glad there ended up being a spiritual realm and the like and it makes the whole cosmos a great deal more interesting. ;p
19. Been contemplating the reincarnation question and its relationship with karma, justice, free will, and destiny. Some of the OOB writers seem to say animal spirits are different from human spirits. This contradicts the usual Buddhist teaching that a human can descend and be incarnated as an animal with negative karma. I also question how one can obtain freedom if one lacks the cognitive powers of humans. Finding the "way" is hard enough in itself. Not sure...
20. Been contemplating one strange idea I got from Gurdjieff which I've seen repeated by Monroe. These are honestly the only places I have encountered such a thing. Gurdjieff said "archangels" feed off the suffering and deaths of humans; that the whole earth is a kind of prison for their benefit. It seems Monroe had a similar idea which he mentioned once called the "loosh" farm... no idea what to think of it. If true it makes human life extremely bleak and intrinsically manipulated. But perhaps it is an allegorical / teaching tool.
21. Been thinking about Plato and Socrates, the idea the physical world is an "emanation" of the higher spiritual world, and the World of the Forms. These great Greek philosophers had the right idea...
1. For some reason it seems I had the idea the still mind evolves into a superior "silent mind" in which no thought provocations arise. Perhaps this is achievable in an OOB state but after years of striving for perfect "silence" using all kinds of mechanisms in the here and now it seems to not be a good use of effort. The "still mind" will suffice.
2. I have been consuming more literature on astral projection / the OOB state recently. I have been reading through Robert Monroe's original book on OOBEs and browsing some posts and guides by people who claim to be able to have OOBEs. I have been reading these with a good mix of openness and skepticism. Many of the ideas challenge well established notions. For example, one person claims to have interacted with aliens, been tackled by astral projecting secret service agents, etc. It may be in this higher reality there are deceptions there too.
3. It seems I got the idea (from one of the Buddhist sutras somewhere) that it was necessary to master jhanas 1-4 to achieve enlightenment and the OOB state was of secondary importance. It seems I also developed some unclear ideas from reading mystical literature; for instance, the concept of the "unitive state" or "spiritual marriage" as a state in the here and now as the highest goal.
4. Reading Monroe's account - and the accounts of others who have had OOBEs - it seems many of them have them with no prior preparation or meditation experience. I do not have a good narrative here and am honestly losing interest in creating one; it is what is. Monroe writes he had a nonexistent interest in religious questions prior to his experience; he experienced his first OOBEs just from relaxing deeply.
5. Monroe's account testifies to the reality of the nonphysical, and on the survival of the spiritual after death. At the same time, it emphasizes the importance of trying to achieve this experience while alive, so one can be prepared for the end.
6. From Evelyn Underhill, Gurdjieff, and similar writers I had the idea that those who experience OOBEs have been through the "mystical way." For example, they have gone through a process of metanoia (the transformation of the mind and emotions) - also called "purgation" in monastic literature - and the dark night of the soul, etc. Reading some of the accounts of people who have been OOB, it seems many have these experiences at an extremely young age with no prior preparation. So, this undermines all these neat narratives of how the mystical life works or develops. Though I do not lament my years of training and study and discipline, it is a paradigm shift.
7. Stopped meditating sitting. Meditating now lying on the back in bed, and orienting most sessions now to begin about an hour or two prior to sleeping. Focusing mostly on bodily motionlessness.
8. It seems the goal may be to reach what is called "sleep paralysis" and then "pull" oneself or "roll" oneself out of the body. I have never experienced this state of paralysis before, though I have felt the limbs and body parts "tingle" or change as you remain motionless for long periods.
9. It seems being still for 1 hour is not a long enough time. This is what I have been doing and it may not be enough. I have been trying to find people giving time frames to give a better perspective. Some people claim paralysis can happen within 20 minutes, others say 1 hour or more.
10. The paralysis / OOB state may have something to do with sleep phase (unclear). One writer is absolutely vehement it only happens during "phase 2" (?) of sleep. So what he writes is one should take a nap in the afternoon (uses your "phase 1" of sleep) then go back to bed with the bodily motionlessness practice to provoke the OOBE. I don't nap often but I may try to get an hour or two less of sleep one of these nights and give it a try.
11. It seems I should expect blindness and a lack of other senses, strong sexual desire, and a difficulty separating from the physical body if I can provoke an OOB state. It seems sight and the other senses "develop." I should also expect, apparently, not to remember the experience and that for this reason I should write it down.
12. It seems the experience of being OOB (I am writing as someone with no experience of it) gradually results in a development of senses in the "astral" body but then after sufficient time elapses it shifts into a wholly different experience as a formless being.
13. It seems sex in the physical world is a shadow version of intimate contact in the nonphysical world.
14. It seems OOB experiences take on two forms: one in which one has the experience of separating from the body and finding oneself in the present environment; and one in which there is no experience like this and in which one just finds oneself spiritually in a wholly other place. This distinction really clarifies a lot and helps make it a lot less confusing.
15. Dreams, it seems, are in fact the lowest plane of the spiritual world and each night pretty much everyone visits the spirit world though they do so in a "drunk" or "unconscious" state. This is honestly a huge understanding to have in our world of 2019. Dreams are usually dismissed as oddities or events of moderate psychoanalytical interest but not much else. It seems that our distant ancestors, before the rise of technology, may have been quite active while asleep - which would explain much of the folklore around shamans, medicine men, etc - and with the advent of technology and materialism we lost this understanding.
16. Lucid dreams seem to be a "created" reality (no experience with these either) but are still illusions. The out of body state is an interaction with a "real" world (?) though the concept of real changes quite dramatically here...
17. Reflecting back on all this it is quite an extraordinary journey to come to this. It is indeed true the "straight and narrow path" is found by few and that "human beings are not supposed to find the spiritual path." Being born in the world one has no idea; the idea of there not being a spirit, atheism, materialism, etc, could be just as plausible as there being one from normal understanding. All the established religions with their corrupt priesthoods also lead one astray. Enlightenment itself could have been many things for all one knew and one might imagine it could have nothing to do with the "fantastic."
18. I think of all those philosophers I read over the years who got side tracked thinking about other topics (economics, politics, etc...) missing the real goal of philosophy; or of Kant who thought there was no way one could have definitive knowledge of the spiritual one way or the other. I have to say I am glad there ended up being a spiritual realm and the like and it makes the whole cosmos a great deal more interesting. ;p
19. Been contemplating the reincarnation question and its relationship with karma, justice, free will, and destiny. Some of the OOB writers seem to say animal spirits are different from human spirits. This contradicts the usual Buddhist teaching that a human can descend and be incarnated as an animal with negative karma. I also question how one can obtain freedom if one lacks the cognitive powers of humans. Finding the "way" is hard enough in itself. Not sure...
20. Been contemplating one strange idea I got from Gurdjieff which I've seen repeated by Monroe. These are honestly the only places I have encountered such a thing. Gurdjieff said "archangels" feed off the suffering and deaths of humans; that the whole earth is a kind of prison for their benefit. It seems Monroe had a similar idea which he mentioned once called the "loosh" farm... no idea what to think of it. If true it makes human life extremely bleak and intrinsically manipulated. But perhaps it is an allegorical / teaching tool.
21. Been thinking about Plato and Socrates, the idea the physical world is an "emanation" of the higher spiritual world, and the World of the Forms. These great Greek philosophers had the right idea...
22. I think of my cousin who works at a hedge
fund. Such a different path he has followed: following the wisdom of the world,
a life filled with stress and anxiety and endless work hours, trying to
accumulate wealth. And yet that wealth (as I intuited at a young age) only
lasts so long. The same with my friend who is sex-obsessed. And here I have
followed this (apparently ;p) foolish path, with this lifestyle that is simple
and unambitious, and yet reach this otherworldly wisdom and have the potential
for freedom. Life is a harsh place and very complex.
