The OBE: Adventures on the Astral Plane
 
“It is improbable that so many people who are apparently psychologically healthy are having hallucinations. There is still much we don't know about the mind and its abilities. I don't know how long it will take, but I believe the astral projection theory can be proved and controlled.” - Dr. Eugene E. Bernard, professor of psychology, North Carolina State University1  [ON SCREEN]

Hello and welcome to Truthiverse and Part 2 of the Afterlife Series - this episode we dive into OBEs and adventures on the astral plane. This is a little snapshot or peek through the keyhole into the research and writing I’ve been doing over many years now on this and other related subjects. There’s some very interesting material here, so let’s get into it…

	The out of body experience (OBE) is traditionally referred to in occultism as “astral projection.” Essentially, it is a lucid experience of functional consciousness separated from the physical body, not in pure non-duality (unity consciousness), but very much in the realm of dualistic subject-object perception (I.e, “I’m here, you’re there,” as opposed to “I am everything—and we are one!”). Such experiences are on record throughout the world, over centuries.
 
These accounts begin with the crude scratchings on pre-historic caves, and continue in the very graphic murals found in the temples of early India, and in Egyptian excavations. The Bible is full of accounts of astral journeys, and all through the literature, folklore and early history of the world since Biblical times there are continuing reports of these strange, eerie, but at the same time exalted Other World explorations…often bringing with them veridical evidence.3 

	In other words, the astral journey is a global phenomenon and has probably occurred for as long as humans have existed. Everyone has the capacity (and uses it in their sleep whether they realise it or not). Paul confirms this “dual nature” of man’s in his first Epistle to the Corinthians, saying, “There is a natural (physical) body and there is a spiritual body.” There are many “paranormal” aspects of Christian doctrine that could be subsumed under a more insightful and mature occult-scientific framework than the general exoteric Christian dogma.
According to Margaret Waite in The Mystic Sciences, Dr. Eugene E. Bernard, one time professor of psychology at North Carolina State University, concluded from his studies of astral projection that at least one out of every hundred people has experienced some form of out-of-body travel. In 1952 Dr. Hornel Hart had 155 students at Duke University fill questionnaires and found that over 30% had some experience, either direct or indirect, with astral projection. Hart held the view that the brain expresses consciousness but does not generate it and that it can observe and act at long distances from the brain.4 He was absolutely correct, as readers of TGI Book 1 well know.
In the space of about a decade, British geologist, Dr Robert Crookall collected and wrote about 750 cases of OBEs. His first book on the subject, The Study and Practice of Astral Projection, was published in 1960. Crookall studied each case, looking for commonalities that might yield greater understanding. He identified six characteristics that applied to all OBEs he scrutinised:

1. The subjects feel that they are leaving their bodies out of the top of their heads.
2. The subjects black out for a second at the exact instant their astral and physical bodies separate.
3. The subjects’ astral bodies float above the physical bodies for a while before moving away.
4. The astral bodies float again over the physical bodies before returning.
5. The subjects black out again momentarily as their astral body returns.
6. When the astral body returns too quickly, the subjects’ bodies are buffeted and jolted.5   [ON SCREEN]

	Crookall saw the astral, or, “Soul Body” as consisting of a kind of matter, “but it is extremely subtle and may be described as “super-physical.’” (This “matter” may be the postulated super particles of string theory, according to Jay Alfred; my own suspicion is that this akasic matter is what science would regard as antimatter—both may be true.)
Grosso states in Experiencing the Next World Now, that in an average class of about twenty students, usually around two will share that they have had an OBE.7 The late ESP researcher Dr. Joseph Rhine is purported to have records of as many as 10,000 documented cases received from people all over the world, regardless of age, sex, or economic status. A Dutch study from 1993 of 475 psychology students found that 22 percent reported a spontaneous OBE, while 7 percent reported two to five of them. A comparable American study reported spontaneous OBEs among 25 percent of students and 14 percent of the general population from the same city.8 It is clearly a “universal” human experience.
	 Interestingly, many of the reported projectors are strongly “left-brained,” pragmatic, rational types; businessmen, computer programmers, engineers, analysts, and accountants, according to Preston Dennett.9 
To put things in perspective, if the scientific verification of the existence of the human energy field/s is seen in view of traditional occult theories of consciousness, then science has long since proved the survival of human consciousness, and therefore, its immortality. The reason is that the auric field is actually the mind-field—these fields are actually “where” our awareness resides (if you can speak about it being located anywhere at all), and these fields occupy the time domain/time-space/implicate order, as opposed to our explicate space-time. Consciousness then, is immortal, infinite, and timeless by definition, as I went to great pains to show in Book 1 of The Grand Illusion [QUICKLY PUT BOOK ON SCREEN - 3-5 SECONDS]. 
	The particular energy field that concerns us here is the astral vehicle, though this is a simplification, as Crookall’s speculations reveal. 
	The astral plane is, generically speaking, the reality out-of-body experiences or astral projectors (and many NDEers) find themselves in. The name “astral” apparently comes from the medieval alchemist Paracelsus, and signifies “starry,” so deemed due to the luminous appearance of astral matter which was associated with the more rapid rate of its vibration. The astral plane is traditionally conceived of as the world of emotion, passion, and sensation. It is through the astral body that feelings exhibit themselves to one possessing clairvoyance at the astral level. Thus, the astral body continually shifts in appearance as emotions change.10 
It is important to grasp that each plane’s “matter” interpenetrates that of the other planes; at Earth’s surface they are all coexistent with one another, although matter from the higher planes—being of lower density—extends further away from the physical Earth than the lower. When someone “rises” from one plane or subplane to another, rather than moving through space, they are transferring their consciousness from one “level” to another. The individual gradually becomes unresponsive to the vibrations of one grade/density of matter, and instead begins to resonate with a higher, more refined grade. The result is that one world and its inhabitants would fade from view, while a new one of a more exalted kind would come into view. You may find it interesting to note that, according to Leadbeater, the “background environment” of subplanes four, five, and six of the astral is the familiar physical world.11 
	OBE pioneer and founder of the Monroe Institute for Applied Sciences in Faber, Virginia, Robert Monroe, physicist Michael Talbot, Robert Bruce, and many others have also experienced and written of “zones” within the lower astral that bear close correspondence with the physical world, so we know that Leadbeater’s assessment has been confirmed in essence by fellow astral travelers. This correspondence between the physical and lower astral allows for confirmatory data to be retrieved by the OBEers (and also remote viewers) and checked later on against experience in the physical world. 
	The “real-time zone,” Bruce tells us, is technically a part of the astral, though best considered a separate dimensional level, since it bears no direct relationship to the lower subplanes. Experience of it is akin to being “an invisible specter in the real world.12” Such a state would be highly useful for remote viewing and parapsychological testing.
Astral projectors in the real-time zone are slightly out of phase (or “decohered”) with the physical and the astral plane proper in Bruce’s view; at a higher vibrational level than physical space-time, but lower than the astral. They occupy a “direct dimensional reflection” of the physical universe as it is in real time.13
Worth noting, too, is that Bruce agrees with the theosophical conception that the astral plane is divided into seven major levels or planes, “each containing many subplanes and internal realms. The astral dimension spans the universe, but for all intents and purposes is totally nonspatial.14” 
	To the theoretical physicist, this makes it an “imaginary” aspect of “phase space,” probably at least two ortho-rotations away from our reality. Despite this, according to Bruce, an astral projector’s physical location is usually consistent with where they perceive themselves to be in the real world. “Their movements can be tracked and ascertained if they are viewed with real-time sight, a type of clairvoyance.15” Astral projectors exist as invisible points of consciousness (but usually perceive themselves as having bodily form) connected to the physical body via an invisible energetic linkage often called the silver cord.16 
Leadbeater comments on the astral plane’s lower subdivisions and indicates the presence of an extra spatial dimension by explaining that, with astral vision, objects can be seen

from all sides at once [as in a Picasso work]…and when we add to this that every particle in the interior of a solid body is as fully and clearly visible as those on the outside, it will be comprehended that under such conditions even the most familiar objects may at first be totally unrecognizable.17  [ON SCREEN]

	This alteration of vision has been experienced and verified by others, including OBEer Preston Dennett. The reason for this is simply that the astral “body” is really just a projection of the mind; in truth, the astral “vehicle” of consciousness is just a localization of awareness with no specialized physical sensory organs—it perceives holographically and holistically.18 The idea of holistic sensing in the West goes at least as far back as Aristotle: 

“The powers of sensation are established in the spirit, for the whole, through the whole of it, both sees and hears and is active in the rest of the senses. And thus all the senses are in it…19”  [ON SCREEN]

	Hence, the OBEer finds himself able to expand his field of vision, even to the extent that he perceives in every direction simultaneously. On top of this, Leadbeater adds that the astral sight renders visible various physical matter that the physical eyes do not see, apparently including aspects of Earth’s atmospheric matter. Recognizing that the seer is forced to interpret data coming from a higher-dimensional plane (where an object can be seen from all sides at once) in 3D terms presents us with some rudimentary sense of the potential difficulties involved. There is a translational or interpretive process between 3-space and 4-space that is not always 100% reliable.
Most well known OBE explorers start out as sceptics, including both the late Robert Monroe and the still living Preston Dennett. Having developed the ability to “project” almost at will, Dennett went on to have over a thousand conscious OBEs, causing him to write that he found the astral dimensions to be an “utterly real place, richly detailed and teeming with life.” For Dennett, the astral planes are like physical life only more real,20 a common sentiment among OBEers.
The doctrine of the astral body is fundamental to Kabbalism: the notion that man possesses a “spirit body” of roughly the same shape and extent as his earthly body, which can detach itself and move upwards through higher realms21.

Modern and contemporary OBEers attest that we have strong sensory awareness on the astral planes, with the ability to discern heat, cold, different flavors, and aromas (olfactory functioning), physical impacts, pressure, speed, and so on. I cover this idea in detail in Book 2 of The Grand Illusion.

Ancient OBEs
Nearly 2,000 years ago, around 77 AD, Pliny the Elder (23 - 79 AD) published his Natural History, [PIC OF PLINY/BOOK] a work devoted to various fields of human endeavour, including agriculture, botany, geography, painting, and zoology. It also features an account of what happened to an ancient OBEer:

“With reference to the soul of man, we find, among other instances, that the soul of Hermotinus of Clazomenae was in the habit of leaving his body, and wandering into distant countries, whence it brought back numerous accounts of various things, which could not have been obtained by any one but a person who was present. The body, in the meantime, was left apparently lifeless…At last, however, his enemies, the Cantharidae, as they were called, burned the body, so that the soul, on its return, was deprived of its sheath, as it were.30” [ON SCREEN]

	One can only wonder what other ancient and esoteric knowledge we lost through the destruction of the Alexandrian library and other repositories systematically destroyed in the long process of Christian colonisation of the world.

Anecdotal Appetizers—and Beyond
I will begin this section with a relatively well known veridical OBE report dating back to 1977. If you are a veteran of the field, you will know this story.

Kimberly Clark, a hospital social worker in Seattle, Washington, did not take OBEs seriously until she encountered a coronary patient named Maria, Several days after being admitted to the hospital Maria had a cardiac arrest and was quickly revived. Clark visited her later that afternoon expecting to find her anxious over the fact that her heart had stopped. As she had expected, Maria was agitated, but not for the reason she had anticipated.
	Maria told Clark that she had experienced something very strange. After her heart had stopped she suddenly found herself looking down from the ceiling and watching the doctors and the nurses working on her. Then something over the emergency room driveway distracted her and as soon as she “thought herself” there, she was there. Next Maria "thought her way" up to the third floor of the building and found herself "eyeball to shoelace" with a tennis shoe. It was an old shoe and she noticed that the little toe had worn a hole through the fabric. She also noticed several other details, such as the fact that the lace was stuck under the heel. 
	After Maria finished her account she begged Clark to please go to the ledge and see if there was a shoe there so that she could confirm whether her experience was real or not. Skeptical but intrigued, Clark went outside and looked up at the ledge, but saw nothing. She went up to the third floor and began going in and out of patients' rooms looking through windows so narrow she had to press her face against the glass just to see the ledge at all. Finally, she found a room where she pressed her face against the glass and looked down and saw the tennis shoe. Still, from her vantage point she could not tell if the little toe had worn a place in the shoe or if any of the other details Maria had described were correct. It wasn't until she retrieved the shoe that she confirmed Maria's various observations.
	“The only way she would have had such a perspective was if she had been floating right outside and at very close range to the tennis Shoe,” states Clark, who has since become a believer in OBEs. “It was very concrete evidence for me.31” [ CITATION ON SCREEN: Greyson and Flynn, The Near-Death Experience (1984) ]

	This story is part of near-death lore, and made Clark a sort of celebrity in the NDE community, but on a personal level it allowed her to better grasp her own NDE dating back seven years earlier which she had previously dismissed as fantasy!32 
Let’s look at a couple of additional instances of bilocation of consciousness and OB perception.
	Dr. Thomas Garrett, a therapeutic hypnotist, once treated a young man in a deeply depressed state over a quarrel with the object of his affections. Garrett placed the man in a deep trance and

planted the suggestion that he would be able to travel astrally to the young lady’s college dorm at Wellesley and find out how she really felt about him. After a moment of silence, the young man announced that he was in Wellesley and standing outside his girl’s door. Dr. Garrett directed him to “pass right through the closed door,” which he evidently did, because before long he was announcing in considerable elation that he was watching his girl at her desk writing a letter, and the letter was to him. 

“What is she saying?” Dr. Garrett asked. Slowly his patient repeated word for word what the girl was writing in the note; an apology for the cause of their quarrel, and a plea for forgiveness. Dr. Garrett wrote down every word, and when he brought the subject out of the trance he gave him a copy of the contents of the letter which he would not actually receive for another day or so. When the letter came, it was exactly as it had been worded earlier.33  [INCLUDE SOME OR ALL OF THIS QUOTE]

During the early days of his research participation at the American Society for Psychical Research, the late government-paid remote viewer Ingo Swann had an unexpected and spontaneous “success” of the informal variety. He wrote,

after being hooked up with the electrodes, but while waiting for Janet to deal with the temperamental Dynograph, my “OOB perceptions” seemed to have gone through the wall into the street outside. There was snow on the ground, but there was a woman going by dressed in a ridiculous orange coat. This had been something of a spontaneous event. While waiting for the experiment to commence, I was just suddenly outside of the building—in a “pop” kind of way. I had made no deliberate attempt in this regard, nor had even thought about doing so. This event was so unusual that I wanted immediate feedback as to whether there was an orange coat in the street. I tore off the electrode leads, jumped into Janet’s room, explained as I dragged her down the stairs to the building’s front door. Once outside we were just in time to see the orange coat turning the corner onto Central Park West.35 

	This wasn’t Swann’s first OBE. As a feisty 2 year old, he was taken to a hospital for a tonsillectomy. Frightened by the experience, young Swann fought with the nurses and the doctor. Suddenly a nurse appeared with a half-filled balloon. “I bet you can’t blow this up further,” she said. Taking the challenge, Swann began blowing on the balloon and quickly realized he had been tricked. The balloon was filled with ether, and each inhalation brought him closer to unconsciousness. An ether mask was finally put on his face, but the enraged youth found his mind slipping into a different viewpoint. 
	As he looked down on the operation as an observer, he saw the doctor place a cutting instrument down his throat and heard him mutter, “Shit!” when he accidentally cut Swann’s tongue. He saw the doctor take his two small tonsils from his mouth and place them in a small bottle, which a nurse placed behind some rolls of tissues on a counter. He was aware as the doctor sewed up the slice in his tongue and as he began to regain consciousness, he said, “I want my tonsils.” 
	A nurse told him that his tonsils had already been thrown away. Young Swann replied emphatically, “No, you didn’t.” Pointing to the rolls of tissue, he astounded everyone present by proclaiming, “You put them behind those over there. Give them to me. Mama, the doctor said ‘Shit!’ when he cut my tongue.36”  
Dr. Chris Humphrey has experimented with hypnotically induced OBE and learnt it is possible for people OB to see the aura, because his ex-wife—an excellent hypnotic subject—did just that. 

I was conducting a group-hypnotic experiment in Manhattan, Kansas in 1970 or 1971, and my little experiment caused her to pop out of her body into a kind of bilocated experience. One point of view was up in the corner of the room, the other was in her body. [The mind-split.] From her OBE point of view, she saw a brilliant aura of gold and orange around me, but not around anyone else. The explanation is the suggestion I had made to “draw yourself into the middle of your head.” Only later did I discover that this is one way of inducing the OBE. Of course, the instruction would also result in drawing in the aura.37 [ON SCREEN]

	Biochemist and OBEer Don DeGracia shares an intriguing story that came tantalisingly close to offering him objective confirmation of one particular OBE of his, in which he encountered a friend, Tim. After working hard to get the dazed Tim into a lucid state in this astral dream world, DeGracia recounts that he showed him how to fly, and they thereby set about exploring the city they were in. DeGracia:

I kept reminding him to call me when he woke up. Eventually, I lost him and continued with my projection. I woke up straight from my projection and it was about 11:00 AM. And then, within minutes of waking up…Tim called me!…I asked him how long he had been awake, and he said he just woke up, which meant that he really had been sleeping at the same time I was projecting…He couldn’t remember anything…but he said he had an urge to call me!38 

	DeGracia’s instruction to Tim to call him registered in the level of the subconscious mind called the astral body and thus he did so, despite not knowing why he had the urge! Another interesting challenge to our ego-centric concept of conscious free-will choice.
	Numerous projectors have discussed their interactions with sleeping people on the astral plane, apparently finding more often than not that astral sleepers tend to be disappointingly imperceptive of their environ and their own activities and potentials. 
Sylvan Muldoon [PICTURE] attempted a series of unannounced sleep-state OB appearances to a young lady he knew. The morning following a spontaneous attempt to appear to her in his sleep, he received a phone call from her, in which she stated that he “appeared” to her the night before—rather more vividly than usual—and she had immediately been seized with the urge to write automatically—the result being a verse of poetry. The poem consisted of the opening lines of the song When Sparrows Build, fully accurate with the exception of one word. A couple of days earlier they had discussed this very song, and Muldoon had promised to get a copy to her some time.39 
In her own dreams, Helen Brooks experienced this astral projection or “exteriorisation,” as she called it, and it allowed her to make some interesting observations. Hovering over some sleeping children, she observed a “misty vapour emanating from the tops of their heads… On peering closer, I was able to see what they were doing astrally. For reflected in the vapour were the activities of their astral bodies.40” 

A classic example of a dream OBE involving a married couple AND an independent witness, was reported in 1863 by a Mr. Wilmot of Bridgeport, Connecticut:

I sailed from Liverpool for New York, on the steamer City of Limerick....On the evening of the second day out...a severe storm began which lasted for nine days...Upon the night of the eighth day...for the first time I enjoyed refreshing sleep. Toward morning I dreamed that I saw my wife, whom I had left in the U.S., come to the door of the stateroom, clad in her night dress. At the door she seemed to discover that I was not the only occupant in the room, hesitated a little, then advanced to my side, stooped down and kissed me, and quietly withdrew.
	Upon waking I was surprised to see my fellow-passenger...leaning upon his elbow and looking fixedly at me. “You’re a pretty [lucky] fellow,” he said at length, “to have a lady come and visit you this way.” I pressed him for an explanation, and he related what he had seen while wide awake, lying on his berth. It exactly corresponded with my dream...The day after landing I went to Watertown, Conn., where my children and my wife were...visiting her parents. Almost her first question when we were back alone was, “Did you receive a visit from me a week ago Tuesday?”  
	“It would be impossible,” I said. “Tell me what makes you think so.” My wife then told me that on account of the severity of the weather,...she had been extremely anxious about me. On the night mentioned above she had lain awake a long time thinking about me, and about four o’clock in the morning it seemed to her that she went out to seek me....She came at length...to my stateroom [on the steamer]. “Tell me,” she said, “do they ever have staterooms like the one I saw, where the upper berth extends further back than the under one? 
	A man was in the upper berth looking right at me, and for a moment I was afraid to go in, but soon I went up to the side of your berth, bent down and kissed you, and embraced you, and then went away.” 
	The description given by my wife of the steamship was correct in all particulars, though she had never seen it.41 [WHOLE QUOTE ON SCREEN IF POSSIBLE]

	It is particularly interesting in this case that Wilmot’s roommate on the ship actually visually perceived his wife’s astral form as she visited him in their shared dream state, and on top of that, she offered accurate details regarding the steamer despite having never seen it. Veridical tri-party astral events like this, though rarely reported, go to show that consciousness outside the body has an objective quality to it—these are not merely fantasies inside someone’s skull. Also interesting to note is that Wilmot was perceiving his wife’s visit whilst asleep, the reason he initially supposed it was just a dream. Alas it was no dream, and in his astrally focused state his consciousness detected her astral presence.
The Society for Psychical Research (Frederick Myers in particular [PICTURE]) documented the old case of a former member of the London Stock Exchange, identified only as “S.H.B.,” who, as Swami Panchadasi (William W. Atkinson) puts it, possessed the power of voluntary awakening of astral sight in others by way of his “appearance” to them. S.H.B. told the Society: 

One Sunday night in November, 1881, I was in Kildare Gardens, when I willed very strongly that I would visit in the spirit two lady friends, the Misses X., who were living three miles off, in Hogarth Road. I willed that I should do this at one o’clock in the morning, and having willed it, I went to sleep. Next Thursday, when I first met my friends, the elder lady [Ms L.S. Verity] told me that she woke up and saw my apparition advancing to her bedside. She screamed and woke her sisters, who also saw me. (The report includes the signed statement of the ladies, giving the time of the appearance, and the details thereof.42) 

MS Verity said in her statement: “I distinctly saw Mr. B. in my room, about 1 o’clock. I was perfectly awake and was much terrified. I awoke my sister by screaming, and she saw the apparition herself.43” A third sister called in from another room of the house corroborated the events. The full report can be found in Edmund Gurney’s Phantasms of the Living - Volume I. 
	Discussing S.H.B’s impressive efforts, Myers wrote of the projections as, “the most extraordinary achievement of the human will. What can lie further outside any known capacity than the power to cause a semblance of oneself to appear at a distance?” [ON SCREEN]
	Myers felt we should now view the subliminal self as the “central and potent current, the most truly identifiable with the man himself…The spirit has shown itself in part dissociated from the organism; to what point may its dissociation go? It has shown some independence, some intelligence, some permanence. To what degree…may it conceivably attain?” [ON SCREEN] He had become convinced that, of all vital phenomena, this astral projection ability “is the most significant; this self-projection is the one definite act which it seems as though a man might perform equally well before and after bodily death.44” 
	Thus, over a century ago, for all intents and purposes OBE/astral projection was proved using a thoroughly empirical approach.	
One of my first OBE attempts (many years ago) was partially successful. I experienced the distinct sensation of gradually separating from my body, as if a more ethereal body was peeling itself away. Accompanying this were some almost overwhelming auditory phenomena. What started as a soft, low rumble, became an incredibly loud hybrid-like sound of a massive drum roll combined with the sound of an on-coming train.
	 The sound effects I describe are something that the late, veteran OBEr, Robert Monroe also experienced and wrote about. Other reports record similar auditory phenomena. Cyndi Dale identifies a “train noise” that occurs during the death process. This sound is “the fallout of the instantaneous shift of energy between body and soul.45” 
One event that occurred soon after moving to Melbourne (aged 23) while temporarily living with a friend offered a little more success, albeit totally unintentionally. My friend was away overnight, so I slept on his bed rather than on the futon. As I was shifting consciousness states, I suddenly detached from my body and proceeded to “bounce” off of the wall to my left, then the next wall, then the next, bouncing right back into my body. Having done a round trip of the room, apparently my subconscious curiosity had been sated and I was ready to drift off to sleep. 

 Author and occultist David Conway knew a man who had been in a motorcycle accident, the physical trauma (which wasn’t severe) causing him to experience an OBE. He thought about his wife and immediately found himself at his home watching her making pastry with great clarity—a clock on the wall showing the time as twenty past four. Returning home, he learned his wife had been frantically telephoning local hospitals and the police, having “glimpsed him in the kitchen” (a classic “crisis apparition”) shaken and bandaged, as she prepared the weekend’s baking for the oven. Her vision happened at twenty past four.47 

After-death communications (ADCs were covered in Part 1 of the Afterlife Series) can occur in the OB state—more easily than during physical waking consciousness, because the incoming souls do not have to lower their vibrational state to near-physical in order to interact with us. They only have to meet us on the astral frequencies, which for them is easy. One woman’s ADC began as she was sleeping and realised she was looking down on her body lying on her bed.

…the real me, was being drawn up and up…I was being drawn higher—I was above the house looking down on the trees—I went higher and higher—and all of a sudden Shawn was there!...It was very bright but there were no earthly surroundings. I had a floating feeling like we were suspended in space.
	My son and I hugged each other—it was so intensely joyful, it was just overwhelming! There were no words, just this great joy and the fact that Shawn was really still alive…I knew my son was all right and that he still cared about me. He was aware of my life, but he also had a life of his own. His was an unrestricted life with unrestricted freedom and knowledge far beyond what we have here on earth. [THIS PARAGRAPH ON SCREEN]
	Then I was back down in my body on my bed, and I was awake. I thought to myself, “This existence seems more like a dream. That existence seems more real than life!” It was the most comforting and the most real experience I’ve ever had.49

Other ADCs happen on higher vibrational “levels” or “planes.” Another woman in the Guggenheims’ database details being taken from her body by an angelic entity while injured in hospital, following a car accident that killed her two sons.  She found herself in a beautiful meadow. “It was the prettiest emerald green with the most vibrant clear blue sky. The colors are hard to describe because they are not like the colors we see here.” Here, her two boys were running and playing with other boys and girls, vibrant and healthy. The being instructed her: “Your sons are fine and you will see them again. Do not worry.50” 
The experience ended as she was thrust back into her body. This realm she experienced is known in spiritualism as the Summerland and is not one of the lower/nearby astral subplanes—where it fits in the afterlife scheme of things is discussed in depth in Book 2 of TGI.

Shared OBEs: Joint Adventures in the Astral Virtual Reality
By the mid-1980s, an unanticipated side of remote viewing was noticed by the government-funded American Psi Spies: Someone was looking back at them as they worked. The Psi Spies unit first became aware of this situation from Robert Monroe (1915 - 1995) [PICTURE] who had his first OBE in 1958 at the age of forty-three.1 According to the Psi Spies, the Monroe Institute was used to screen potential remote viewers and to acquaint them with psychic experiences.
Monroe was experimenting with out-of-body and other altered states of consciousness when he realized that three unknown people were with him—and trying to probe his mind. One of these three was a woman who seemed particularly powerful. This being an odd experience to Monroe (and that’s saying something!), he felt vulnerable and therefore enlisted the Psi Spies for help. Investigative author Jim Marrs [PSI SPIES BOOK ON SCREEN] reports that, having been alerted to the existence of foreign remote viewers, the Psi Spies joined in a game of psychic cat and mouse with the other side, pursuing each other and even developing a sense of camaraderie in the process. “We thought of them more as an opposing team than an enemy.” [ON SCREEN QUOTE]
American Psi Spy Mel Riley said that the situation became bizarre, even for them, so they didn’t speak about it outside the unit. Evidently, a tacit agreement was gradually formed between both sets of Psi Spies to not alert their respective bosses of this incredible and unexpected situation, for fear of negative repercussions.
Following unsuccessful early searches for their Russian counterparts, the Psi Spies realized that the extrasensors were not only operating in Russia, but also the USA. Hoping to remedy the situation, the Psi Spies (eventually) mounted an offensive against their opponents. According to several unit members, the Psi Spies ran a series of remote viewing sessions against the interlopers. They first remote-viewed Robert Monroe’s out-of-body event to see what was happening, and sure enough, they quickly realized that three people were non-physically present, observing. One of them was a woman. Monroe had gotten the impression that her name was Inga Arnyet. This was confirmed by the Psi Spies.
An entire six-man Psi Spy team was thus assembled to concentrate on the female Soviet psychic in a coordinated group offensive. Armed with the location coordinates, the Psi Spies psychically slipped away into the astral and assembled in the Soviet compound, aware of each other only as ghostly, translucent figures, though the numbers were comforting. Soon the interloper was located. According to Riley, the woman became very upset when confronted by the team because she had never expected such an “attack.” With the team collectively viewing her, she lost all concentration and was rendered ineffective as a remote viewer—mission accomplished.
Following the operation, the Psi Spies team looked at each other as it was time to return to the physical, and then watched each other shoot into the air one by one, fading from sight. It was a spectacle that none had seen before because, until then, all sessions had been conducted individually.2 
Of particular interest to us in this case are the following elements, not strictly based in RV, but extending into other areas:

Some RV sessions appear to be indiscernible from regular OBEs. It is not unreasonable to assume these experiences are occurring on the so-called astral plane or, more specifically, what Robert Bruce calls the real-time zone, where you can observe the real physical world without suffering the bizarre distortions and anomalies that often manifest in the astral plane proper. 
RVers could perceive each other as ghost-like translucent humanoids during the sessions—mental projections of their familiar physical form - Residual Self Image.

	It cannot be denied—conservatively speaking—that a form of bilocation of consciousness is taking place with RV and OBEs. Within the philosophical framework of monistic idealism, such a functional bilocation of consciousness is not only unremarkable (since consciousness is rightly seen as the ground of all existence) but to be expected. No matter “where” we go, our consciousness and all the information in the holographic omniverse is already there to begin with.
	Physicist Tom Campbell, who worked with Monroe in the pioneering early days and helped him develop the research technology, does not believe neurochemistry has anything much to do with the OBE. He also believes that physical reality too is a simulation, not unlike the virtual realities of the astral mind-worlds we have been exploring here. He subscribes to the kind of holographic model I outlined in Book1 of The Grand Illusion: our senses interact with a kind of quantum hologram projected into our minds by what he calls  metaphorically “The Big Computer.” Until objects in PMR are observed they exist only in potential3, à la the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. What we call “reality” is a mobius strip twisting back to look at itself.

I hope you enjoyed this instalment of the Afterlife Series - please do share it with interested friends. Full references and citations will be found in Book 2 of The Grand Illusion. See you next time!


1 https://www.lucid-mind-center.com/robert_monroe.html
2 Marrs, PSI Spies, 164-171.
3 Peake, The Out-of-Body Experience, 102.

1 Richard Webster, Astral travel for Beginners, Llewellyn, 1998
2 Erika Bourgignon, Possession and Trance in Cross-cultural Studies of Mental Health, cited by Frecska in Inner Paths to Outer Space, 180
3 See Waite, op. Cit., chapter 3.
4 Waite, op. cit.
5 Richard Webster, Astral travel for Beginners.
6 http://www.unexplainedstuff.com/Mysteries-of-the-Mind/ESP-Researchers-Out-of-body-experience-obe.html
7 Grosso, op. cit. 8.
8 Van Lommel, 77.
9 Preston Dennett, Out-of-Body Exploring, 167.
10 Leadbeater, Man Visible and Invisible, 16–18.
11 See Leadbeater, The Astral Plane under ‘Scenery.’
12 See Bruce, Astral Dynamics, Chapter 1.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 See Leadbeater, The Astral Plane, under “Scenery”.
18 The idea of holistic sensing goes at least as far back as Aristotle: “The powers of sensation are established
19 GRS Meade, The Doctrine of the Subtle Body, 71.
20 See Dennett, op. cit.
21 Wilson, The Occult, 262.
22 Powell, The Astral Body, chapter 2.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid., chapter 4.
25 Ibid., chapter 5.
26 Karagulla & Kunz, 56.
27 See Dennett op cit.
28 Dennett, 102-3.
29 Bruce, op. cit., chapter 3.
30 Carlos Alvarado, Historical Notes About Out-of-Body Experiences: I. Cases from Antiquity, https://carlossalvarado.wordpress.com/tag/out-of-body-experiences-pliny-the-elder-plutarch-thespesius/
31 Talbot, 231-2, citing Greyson and Flynn, The Near-Death Experience (Chicago:
Charles C. Thomas, 1984), as quoted in Stanislov Grof, The Adventure
of Self-Discovery (Albany, N. Y.: SUNY Press, 1988), pp. 71-72.
32 To hear Clark tell the story about the blue tennis shoe in an interview, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3ASmyyVgQY
33 See Waite, chapter 21.
34 Dennett, 75.
35 www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/RealStoryCh17.html
36 Marrs, PSI Spies, Chapter 3.
37 See Humphrey, UFOs, PSI and Spiritual Development.
38 DeGracia, DOOBE, 180-1.
39 Muldoon and Carrington, 37-8.
40 Wilson, The Occult, 719.
41 Mishlove, The Roots of Consciousness, 81-2. Also detailed in Grosso’s Experiencing the Next World Now, pp 16-7.
42 See Panchadasi, Clairvoyance and Occult Powers.
43 Edmund Gurney, Phantasms of the Living - Volume I. See also Myers, Human Personality.. Vol. 1, 396
44 Frederick Mysers, Human Personality…, Vol. 1, 211.
45 Dale, 129.
46 Talbot, 231.
47 Conway, Secret Wisdom, 131.
48 Ibid., 180-4.
49 Guggenheim and Guggenheim, 170-1.
50 Ibid., 171-2.
51 DeGracia, DOOBE, 77.
52 Bruce, 131.
53 Muldoon and Carrington, 124.
54 Ibid., 160.
55 Dennett, 91.