I'll let you into a secret, friends. As Yeheshua said, "there are many rooms in my father's house." There are other worlds, and the substance of these worlds is mind. Some Quantum physicists are coming around to this idea (not all!), but it's something religions have been saying for years.

Once, I sort of believed in life after death, but it wasn't until I had actual experience of these other "worlds" that I really came to believe in them. I was curious. I read a lot, and I decided to experience things for myself.

I read a book on astral travel and decided to give it a go. I thought, if this works, it's proof that there are other worlds. Maybe. You never really know.

It took me some time. You have to prepare yourself mentally, and you have to practice regularly. For me, it took a good month of regular exercises until it finally worked. This was a real breakthrough. Until then, I had no real "proof", and sure, I could put it all down to a series of dreams, but it parallels with everything I read about this "world".

Everything the books describe is true. When you get to a certain stage of mental concentration, you hear a crack. Well, before this, you feel your body vibrating - exactly like low voltage electricity. If you're careful and you stay aware, you can then leave your body. If you lose focus, you fall asleep and nothing scary happens. This happened to me a number of times as well.

When I first left my body, everything was just like it is normally - everyday familiar things I had around my room - except there was a shimmering bottle green light everywhere. I knew I was in the astral plane. There, you hear things differently - almost a flanging, echoing effect, but this changes with your level of concentration. Everything in the astral depends on your focus.

You can fly. The book I read said to jump into the air and if you stay there you know you're in the astral. It's true. I jumped, stayed there, and checked out the ceiling. You can also pass through things. I went through my closed bedroom window and flew around the top floor of the flat I was living in, checking out the brickwork. It was night, but the sky had that strange green hue. Everything tends to shimmer and glow. Everything seems alive, even things like the bricks.

As the books say, a silver chord attaches you to your physical body. I didn't notice this at first, but later did. As I observed, you tend to lose your focus after a while, and the initial clarity breaks down. Things become dreamy, because that’s exactly what the astral is - the dream world. As you see things and meet people, your emotions take over and strange things happen. Your mind plays tricks with you, and you can find yourself back in your physical body very quickly.

I found that you can focus on a place and fly there really fast. I once asked to go to Mars and took off, speeding through space. I got scared after leaving Earth though, and snapped back to my body. I never did make it to Mars.

You can ask to meet people too, but I always found this confusing. They always seemed like projections of my own mind, which of course is exactly what they were. For some reason, I kept running into a lot of cats. They followed me. I wonder if this is why witches are always associated with cats.

Anyway, I’ve stopped now. If you don’t keep your practice up, you lose the ability. Also, the astral is just as confusing a place as this world - more confusing. It’s a fun place to visit - and I believe we all do when we sleep and die - but it’s hard to stay grounded there.

What was interesting though, is it’s just like they say in the books. The "bardo" state in the Tibetan Book of the Dead - the place you go after death - describes it perfectly. Because of that, I tend to believe in reincarnation, which is what Tibetan Buddhists believe and describe in great detail.

Obviously, I still don’t "know", and I’m no expert on these things. I would never tell someone what they should believe because I know people have to experience this sort of thing for themselves. But from my experience, these "worlds" are just what others have described. It’s just like looking at a picture of a place and then seeing it for yourself.

From what I experienced though, the astral world comprises solely of mind. It is purely phenomenological. There are certain "natural" laws there, but there are probably mental laws too. You can manifest things in the astral solely through fear or desire. You can think of things and they    appear, or you are taken to them.

If what the books say are true and our own world reflects the astral, then I can see how we’re propelled through life - lives? - by desire and intent. Still, it’s a very sloppy way of doing things, being propelled through time by fight and flight.

What I found in the astral world is the more focused you are - the more you simply observe things just as they are - the less you’re conveyed madly about the place by your own hopes and fears.

I don’t have the travel bug to go back anytime soon, but this is what that "place" 
showed me. If you’re going to believe something, I think it’s a good idea to check it out for yourself. Otherwise, I’d be skeptical.

Don’t believe me, friends! Try for yourself and see.

Sure. People have said that to me. Why travel across the world to visit someone or go to some place? Why not just astral travel there?

It’s a technical problem. The astral is tricky - our minds are tricky. Unless you’re extremely focused and aware, the astral plays games with you. Nothing is as it seems. The astral world is a child’s world. You see things like a child - or maybe like a cat.

As much as I’d like things to be otherwise, there’s no place like home.

Karnal wrote on Jan 18^th, 2013 at 4:16pm:



Makes sense. I've always pictured you as a kinda Venus-y gal with a hint of moustache and some Mediterranean follicle issues.

Yadda wrote on Jan 18^th, 2013 at 10:07pm:


Life doesn't come packaged with proofs.  If it did, we wouldn't be having all these great conversations.

muso wrote on Jan 18^th, 2013 at 5:33pm:


Ah, you ask a good, cunning question. I believe the astral world is exactly what Plato was describing with his notion of forms, who’s counterparts in the three dimensional world are mere reflections of what we call the astral world. That chair, bed, desk - all exist in thought form somewhere outside this world. People, places and things. Victory and failure, health problems, luck, even events. Neoplatonists in the 3rd century certainly held this view, and the early Christian church struggled between a pagan devotional style of religion and the more gnostic mystery tradition of the Platonists. No need to guess who won. If you read Plato’s metaphor of the cave as a literal description of reality, it makes a lot of sense in reference to the astral. Our world is a projection of much subtler worlds, and most of us spend our lives with no understanding of the worlds outside (within) our own.
 
A lot of Plato’s ideas have been reinterpreted - particularly by German idealists and 20th century phenomenologists. The trick, however, is how to get rid of metaphysics without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Plato’s cave can be useful in linguistics, but Plato wasn’t describing the problem of language and metaphysics. I think he was describing a view of cosmology, but one where forms - ideas - are critical.

The modern Western obsession with language became less important to me when I experienced thought transfer in the astral. Here, intention and meaning is conveyed between people/beings without words, but through thought and emotion. You just "know" what people mean - very problematic in this world, I realize.

I recommend a book, Betty Eadie’s Embraced by the Light. It’s the cheesiest New Age book cover you’ll ever see, but it’s an amazing book. Eadie had an accident and went into a coma. She describes what happened to her after she was momentarily declared clinically dead.

She saw the doctors working on her and later identified them. She left her body, flew over to see her family, and then met a being who showed her around "heaven". She met Jesus, although he was described as a projection of her own understanding of Oneness. According to the guide, Buddhists meet the Buddha, Catholics may meet favourite saints, etc, etc - I don’t know who Jews or atheists meet. Anyway, she spends what feels to her like 3 months in bliss, being taken around by this guide.

I’m not sure if I believe everything the guide says - he says there’s no reincarnation. Beings choose to be born into bodies on earth to learn things. This sounds way too nice to me. Anyway, Eadie is still  mormon, even though her experience went against much of what that church teaches. Apparently, her congregation shunned her for a time after she published the book. When she came back to life, she became very depressed. She wanted to die and go back, but she remembered what the guide said about destiny, etc, etc.

I believe Eadie’s experience happened because it’s backed up by other survivors of near-death experiences. It’s not always happy days though. I’ve read some people have a very confusing, fearful time. The Tibetan Book of the Dead describes the bardo as a confusing place for most. Yes, there are guides who can help you there, but there are also a lot of lost souls wandering around. The astral travel book I read gave gnostic incantations to dispel "negative" entities, and they seemed to work (for a short period, anyway). I believe you can meet people you’ve known when you die, but you can also meet a lot of deadbeats. One time I went to some place full of drunks. It was hard to get away from them - they brought me down. I could have fallen into an astral life of booze and drugs if I had stayed around. Still, the astral only reflects your own mind. Betty Eadie must be an extraordinarily aware person to have experienced what she did. The astral or bardo world is not like that for everyone.

I would much rather live in a world of ideas where people discussed their own experience of these matters rather than some book-learned priest, rabbi or imam’s secondhand interpretation. We all need an understanding of death, I think, or we never really come to terms with it. If you can live well with your corpse rotting - and that’s all - fine. Many great people have, including Mother Theresa if we believe her letters about her doubts.

Still, there’s no point getting all "spiritual" about these matters (whatever that word is meant to mean). Who you meet on the astral, the sort of places you can go, and how easily you’re able to focus and navigate yourself around, depends on your work in the physical world.

Plato was right - there is a world of pure forms, but it lives within the tiny holes of matter in this world. Thought - ideas, information, call it what you will - is the substance of all matter. Nothing is fixed or concrete, everything changes. What is physically possible within matter is only determined by bonds of attraction, or forces of rejection.

This is, I think, almost identical to the nature of mind.

muso wrote on Jan 19^th, 2013 at 8:34pm:


That, I would find a little difficult too 
It would be hard for me to believe (wihin my conscious mind) that there is a conscious self which exists for any length of time beyond the physical self.
I would imagine that the semblance of time would cease to exist.

Those who have experienced the physical self dying seem to have very similar memories of the event which are generally quite good ones and helpful to their continuation in the physical life.

Yes, it's our perceptions of a physical world that we can usually never escape, but that's not to say that there is nothing beyond it.

NorthOfNorth wrote on Jan 20^th, 2013 at 10:32am:




It is my firm belief that the man, Jesus the Christ [the redeemer], was executed, died, and rose again,
.....that Jesus did survive death.

But that is just me.            

Jesus, the man, is alive.

If Jesus is alive, can others be redeemed too ?

Why not ?







Luke 24:13
And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs.
14  And they talked together of all these things which had happened.
15  And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them.
16  But their eyes were holden that they should not know him.
17  And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?
18  And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?
19  And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people:
20  And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him.
21  But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these things were done.
22  Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre;
23  And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive.
24  And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not.
25  Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken:
26  Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?
27  And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.
28  And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further.
29  But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them.
30  And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them.
31  And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.




In numerous places in the NT, Jesus 'previewed' his death [and resurrection], to his disciples.

If we can believe the recorded Gospel story, then we are told that Jesus came to do a predestined 'work' on earth, for the 'Godhead'.

And recorded in the Gospel story, Jesus witnessed to his contemporaries, that he knew and understood what that work was.

Jesus testimony throughout the NT is the witness to his determination to complete the task that was assigned to him.


Of course, if a person believes that Jesus is his/her redeemer, he/she also believes in the veracity of the Gospel story.

Atheists do not.






Job 19:23
Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!
24  That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!
25  For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:
26  And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:

Seeing that the said "God's" truths have always been scientifically proven to be phony, it's extremely doubtful that religion can ever have any power over a natural being at all.