AP_10.TXT ------------------------------------------------------------------- FILE 10 of 15 - CompuServe Astral Projection Class by Don DeGracia, 1994 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Astral Projection Class on CompuServe by Don DeGracia: 72662,1335 Copyright 1994 None of this material may be reproduced without explicit permission from the author. IN THE OOBE REALM - PART 4 ii. The Middle Realms (continued from FILE 9) 2> (This is an example of me discovering a "Rehab Center". In this case, it was a place for the elderly, and it was very much like a nursing home. Also, though it is somewhat premature in the notes, in the following entry I met what seemed to me during the projection to be a deceased person, a young child. I have decided to include this here for the sake of keeping the journal entry intact. Later I will discuss meeting deceased people in more detail.) "Laid down. Broke consciousness. Was out of my body in my bedroom here at Dad's house. Passed out my window into the backyard but nothing looked familiar. Went around to the front and still didn't recognize anything. I can't recall any of the details. I wanted to fly away and explore so I shot upwards. I was afraid I'd blackout. I remember seeing suburb and city streets spread out below me. The scene below me looked like a bluish-green microchip. Then I blacked out. I was in the void and I tried like hell to fly downwards. I managed to go downwards somewhat and my vision faded back in and I saw the microchip looking city below me. There was a force tugging me back upward, but I resisted, broke it, and hovered back downwards. I watched the microchip scene turn back into city streets as I lowered myself. But now I was somewhere totally different than where I started and I still didn't recognize anything. I was standing in front of a building that had an official looking appearance. I went inside. There was a group of older women inside the doorway. I tried to speak with the one who looked the youngest (she looked to be maybe 50). I got her name, but she was basically ignoring me as if I was a bother to her. She was wearing a nurse outfit. I noticed that there were only old people around. I continued trying to talk to this nurse. I told her that I had a physical body at home, and that I was projecting and I wanted to know if she was aware of the fact that she was not in the physical world. Yet she continued to ignore me as she was too busy with the older folks. When I was talking to her, at some point a little blond boy with glasses, kind of nerdy looking, maybe 10 years old, appeared. He was hanging around me but I ignored him cause I was trying to talk to Kate or Katherine (the nurse). After the nurse left pushing someone in a wheel chair, I walked into what appeared to be a TV room. There was a TV on and a few old men sitting around watching it. I saw a bulletin board and went and tried to read it. I managed to read, with great difficulty, one line of what looked like a flyer announcing a party. I tried to reread the line so as to memorize it, but it now read something completely different. Familiar with this kind of a thing, I gave up on trying to read. The little boy was still following me around. I decided to leave. As I walked out, it dawned on me that this was probably an old folks home for recently dead people, like the kind that Robert Monroe describes. When I realized this, I really wanted to scram. The little boy followed me outside, then he took off running in front of me and indicated that I should follow him. He ran across the street to an old abandoned house. He ran around to the back and "stepped" up this ten foot step onto a platform of some kind, that looked like a scaffold. The whole while I was following this kid I told him to slow down or that I'd disappear. When we got around back, it took me a bit of trouble to climb up onto the platform that he got onto with merely one step. But I managed to pull myself up there. When I got up on this platform he told me that "this was the funnest place with the best toys." He was playing with a few broken wooden soldiers. I had the strange feeling that this child was dead and was simply running around unsupervised and uncontrolled on the astral plane. I started to fade and I held onto the child to stabilize myself. I tried to talk to him. I got that his name was Steven and he was from Illinois. He said his address was 1717 High Hill. Then he seemed to read my mind, cause I was going to ask him his zip code, but before I could he started mumbling a string of numbers. He didn't seem too intelligent. He seemed like a normal 10 year old. I asked him if he knew whether he was dead or if he was just dreaming. He told me he knew that his Dad was dead. As it was that my lockmold was unstable anyway, I faded out and awoke back in my physbod." 3> (Here is the excerpt from the infinite shopping mall I mentioned above.) "...Very dramatic and very very conscious. I was somewhere, don't remember where, or how I got there. I know I didn't like it though. It was a big place inside a building, high walls and giant rooms. It seemed like a giant shopping mall. Not giant in the sense of proportions, but giant in that it went on forever. Actually, I got both senses from the place. I felt claustrophobic. The escalators looked more like roller coaster cars and I couldn't figure out how they went round like an actual escalator. I asked someone where the exit was, and they pointed down to a lower level. I flew down that way. My perceptions were strange, very 4 d. No matter how I moved, the front always stayed in front of me. Somehow I ended up in a big room. There were people in a queue for what I thought was a ticket window. I tried to pass through the wall but couldn't. It was kind of funny cause I was bouncing rapidly against the wall but not going through it. Someone in the queue pointed up at me saying something to the effect "the nerve of some people". I thought to myself "fuck you". I landed frustrated . Stood there wondering how I was going to get out of this place. Then my vision blacked out..." (END OF ENTRIES) This is all I am going to say about the middle regions of the OOBE realm. Again, I want to stress that the majority of typical OOBEs occur in these realms. iii. The Higher Realms There are higher realms in the astral plane. I have not visited these as much as I have the lower and middle realms, which, given the psychological correspondence between the OOBE realms and one's personality, could be construed as a not too pleasant situation. Still, my few visits to the higher realms are characterized by the following. The higher realms appear much more ethereal than the middle realms. Colors are very delicate and "light" (i.e. the opposite of heavy). Colors and things can also appear very much like sparkling jewels. In general, the higher regions still have buildings and recognizable landscapes. The most important clue that you are in a higher region is *how it feels*. When in a higher region, everything feels really, really good. It is peaceful and satisfying and makes you feel light, relaxed and content. It is my suspicion that here too, as with the middle realms, you will find regions where deceased people dwell. These are likely the regions people pass into after they have worn out their earthy desires which bind them to the middle regions. According to occultists, and other authors (Monroe, for example) these higher regions are NOT the final resting place for the departed. They are still intermediate stages in the long soujurn that occurs after the death of the physical body. Another thing that differentiates the middle from the higher regions is something I forgot to mention in the discussion of the middle regions. This is the fact that you may sometimes encounter dreaming people in the middle regions. How you can tell dreaming people from dead people will be discussed ahead. Here I just want to say that you rarely encounter dreamers in the higher OOBE regions. Let me now give a couple journal entries that I believe were visits to the higher OOBE regions. 1> (Here is an excerpt of what I feel was a projection to a higher subplane. It was a beautiful place. Note too the potential romance.) "....I faded in alongside a pink house that reminded me of my old place on Houghton Ave. - which is one of the reasons I thought I was in Houghton. Standing on the lawn I saw a white picket fence running up the walk to the front door. Across the street was a lake and beyond the lake an amazing horizon of sun and colors. Everything seemed to have a pinkish red tint to it. The colors were like soft delicate pastels. A warm breeze was blowing. My movements were like slow motion as I walked through the front yard (not the slow motion kind of movement that makes it difficult to move, but a slow motion in the sense of being very dream like). My thoughts seemed very removed from my situation. The whole thing seemed to be beautifully unreal (but not contrived, like I feel when I'm in a thought-form. This feeling was different, what one might call a "sense of surrealism"). These feeling were compounded by a deep realization of the novelty of these feelings in the context of the fact that I was projecting. I was trying to figure out what to do next. Should I fly into the colored sky-scape? Should I walk about and explore? I dreamily went up and leaned on the picket fence in awe of the serene beauty that was filling me at the moment. Then, from across the street came a very beautiful blond girl. She was wearing a black sleeveless top and a plaid skirt of greens, yellows and reds. Her beauty fit in exquisitely with this place. She ran across the street towards the house I was at. She walked up the front walk past me apparently not noticing me. "Hey, Blonde," I called to her. My voice was distorted and in slow motion. I waved at her and my motions were in slow motion. She turned and saw me. I tried to say `come here', but the words wouldn't come out. But she could tell what I wanted for she walked over to me. Up close she was even more beautiful than I first thought. Straight blond hair draped over her elfin features, thin high cheek bones, slender green eyes, cute upturned nose. I was irresistibly drawn to her. We hugged. I caressed her breast which felt so soft and real. She responded to me erotically and sensuously. We kissed and I felt myself begin to fade. I pressed my entire body against hers trying to stabilize myself. I rubbed my face, arms, legs, torso and groin against hers. Still clutching her I faded out..." 2> (Here is another episode in which I believe I was in a higher region. The place in the following entry is very much like a place described by spiritualists called "Summer Land", which is a beautiful meadow strewn region where the deceased rest. Note that this occurred in the same projection where I was in the infinite mall.) "(after I had escaped the shopping mall and was in the void for a while)...I materialized somewhere else! I was now standing outside, in what seemed to be a pleasant countryside. There was a guy and a girl standing near me looking at me. They looked like hippies to me. Both were wearing loose white tops and white skirts, with sandals on their feet. She was blond and cute, he had a beard. I asked them where I was at. They seemed to be paying attention to me. I asked them what was this place and what their names were. They didn't respond to my questions but we did talk. The girl said something to me but I thought she was just speaking nonsense. Yet it didn't seem to matter. There was an incredible happiness that filled me and I wanted to make love to her. She took me by the hand and I walked with them. I saw wood shacks dotted about and other people around the shacks. The area seemed to be a beautiful meadowland of rolling hills of green and yellow. I remember fighting to hold my lock mold, and they seemed to sense this and we moved slowly and cautiously. We ended up on a hill under a tree. I flew up into the tree, and they flew with me, still holding my hand. We frolicked about the tree in the air. The tree seemed very 4-d, as if I could see many perspectives simultaneously, and the tree looked as if it was weightless. I remember looking in her face as she was suspended above me, and I lost the lock mold. I felt it coming though because we were moving rapidly , dancing in the air around the tree. Then I was in blackness again..." iv. The Surreal Regions Finally, I want to end this survey of the places you may go by describing what I will call the "surreal" regions. As I said, these are realms of dancing sounds and colors. They are not really "places" in the sense we normally think of the word "place". I have actually been in these surreal regions quite a bit. Getting to them has a lot to do with the void. Often, I will be in the void and it will transform into a surreal region. What are the surreal regions? There are a couple answers to this question as far as I can tell. Some of the surreal regions are related to the physical plane or how the physical plane affects the etheric plane. That is, such regions have something to do with perceiving the physical plane from a viewpoint we normally cannot. Many times I have seen what look to me like biological structures in my projections, and I wonder if I may be actually seeing my brain or my own body from on the inside. That is, sometimes it seems like my perception "shrinks" and I can see things that normally one would need a microscope to see. This is one class of surreal region. Now, the idea of perceiving minute things that we cannot see with our normal vision is not new. Yogis have described this ability for centuries. The earliest known description of this psychic ability is in Patanjali's Yoga sutras, which dates back to 500 B.C.. At the turn of the century Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater used this psychic ability, which they called "magnifying clairvoyance" to literally see atoms and molecules, and they published these observations in a book called Occult Chemistry. In 1980, this ability was dubbed "micro-psi" by Stephen Phillips, a physicist who studied Besant and Leadbeater's descriptions of atoms. The Hindu name for this ability is "anima" and anima is this name I will use. What I am saying is that you will be able to use this ability, anima, when out-of-body. This will occur in two contexts. In the first case, this may be the basis for some of the hypnogogic images you see. That is, during hypnogogia, some of what you may see may actually be you using anima, shrinking down your perception and actually seeing the cellular and molecular structures of which your body is composed. I will give examples of this below. The other context in which you may find yourself using the anima ability is that you will seem to be in a PLACE that is very "biological" looking. In this case you are not merely viewing biological structures, but are actually *inside* of them. Now, in both cases, I do NOT believe you are literally viewing your physical body. I feel that these perceptions exist on the etheric plane. So what you are seeing is etheric plane images that correspond to biological structures inside your body. This is very similar to when you see your bedroom during a projections; it is not your physical bedroom, but its etheric counterpart. Whatever the truth behind these biological appearing images, there is no question that you may see them. The second type of surreal regions you may visit falls into a different category than the anima images. This second category of surreal regions is closely related to the void. Sometimes you may be in the void and it will transform into a space of abstract colors and shapes. You will have a hard time putting what you see in such spaces into words. The shapes and colors will also move and be very dynamic. When you are in such a surreal space, it may either transform back into the void, or you may transform into one of the middle or higher regions of the astral plane. What is going on here is the following. When you move from the void to a subplane (using the hands trick, for example), what you are doing is phasing into that subplane. Again, using our "radio station theory of consciousness", this is analogous to moving from a region of static on the radio to tuning into a radio station. Now, tuning into a subplane, though it is *analogous* to tuning into a radio station on your radio, is by no means the same process. When you are tuning into a subplane during an OOBE, it is possible to PARTIALLY tune into a subplane and perceive that subplane from a completely different angle or perspective than if you have completely tuned into the subplane. When you percieve a subplane from such a partial angle, it looks TOTALLY DIFFERENT than it does if you tune into it completely. What you see during a partial tuning into a subplane is a weird space of moving colors and geometric patterns. In other words, you appear to be in a surreal region. Now, this idea is not speculation on my part. I have literally observed this to be the case. I will give an example below showing how this works. So, in summary, I have discovered two types of surreal regions encountered during OOBEs. The first results from anima and these are perceptions of biological and molecular spaces. The second results from partially tuning into a subplane. Both types of surreal space are perceived as very abstract looking "places" of moving colors and geometric images. I have made minor references to these types of perceptions in some of the entries I have listed so far. In one I speak of falling through the "meme bacteria" and this is a description of using anima to see biological structures. These "meme bacteria" are green and purple neonish colored images, and they may appear as green tubes with purple liquid flowing through them (which I think my be me seeing my blood flowing through my veins or arteries), but they may also appear as swirling vortexes of green and purple. or as a wall of green and purple patterns. I also have referred to seeing the "green and purple" images during hypnogogia and these also refer to using anima. Finally, to close I want to say that the two categories of surreal space I describe here by no means exhaust the possible causes of surreal spaces in the OOBE realm. According to reports by occultists, yogis and other OOBE authors, there are many types of surreal spaces including planes beyond the astral. The reader interested in further information is referred to the bibliography. This said, let me list some of my experiences in surreal regions while out-of-body. 1> (Earlier in these notes I presented an entry in which I was being dragged along by the wind force, in FILE 8, entry 2 under the heading "a. Moving, Flying and the "Wind". While I was being dragged backwards by this wind force, I decided to turn around and see if I could see what was dragging me. When I turned around I saw a surreal landscape. The following is the continuation of the entry from FILE 8, and I believe this was an anima based perception.) " ...For a while I relaxed and let it drag me along. Soon though I became impatient and wanted to see if I could turn myself around and see what was dragging me. I struggled very hard to pull myself around, and it felt like I was trying to pull myself against hurricane winds. When I had my back to the direction of this wind force, I remember seeing trees pass me by at high velocity. But I managed to turn around and what I saw was unbelievable and utterly amazing. I don't even really know how to describe it! When, after great effort, I turned myself around, I was no longer seeing the forest. Instead I was looking onto this unbelievable colored field and there were three spheres ahead of me and they had something that looked like butterflies dancing in each of them. But they were not butterflies, though they looked a little like them. Whatever they were, there was one each inside of the three spheres and these "butterflies" were spinning and rotating within the sphere and constantly changing color. The way they changed color was strange, it was as if colors were welling into them from somewhere I could not see, like a liquid, and flowing around inside of these butterfly creatures. I was both awed and confused; confused that the forest was gone, and confused at what I was looking at, awed because whatever I was looking at was very, very beautiful. My first thought was, "God, this looks like what Leadbeater describes the astral plane to look like." But there was a peculiar quality to the scene that reminded me of looking under a microscope. I began to wonder if I was seeing the inside of my brain somehow. The "butterfly" things were extremely reminiscent of cellular appearances. The background behind the three spheres looked like a landscape, somewhat reminiscent of a garden, but it was strangely and complexly colored, most of the details escaping me now except the preponderance of pink colors, and the effect of sunset-like colors. Also, I experienced another unique sensation after I had turned around. I still felt like I was being pulled forward by the wind, though that was weakening. I could see nothing in front of me that seemed to be pulling me. And the strange field of colors with its dancing "butterflies", though appearing three dimensional, looked like it was very close to my face. But strangest of all was a very weird feeling that I could pull off the top of my head. This was the first time I had felt this sensation though it would not be the last. The feeling is that, at the very top line of my visual field, I can reach underneath and pull upwards, and the top of my head would rip off. Obviously, this is not a pleasant feeling, but I was very curious as to what it was and why I felt it, and if the feeling had any connection to the scene before me, which I was thinking more and more was some inner view of some type of cells and biological structures. Yet in short order, the pulling of the wind died away, I felt myself slowing down, and the scene before me faded away. I was back in my bedroom again, still lucid in the projection state..." 2> (Here is the first time I had been to a surreal region resulting from partially tuning into a subplane. You can see below that I suspected my perceptions were due to partially tuning into a subplane, but I was not certain at this point.) "I was back in the void again. This time though it was different from the last time. I was seeing really complex geometrical patterns come spinning past me. It's hard to remember exact details, but every now and then I'd see these really intense color patterns. It was hard to conceptualize what I was looking at in this "void". I'd be zipping along checking out these spiro-graph patterns then all of a sudden I'd see a color pattern. It wasn't that these color patterns would appear before me in the void like the black and white spirograph patterns, it was more like I would "fall" backwards, see these intense color patterns, then "slip forward" back into the void. I was wondering if I was bordering on some deeper, more abstract plane and was blinking in and out of it or something. I do remember seeing these really intense lime-green cones that were embedded in some type of complicated geometrical patter. I remember yellow and purple too. At some point I did my spinning trick and my hand trick and cause myself to materialize again. Now I was in what seemed like an upstairs flat or apartment..." 3> (In this projection, I literally saw first hand how the surreal space I was in resulted from seeing a subplane from a different perspective, so to speak. In other words, it was during this projection that I saw absolutely that my perception of a surreal space was related to a definite subplane.) "Had been up all night studying for an exam and gabbing with John. Went to bed about 5:00 AM. I fell asleep almost immediately. Next thing I knew I was walking thru a dance club, very reminiscent of the Detroit dance club scene. The place was large and dark, and there was a huge dance floor filled with very underground looking people. I was not lucid at this point, but I had a very strong feeling that something was up. I walked off of the dance floor into another room that was a bar. Sitting at the bar was my good friend Eric, with whom I had jammed in a band. When I saw Eric it dawned on me - I was in the dream world! And also, at this realization, I most definitely experienced the "headrush" feeling. My lucidity was incredible. Everything was absolutely clear and vivid. I felt exactly like I do when I'm awake. Once my lucidity clicked in though, I became very aware of my potential to fade out so I moved very slowly and carefully... (I spoke to Eric, then faded out into the void) ...I seemed to now be floating in the void. However, there were what seemed to be colored triangles moving around, crossing and spinning over one another making distinctly geometric patterns in front of me. The colors were mainly a yellowish green with red, orange and pink hues and they had the texture of clear and smoky, but smooth glass. "This is a weird view of the void," I thought to myself. I stared at these patterns wondering what the hell I was looking at. I began to focus harder and harder on these patterns, trying to discern some detail in them. Then, as I was focusing, the most incredible thing happened. I watched these patterns "solidify" and transform into the scene on the dance floor of the club I had just left. The spinning triangles were actually the dancing people in the club! I was amazed. I relaxed my focus and the scene faded back to the spinning triangles. I was thinking, "Wow! This is amazing!" I tightened my focus again and the triangles again transformed into the dancers on the dance floor. This time I tightened my focus so much that the entire bar scene faded in around me! I was back in the bar again! My lockmold was again very strong, but again, I moved slowly and cautiously so as not to get too excited and fade out. I wondered if Eric was still here. I walked off the dance floor, through a neon lit hallway, back into the bar where I had seen Eric. And no shit - there he was in the same room! I was extremely lucid and I really had to fight to keep myself calm because I knew I would fade if I got too excited..." 4> (The final example I will give of a surreal space is perhaps the most dramatic I have ever experienced. However, I failed fully to record this experience until 4 years after it had happend. Here is what I wrote in my journal the day I had the experience in 1988:) ""Laid there thinking/talking to myself, did hands trick and skipped/fell down/backwards. Landed by a gymnasium. Skipped to an acting stage (i.e. artificial, like it was a stage set) looking city. Got bored and left. Voided a bit. Explored four levels of physiological structure: 1. the meme bacteria, 2. swirling colors, eddy fluxes, 3. cells and proteins, 4. rock plateau with embedded gems and atom lattice. Skipped to 5th level and was in a city. Skipped into a room and talked to a girl. Various other things that I can't remember. Laid in focus 10 remembering then fell asleep." (This is all I wrote originally in my journal. It was 4 years later that I elaborated on these brief notes when typing my journal into the computer. Below is what I remembered of this experience four years later. What we have here is a lesson in being lazy. I was too lazy to record this experience in detail, and, as you will see, I forgot significant parts of the experience. This is, in my mind, one of the most significant uses of anima that I ever have done. I was a fool to not record it in more detail. What I could remember when I entered my journal into the computer is:) "...What I do recall very clearly is that, while I was in the midst of the meme bacteria level, I got the idea to shut my eyes, spin around rapidly, and pretend that I was shrinking. When I did this and opened my eyes up I was quite surprised to see that I was actually somewhere else! That I had or had not shrunk down I don't know absolutely, but then again, there is not one thing described in this journal that I have any absolute understanding of (other than the fact that this stuff did occur!). And what I saw when I opened my eyes was amazing. I was in the midst of a spectacular panorama of swirling activity and spiraling colors. In the entry above I refer to this as "swirling colors, eddy fluxes". Even now I can remember some of the images of what I saw. At the time my impression was that I was watching the biochemical cycles inside my cells, but I was seeing them up close. The scene was staggering in its complexity. In this projection, I was floating amongst the images, floating surrounded by these color patterns. I remember that I was amazed, but baffled, and didn't understand in the least what I was looking at, other than that it was very beautiful and moving around too much to make out any definite structure. At the time, during the projection, the main thing going through my mind was the new travel/skip technique I had just devised. Since, at this second level, which I had assumed to be nested inside of the meme bacteria level, I didn't really know how to make much sense of what I was seeing, I decided to try the same technique again. So, in the midst of all these swirling colors, I shut my eyes, started spinning around and once again pretended I was shrinking. Then I opened my eyes and again I was somewhere else! In the entry above I have the description of this third level as "cells and proteins". Unfortunately, at this point I don't remember a single image I saw at this level. Whatever it was though, it must have been things that reminded me of protein structure, which would mean coils and loops, or I wouldn't have written this in my journal. I do remember clearly though what I was thinking at this level. I remember thinking to myself something along the lines of the following logic, "if I'm really looking at proteins, then I should be able to shrink down and actually see the individual atoms that the proteins are composed of." So I shut my eyes, spun around rapidly, and pretended to shrink even further. When I opened my eyes I was again at a new level and this I remember clearly even now as I type. I opened my eyes and I was standing on a rock ledge, and in this ledge were embedded little glistening jewels. I looked up and in front of me as far as I could see were little dots of light all lined up in a lattice pattern. "Are those atoms?" I wondered, "if they are, then why aren't they moving?" The ledge that was overlooking this lattice work was only about three feet high and I stepped off of it into the lattice sea of lights. I floated out into it, mostly confounded by what I was looking at. It was very still and quiet. The lights were simply embedded in the darkness, and they were not moving or anything, only sitting in place glowing softly. I remember these images clear as day. I floated through this panorama and became bored because it was the same thing in every direction I looked. I know I was trying to see things like Besant and Leadbeater described in Occult Chemistry. So I shut my eyes, spun around again, and pretended to shrink. And again, I opened my eyes and was somewhere else! This time though I was standing in a city, and it felt very gloomy to me. It was misty and kind of dark. Things were colored, but pale, and mostly shadowy. I felt a little scared by this place. Far off in the distance I saw a creature running and it seemed to me to look like a wolf running like a man. I remember at this point thinking to myself, "I wonder if I'm on the lowest astral plane now? Maybe what happened is I started out at the meme level, shrunk deeper and deeper into the physical level, until I finally popped right out of the physical level into the astral plane." That's what I thought when I was actually there seeing it first hand, and this is what I believe today." (END OF ENTRIES) So there you have it. We've now gone through a survey of what it's like on the other side of the veil, in the OOBE realm. By any standard, what I have described here is only a fraction of what has been described. And moreover, what has been described here is obviously slanted by and limited by my own experiences in the OOBE realm and my own interpretations of these experiences. I do, by all means, encourage everyone to read as much as they can about what life is like in the planes. You may find contradictory reports, you may find differing interpretations, but this is to be expected. The realm where OOBEs occur is vast beyond anything we know or understand here in the physical world. It is truly important if you want to have as full an understanding as possible that you expose your- self to as many views as possible about the OOBE/astral projection/ lucid dream experience. And, as always, you want to use YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE IN THESE REALMS, as your basis for interpreting the reports of others. Other people's reports are great for giving us ideas and for exposing us to possibilities, and for corroborating the things we experience out-of-body, but in the end, there is no substitute for personal, direct experience. I try here to show you doors. It is you who must pass through these doors. ------------------------------------------------------------------- END OF FILE 10 -------------------------------------------------------------------