The Multidimensional Human:

Running the Astral Gauntlet

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Leland) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:53:00 +0000

AC 278: January 5, 2008 (Boston)

I went to bed at 10:45 PM and woke up at 12:15 PM. I’ve been having some pretty incredible dreams during this first ninety minutes of sleep--very clear, and often related to astral projection.

I entered the astral plane from a wake-initiated lucid dream (WILD). I seemed to be walking down a path that led through an ordinary nondescript landscape (waking consciousness) to the edge of a jungle (astral plane). I hesitated for a few moments, observing the boundary between the reality I was in and the one I was about to enter.

Things on one side felt normal, like a clear day without clouds, low humidity, perhaps a little boring. This was the emotional weather of my waking state. There were no big upsets or emotional reactions that would take me to the private areas of the Dream Zone.

There was a shimmering boundary hanging in the air. I felt as if I were standing at the entrance of a dark, enchanted forest, where anything was possible and everything was alive--the astral plane, in which thoughts and feelings create our experience more or less instantly.

Once across the boundary, the atmosphere felt thicker, just like what I feel when I move the focus of my awareness into the astral body level of my energy field--almost like gelatin. This was the sense of being surrounded by astral essence, the living ground of consciousness on the astral plane.

I felt a little fear as I entered the astral plane. I found being surrounded by astral essence a little oppressive. As Powell observes that such essence tends to be “hostile rather than friendly towards man.” The reason for this hostility is that it reflects our “indifference to, and want of sympathy with, other living beings.” [Arthur E. Powell, The Astral Plane and Other Astral Phenomena, 1927, reprint (Wheaton, Ill.: Quest Books), 177].

There may be another reason, as well. We’re not used to thinking of the air we breathe as full of little critters constantly entering and leaving our lungs--yet when we consider bacteria, germs, spores, and so on, that’s exactly what it is. On the astral plane, our inner senses tell us that even what we perceive as the blank space surrounding us like air is an actual living being, a foreign form of consciousness with a will and purpose of its own. This consciousness awaits our every thought and instantly materializes it into some form. Being in the presence of an intelligence so responsive to our thoughts--which we’re often so much less aware of--takes some getting used to.

After crossing the boundary, I realized I was in the Simulation Zone, an astral environment that tests people for their level of inner sense development. This particular simulation was designed to see whether fear would build to the point of turning a projection experience on the astral plane into a nightmare and cause me to wake up.

The environment felt like a dark maze. The moment I entered it, I proceeded with extreme caution, all senses alert.

One sense allowed me to feel my way forward (perception). This sense has eight levels, and I seemed to be operating from the fifth, shape perception, which Charles describes in terms of moving through a maze.

Another inner sense made me aware of the living nature of the place (vibration). It was not just a maze; it was like a forest or jungle, full of organic structures, like trees (stationary locations built up from astral essence, the basic ground of consciousness on the astral plane) and beings, like nocturnal animals (mobile thought forms produced by astral essence from the thoughts and feelings of a Dreamer or astral explorer).

I was acutely aware of my track through this environment, memorizing it so that I would be able to retrace my steps and return to ordinary waking consciousness (navigation and position senses). This path unfolded like a boardwalk through the jungle, each portion appearing (coming into my awareness) a step or two before I trod it, winding a bit to one side or the other as my thoughts wandered. The important thing was to keep going, straight ahead--this was the one correct way through the simulation.

I couldn’t see a thing. I had to feel my way with my feet, wondering whether I would fall off the edge of the boardwalk. The fact that I was moving meant the mobility sense was active.

Underneath the boardwalk was black, swamp-like water--astral essence, alive, but uncommitted to a particular form. It could instantly take shape in response to my mind if I didn’t keep my mind clearly focused on my task and stray thoughts or feelings arose. The sense of being tested was acute: I felt like I was running an astral gauntlet (or, considering the caution with which I proceeded, walking it).

Suddenly, my apprehension about the place was confirmed by the sensation of a large hairy animal I couldn’t see brushing against my leg. I froze for a moment to consider my options. But a sudden flash of illumination lighted up the being. It was a dog, part wild, part domestic--a German shepherd.

It was as if I turned a halogen flashlight on the being. But then the light went off and all was darkness again.

I realized that I’d used my vibration sense to read the ident of the dog, resulting in that flash of illumination. I sent my consciousness out, touched the beingness of the animal, and compared the information gleaned to my internal data bank of nonphysical entities.

The being was what I call a Creature, a thought form made of astral essence (part wild, i.e. originating in the wilderness of the astral plane) containing a fragment of my soul (part domestic, i.e. human). Its purpose was to remind me to guard (shepherd) my thoughts so I wouldn’t awake from fear, or attract negative entities. The challenge here was to tell the difference between a scary self-created Creature and a menacing neg with some other source and purpose. If the latter, I would have scrammed. But because I’d created the entity from my fear, I adjusted my thoughts, calmed myself, and proceeded.

Eventually, I came to the end of the boardwalk. I’d passed my test--maintaining my focus on the astral plane without distraction by fear.

I was now standing on a pier. Off in the distance I saw a shoreline. There was just enough light for me to observe people boarding a ferry across the bay. When the boat was full, it pulled away from the dock and seemed to head right toward me, a bright light flaring up on its front.

I felt a little afraid--as if this boat had somehow been alerted to my presence and was coming after me. It seemed to be associated with law enforcement, picking up prisoners after a day of hard labor on the other side of the water and bringing them home to prison to rest at night. I retreated from the pier. I didn’t want to be discovered.

A new boardwalk appeared, running at right angles to the one I was on. A small, frog-like creature in the water, something like a spring peeper, began spitting at me with unerring aim. Every minute or so it emitted a little bubble of clear light that gently hit me on the head and broke with the sound of high tinkling wind chimes, almost like laughter. I found the persistence of this creature annoying.

My perspective changed. The boardwalk took another sharp right turn, back in the direction from which I’d first come through the jungle, but on a parallel track. Walls assembled themselves around me. I seemed to be in a narrow hallway of wood, as in a log cabin. There was a bathroom at the end of the hall. I was moving away from it, past several closed doors.

Light emanated from under the crack beneath one of the doors. I got curious about what was behind this door and opened it. A man in pajamas with a tooth brush came bursting out, passing me on his way to the bathroom. Then I awoke, needing to use the bathroom.

While recording this adventure, after-the-fact lucidity kicked in. Part of me was more aware of what was going on than the self I identified with during the actual adventure. As I wrote, this other part of me provided explanations for several puzzling things I experienced.

I now understood that when I believed the boat was coming after me I made an error in judgment. The result was the appearance of the second boardwalk--a path out of my awareness of the astral plane and into a private area of the Dream Zone. I was losing lucidity. As the hallway assembled itself, that private area began closing in on me as a personal dream.

The exact subject of the dream wasn’t determined yet, so it appeared as a hallway with several doors, any of which could lead me somewhere. The hallway reminded me of one that goes to the private area of my brother Wes’s log cabin near Durango, Colorado. That’s how I knew it was leading to a private area of the Dream Zone.

My general direction of travel would be toward awakening. Hence the hallway was parallel to the track I’d taken between entering the simulation and arriving at the pier. My position sense was still active.

I also realized that the spring peeper was a type of nonphysical being I call a Robot. It was a part of the simulation environment, designed to warn me that I was about to lose lucidity within that environment. It wanted to wake me up again, before I lost my awareness of the astral plane and entered a dream.

The bubbles were thought-form messages. But my communication and information senses weren’t on, so their content was lost on me. However, they kept knocking at the door of my consciousness until I let them in--when I opened the door in the hall.

The light under the door indicated that there was some illumination for me there--I just had to open my mind to receive it. The man with pajamas and toothbrush was an image of a Sleeper, someone who is not aware on the astral plane. That’s the direction I was heading in.

Also, the people I’d seen on the other shore were Sleepers, leaving their waking lives in physical reality, where they “worked” (i.e., lived, learned, and grew), for the Dream Zone, where they rested. They seemed like inmates of a penal colony because I could sense they weren’t free to roam the astral plane, as I was. They would be confined to the private or personal areas by their need to process the day’s experience and their emotional reactions to it.

The bright light at the head of the boat was my representation of a Facilitator, a nonphysical being whose function was to guide the Sleepers through the transition from Earth to Dream Zone. The Facilitator must have seen me and indicated a desire to meet me, hence the flaring up of the bright light.

In Far Journeys, Monroe uses the term “Lighted” to refer to “Happy, idea, enthusiasm.” [Robert A. Monroe, Far Journeys (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985).] That was pretty much what I saw--a sign that here was an awake, aware, and illuminated being on the astral plane enthusiastic about the possibility of interacting with me. But I was losing lucidity, so I only received the impression that he was coming after me.

I perceived the Facilitator as connected to law enforcement because he was enforcing the law that one’s level of consciousness determines where one ends up in the Dream Zone. The Sleepers in his charge could only go to those areas in which they would dream about stuff going on in their daily lives.

As noted, the hallway I was in would bring me back to waking life, on a parallel but less lucid track than the one I used to enter the astral plane. The bathroom indicated why I was losing lucidity: I would shortly need to wake up and pee.

When a being in nonphysical reality sends us a thought-form message, it keeps knocking at our awareness until we let it in. For example, Leadbeater says:

Each thought-form is a temporary entity. It resembles a charged battery, awaiting an opportunity to discharge itself. Its tendency is always to reproduce its own rate of vibration in the mental body upon which it fastens itself, and so to arouse in it a like thought. If the person at whom it is aimed happens to be busy or already engaged in some definite train of thought, the particles of his mental body are already swinging at a determined rate, and cannot for the moment be affected from without. In that case the thought-form bides its time, hanging around its object until he is sufficiently at rest to permit its entrance; then it discharges itself upon him, and in the act ceases to exist. [Charles W. Leadbeater, A Textbook of Theosophy, 1912, reprint (Adyar, Madras, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1975), 53.]

The balls of clear light that the peeper-like being kept sending me were unable to raise me to a higher level of lucidity. They were aimed at my mental body--but I was at that point in the astral body, on my way into a dream. If I’d been in my astral body, the communication and information senses I needed to understand the Robot’s message would have been available to me.

When I opened the door of the room from which the Sleeper emerged, I finally let the message of the peeper-like being’s thought form enter my mind. I still didn’t fully understand it, because I was in my astral body. When I recorded the adventure, however, the rest of the message, which must have continued to hang out in my energy field, got through.

So, this adventure appears to begin in the mental body and descend into the astral body. As Besant notes: “The untrained astral senses often mislead.” But the mental body “is not subject to such deceptions,” and is the preferred vehicle of consciousness for travel on the astral plane. [Annie Besant, Man and His Bodies, 1912, reprint (Adyar, Madras, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1983), 84.]

Obviously, the trick is to maintain one’s focus in the mental body when traveling on the astral plane. Mistakes in judgment often lead to a loss of lucidity, as I experienced.

Deva (Nature Spirit) Sighting

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Leland) — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 12:36:00 +0000

AC 272: May 30, 2007 (Boston)

[AC stands for adventure in consciousness. I began numbering these adventures, which include astral projection and other altered states experiences, in 1984.]

I had lunch over at Jay’s place this afternoon. I rode my bike there. Afterwards, I took a spin along a bike path in the woods. I wondered if there were any nature spirits there and tried to turn on my inner senses to become aware of them. But I was too focused on the bike path, which is paved, but narrow, littered with forest debris, and full of sudden steep descents.

Returning home, I went through the Arboretum--and there was Jay, sitting on a bench. I joined him and we chatted a bit. Apparently, my inner senses were still on. Now that I wasn’t riding my bike, I could focus on what they were picking up.

My attention was continually drawn to a large tree opposite us. It’s a dawn sequoia from China. The tree is unusual for it’s light yellowish red bark (possibly the reason for the word dawn in it’s name), and for the way it bulges out toward the bottom, tapering gracefully as it rises. It’s almost conical in shape, the trunk looking like a tightly corded muscle, whose cords thicken as they reach the ground, turning into the roots.

I said to Jay, “There’s a being in that tree.” I could feel something watching us. I tried to open my inner senses wider to see what I could pick up.

“When you feel like you’re starting to get something,” I told him, “start moving your focus around to other things in the area to get some other impressions and compare them.

I pointed out a small tree, a large bush. The small tree felt alive and had a presence, but didn’t feel like it had a being in it. The bush also felt like a presence without a being.

By now, Jay’s inner senses were also active. He could feel that the being in the sequoia had noticed our attention and was intrigued.

I was puzzled by the way it appeared to my inner vision. When I saw the tree deva in the big beech by Jamaica Pond years ago, its face had a female cast and its body looked like a pulsating green flame with flecks of yellow and red. It was very tall--ten feet high or more--and lithe.

The being in the dawn sequoia felt male. It was very solid and compact, stocky, only about six feet high, and gray like granite. Its body parts seemed somehow blocky, as if its arms had no elbows, its legs no knees. Its torso and limbs were like solid gray masses of stone.

It felt ancient, and its time scale seemed to be very much slower than ours. As I picked up these qualities, I repeated them to Jay.

“People come and go, walking, running, riding by on bicycles, pushing baby carriages, and maybe someone notices the tree and looks at the label to see what it is,” I said. “But to this being, they all seem asleep. No one notices it.”

I inwardly asked the being if it had a message for me. To my surprise, I got a response. “Man-child,” it said back to me, as if stating a fact. There was something more, but I didn’t get it.

I was so amazed it had responded to me that I laughed. Also, I was surprised at what it called me, which reminded me of a couple of books about fairies I’d read years ago, in which they call any human being Man-child. The expression was just there in my head, not at all sought after or thought about, or even imagined.

The being’s voice was deep, clear, solid somehow, a little slow or leisurely about communicating. There was something else, but I didn’t get it because of my laughter.

I asked Jay if he was picking anything up. But he said he was getting energies and couldn’t sort them out.

I turned my attention back to the being. Now it was laughing too, making a gesture like heavily slapping it’s blocky thigh with a thick hand, the whole arm moving slowly, without articulation. Strangely, the gesture did not seem to take place in slow motion, but as if in a different time frame than ours. The being was hugely entertained by the fact that it had communicated something to me and I’d gotten it.

The being settled down again and I started to relay to Jay various things that it was either communicating to me or that I was picking up about it. I learned that it was a deep stone being.

Apparently, the roots of the dawn sequoia go deep, seeking water. This tree's roots were touching bedrock, which is the creature’s true home. The creature used the roots to gain access to the tree and come up to the surface to look around.

I looked at the other nearby trees--tall pines, hemlocks--and could feel how much more their roots ran along the surface of the ground. But if the dawn sequoia encountered a deeply buried boulder, it would wrap roots around it for greater anchoring and support.

I guess the closest thing in folklore to what I saw would be a troll. But I’ll just call the creature a deep stone being.

After I learned of its origins, the being slowly began to turn away. It withdrew its attention, was no longer willing to communicate. Jay felt its withdrawal too.

I said, “It’s apparently not excruciatingly interested in what we humans are up to.” There’s was something ironic in that thought, because we’re so used to thinking of ourselves as the only intelligent beings around, and we’re so endlessly fascinated by what’s happening within and between us. Meanwhile, here’s a stone being coming up from the depths through the roots of a tree to look around at what’s going on on the surface of the planet, and no one has a clue.

Not long after the stone being withdrew, I said goodbye to Jay and headed home on my bike for a nap.

Reconnecting to My Inner Spiritual Teacher

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Leland) — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 17:22:00 +0000

AC 271: May 29, 2007 (Boston)

I haven’t felt my inner spiritual teacher around for a while. I’m not surprised. I’ve been caught up in trying to figure out my housing situation (should I stay, live alone, get a new house mate, move, look for another place with a friend?). There hasn’t been much room in my head for anything else.

I went to bed early, about 10 PM. As I made myself comfortable in bed, I tried to open myself up to my teacher. I was surprised by how quickly I connected. It was as if someone had thrown a switch. My inner senses came on. My head felt huge and expansive, full of light. The sudden clarity was like the sounding of a gong. And there was my teacher--not a visible presence, but an energetic one. I felt totally seen, held, loved.

I also knew that the connection between us had never been broken. I’d just fallen out of it, as it were, due to concerns about my housing situation. Now I was back.

The early twentieth century theosophist C. W. Leadbeater speaks of this intimate connection between student and spiritual teacher (which he calls pupil and Master or Adept), saying:

if there is any serious disturbance in the lower bodies [physical, emotional, mental] of the pupil it will affect those of the Master; and, as such vibration would interfere with the Adept’s work on higher planes, when this unfortunately happens he has to drop a veil that shuts the pupil off from himself until such time as the storm settles down.” [The Masters and the Path, 2nd abridged edition, 1983, 94.]

I’m not sure that entirely agree with this statement. My experience has been that I fall into and out of awareness of my connection with my teacher, but the teacher is always there. Some level of my being remains aware of this connection. But I don’t always have conscious access to that level. The veil is entirely of my own making.

Also, Leadbeater’s view of the Master in this passage seems strangely limited. I doubt that anything I might go through emotionally while present in physical reality has any effect at all on my teacher. He seems beyond having his own reactions to whatever is going on in my life. The part of me that is also beyond such reactions--what Leadbeater would call the Ego or causal body--is constantly in touch with him. If there’s any separation between us, I seem to create it myself, inadvertently, at the level of my personality in the present lifetime.

Leadbeater goes on to say:

It is of course sad for the pupil when he has to be cut off in this manner; but it is absolutely his own doing, and he can end the separation at once as soon as he can control his thoughts and feelings. [Ibid.]

I agree with this statement. It accords with my experience. My only issue with Leadbeater is whether the separation is initiated from my side or my teacher’s.

I suppose it could be both. Also, the problem may be one of semantics: from which level of the self are we speaking? To human beings incarnated in physical reality, the connection to an inner spiritual teacher is infinitely precious. When it disappears, we’re chagrined. We feel like we’re being punished. Also, we project blame for our descent from bliss onto the teacher: he or she has withdrawn from us. But how could our teacher be so mean? So we must be responsible. Guilt, guilt, guilt.

My experience is simply that I got distracted by personal issues and lost the connection. I noticed that my confusion was compounded by not feeling the support of my teacher. When that connection was reestablished, my relief was enormous. But there was no sense of guilt or punishment, only that I liked the bliss that comes with this connection so much I would prefer to experience it more rather than less often.

I suppose that could be an incentive not to let myself get so confused by personal matters that I lose my connection with my teacher. So I’ve learned something. As the I Ching says, “No blame.”

Book Update and Patanajali, The Yoga Sutras (III.16)

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Leland) — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 01:59:00 +0000

A brief report on the progress of the book. In the process of writing the previous series of postings on Annie Besant’s Man and His Bodies, I came across the several books by Arthur E. Powell on these bodies: The Etheric Double, The Astral Body, The Mental Body, and The Causal Body and the Ego. These books greatly expanded my understanding of the idea of vehicles of consciousness that Besant had written about--to the point that in order to complete the assignment I gave myself in the previous posting, I would have had to write the whole of the new book.

Powell’s books also provided me with a framework for The Multidimensional Human. I’ve been working on the outline for the last four weeks or so.

In the process of digging through old journals for material, I came across a set of essays that I wrote in 2002 on The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. I had just finished reading the translation by B. K. S Iyengar, Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanajali.

The essays concerned the famous passages in the third chapter (Vibhuti Pada) on the siddhis, or yogic powers (sutras 16 to 56). I believed that years of exploring altered states of consciousness from out of body experiences and lucid dreams to the mystical and transcendent states produced by meditation or listening to certain kinds of music gave me some special insight into the siddhis.

I wrote these essays for myself, to help me understand better how what Patanjali had expressed in the Yoga Sutras, which were composed nearly 2000 years ago, applied to my own experiences.

I sometimes wondered whether I would ever publish them, but couldn’t conceive of how I could fit them into a book. Posting them here seems like the best way to make them available to anyone interested--all the more so since they have to do with the ways in which the ancient yogis pursued the development of our multidimensional humanity.

Here’s the first, pertaining to chapter III, sutra 16:

This sutra has to do with the knowledge “of past and future.” The preceding sutras in this chapter speak about various approaches to meditation. They seem to me to make clear that clairvoyantly seeing the past or predicting the future are not what is meant here.

Patanjali means the ability to infer the probable past of probable future of a person, object, situation, or possibly even a state of consciousness, by seeing them as processes. By "seeing them as processes," I mean recognizing the particular form that transformation is taking in any of these things.

Charles talks about a number of levels of perception: immersion in experience, perception of experience as an event, perception of patterns of events, perception of the archetypal nature of such patterns, intuitive perception of the shape of an archetype from within (like being in a maze and feeling your way through), intuitive perception of the form of that shape (like seeing the maze from above), perception of the process unfolding in that form, and perception of the transformation of energy operating within that process. Charles calls the level of perception of the energy transformation seeing things from the soul’s perspective.

In a similar way, Patanjali talks about different levels of meditation, starting with avidya (ignorance) and mounting through ever higher and more comprehensive levels of perception.

At the levels of form, process, or energy transformation, it would be possible to perceive where any person, object, situation, or state of consciousness probably originated (seeing the past) and determine where it will in all likelihood end up (seeing the future). In the case of many archetypal processes, the origins and outcome would not be that difficult for a yogi to perceive. But such perceptions would seem like miracles (siddhis) to anyone caught up in any of the lower levels (immersion, event, pattern, archetype, and shape). To the yogi, such perceptions would simply be by-products of longtime yogic meditation practices.

Theosophical Planes

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Leland) — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 21:25:00 +0000

Since my last post on vehicles of consciousness, I came across some new information on the seven planes described by theosophists. There was no chart that listed all seven in one place in Man and His Bodies, so I had to do some guesswork to construct the one that I offered in the previous post.

That list turned out to be incorrect on several counts. For example, I had listed a separate causal plane, above the mental plane, as the realm of the causal body. It appears that the causal plane concept comes from a later reinterpretation (one of many) of the seven planes of consciousness, where it's located between the astral and mental planes and is supposed to be the source of information about our past lives.

I've gone ahead and made the necessary corrections in the previous post. If you're interested, here's the website where I found the complete list. Scroll down and you'll also find material on the seven subplanes of the astral and mental planes, each of which becomes an afterdeath destination for souls at particular levels of spiritual development.

Vehicles of Consciousness: Overview

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Leland) — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 20:58:00 +0000

I like the theosophical idea of vehicles of consciousness presented in Annie Besant’s book, Man and His Bodies. A vehicle of consciousness is one of several nonphysical "bodies" that we each possess. These vehicles surround our physical form as different layers of the human aura. They also act as modes of perception and transportation within various aspects (levels, planes, or zones) of nonphysical reality, which I call Otherwhere, because the rules that govern it are so different from (other than) those we're familiar with in physical reality.

This notion of vehicles of consciousness accords with my own out-of-body (OBE) adventures, as well as the experiences recorded in Robert Monroe's books, and those of a number of other out-of-body explorers. I believe that they also explain some of the difficulties beginning OBErs may have, especially when they find that their range of exploration in the out-of-body state is extremely limited.

In this and the next several posts, I'll be exploring the idea of vehicles of consciousness, as presented in Besant's book.

Man and His Bodies is based on several assumptions, having their origin in ancient Vedic (Hindu) teachings, going back to at least 800 BCE:

1) The Self (Sanskrit: atman, something like the soul in Western religions) is enclosed in five layers or sheaths (Sanskrit: kosha), with the physical body being the outermost.

2) These sheaths are also vehicles of consciousness that allow the Self to travel in various realms, both physical and nonphysical.

3) Their makeup reflects various degrees of physicality or nonphysicality (subtlety), with the physical body being the most dense (or gross), and the inmost sheath being the finest (most subtle).

These bodies were first described in the Taittiriya-Upanishad (2.2-5), where they are called:

1) anna-maya-kosha: the body made of food
2) prana-maya-kosha: the body made of life force
3) mano-maya-kosha: the body made of mind
4) vijnana-maya-kosha: the body made of awareness
5) ananda-maya-kosha: the body made of bliss

In Theosophy, these bodies are given the following English names:

1) the physical body
2) the etheric body (or etheric double)
3) the astral (or desire) body
4) the mind (or mental) body (and the causal body--see below for explanation)
5) the body of bliss

Each of these bodies is ideally suited for operation as a vehicle of consciousness in a certain physical or nonphysical realm. In Theosophy, this realm is called a plane (I would call it a Zone).
These planes are arranged in a hierarchy from lower (more physical, coarse, or earth-oriented) to higher (more nonphysical, subtle, or Otherwhere oriented, as I would call it). There are seven such planes:

1) the physical plane
2) the astral plane
3) the mental plane
4) the buddhic plane
5) the nirvanic plane
6) the monadic plane
7) the divine plane

The physical and etheric bodies are limited to the physical plane. Both last for a single lifetime and dissolve back into their elements after death.

The etheric body is separable from the physical body, but is not able to go far from it. It has the same shape as the physical body, but is not visible to physical eyesight. It may, however, be perceived by the inner senses, e.g., clairvoyant vision.

Many OBErs, including Robert Monroe, have reported that once out of their bodies, they were confined to a limited range surrounding the physical body (frequently, the dimensions of their bedroom). Perhaps they were operating in the etheric body as their vehicle of consciousness. The ancient Egyptians had a similar notion: the ka was separable from the body, but not able to move very far from it.

The astral body may move freely in the physical or the astral plane, but is not able to access the higher planes. This body is the usual vehicle of conscious for out-of-body travel from point to point in the physical world. It also functions as the vehicle of consciousness for dreams and certain phases of the Afterlife.

The astral body often makes perceptual errors in evaluating what it experiences on the physical and astral planes, although it can improve with practice. I suspect that this is the result of carrying over various assumptions that pertain to the physical body and physical plane into the astral body and the astral plane.

For example, many beginning OBErs have trouble perceiving anything at all once out of body. They seem to be blind. But if they give themselves the command to open their eyes so they can see, their physical eyes open and the OBE is over.

The astral body seems to correspond to the ancient Egyptian notion of the ba, which is able to move freely between physical and nonphysical reality and within the nonphysical reality of the Afterlife.

In Theosophy, the astral body is eventually abandoned at a certain stage in the Afterlife, whereupon it disintegrates (on the astral plane) into its elements.

The mind body is the vehicle of consciousness in the mental plane--but only on the lower four (out of seven) subplanes of that plane. The mind body loses its human form and usually appears on its own plane as an egg-shaped energy field, its size varying according to the evolutionary degree of the Self it contains.

The mind body may range freely on the physical or astral planes. It is less susceptible to making perceptual errors on that plane than is the astral body. It may assume human form at will.

This body too will eventually be left behind on the mental plane, at a late stage in the Afterlife, and will disintegrate into its elements.

The causal body is without form, although it may assume the human form if it wishes, and often does so when traveling on the astral plane.

Some OBErs have reported that they seem to be operating as a point of light or awareness rather than a replica of the physical body. They may be using the mind or causal body as a vehicle of consciousness. The ancient Egyptians have a similar concept, akh, which refers to consciousness when it appears as a dazzling light. The akh, however, is limited to nonphysical reality.

In Theosophy, the causal body is the reincarnating self: "all causes that effect [generate] future incarnations reside in it." (p. 108). Besant goes on to say that "People do not remember their past lives because they are not yet conscious in the causal body as a vehicle." (p. 109)

In Theosophy, the causal body is the true self, the immortal aspect of human consciousness, immensely greater than one’s personality or individuality in any given lifetime. It’s the repository of everything that has been learned in a particular lifetime, and the sum of the wisdom acquired in all of one’s lifetimes.

The vehicle of consciousness on the buddhic plane is the body of bliss. This body is used as a vehicle of consciousness by advanced yogis in deep meditation. In it, they may experience a blissful sense of the unity of all life. This is all that Besant has to say in Man and His Bodies on this topic.

Also, no explanation is given of the bodies that may function as vehicles of consciousness on the nirvanic, monadic planes, or divine planes. These are areas of further investigation. There may be other theosophical writings with which I’m not yet acquainted that deal with them.

The Theosophical View

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Leland) — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 13:25:00 +0000

One of the things I hope to do with the new book is include information on adventures in consciousness from a number of spiritual traditions. I've come across a lot of useful pointers in obscure locations in my reading over the years and want to offer this material to my readers.

A posting on the Saltcube Forum led me to an article about a book published in 1900 by the theosophist Annie Besant called Man and His Bodies. I was lucky enough to find the book in a local library. The librarian almost prevented me from checking it out. There was a rule about not allowing books published over a hundred years ago out of the library. While the book looked (and was) that old, the librarian only noticed that the donor bookplate on the inside cover said that it had been given in 1934. So, I lucked out.

Later, I discovered that the book is available, along with several others by the same author, at the website of the Theosophical Society of Canada, where you can read the full text or individual chapters of Man and His Bodies. The other online books in this series, which include titles on the Afterlife and various higher planes of existence, are listed here. There's also a fabulous bibliography of suggested readings on this site.

The original article that turned me on to Man and His Bodies can be found here.

In this and the next several postings, I'll be exploring the relevance of what Besant has to say to lucid dreaming, out-of-body experiences, astral projection, and other adventures in consciousness.

The Multidimensional Human

noreply@blogger.com (Kurt Leland) — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 00:06:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I got the idea for my fifth book. I want to call it The Multidimensional Human: A Guide to Astral Projection and Beyond. This will be the working title, anyway.

I want the book to be a sequel to Otherwhere: A Field Guide to Nonphysical Reality for the Out-of-Body Traveler and The Unanswered Question: Death, Near-Death, and the Afterlife. So the target audience will be people interested in out-of-body experiences, astral projection, near-death experiences, lucid dreams, mystical experiences, and altered states of consciousness. I use the term adventures in consciousness as a catchall category for such experiences.

My belief is that we humans are multidimensional. We exist in physical reality in a body, each cell of which has its own consciousness. We also exist as souls in nonphysical reality. Our egos straddle both of these realities, which is what makes us multidimensional.

The soul itself has access to a variety of alternative realities, thus increasing our multidimensionality. But most of us have spotty access to this aspect of our beings.

After publishing the books mentioned above, I received a number of reviews on Amazon.com, dozens of e-mails, and a few letters from readers. Many of these communications raised issues that I want to address in the new book. Also, I've been participating regularly for most of this year in a forum on lucid dreams and out-of-body experiences called Saltcube. Over and over, I've been made aware of the acute level of interest that many people have in developing their own adventures in consciousness--and often their frustration in attempting to do so.

In the new book, I want to offer not only accounts of my own adventures in consciousness, as they've developed in the years since the two earlier books were published, but also many awareness tools (beliefs, techniques, and so on) that I've found helpful in overcoming the challenges that have come up over the years in exploring my own multidimensionality.

I hope to use this blog as an opportunity to sketch my ideas for the book as I collect and organize my material.