Ultimate Journey

Robert A. Monroe

1 

The Variable

 

Fear is the great barrier to human growth. It is said that when we are born into this physical universe we bring with us only two fears, of loud noise and of falling, both engendered by the birth process. As we grow older we learn more and more fears so that by the time we reach maturity we—or most of us—are loaded with them. We have grown physically, but our real growth, the realization of our true potential, has been sadly impeded.

 

Unknowns create fears. We may fear the darkness because we don't know what's there. A physical pain may create fear because we don't know what it may imply. When these Unknowns become Knowns the fears diminish and disappear and we are able to cope with whatever confronts us.

All of us have enough Unknowns in our lives—and enough fears. We have no need to look for more. Yet there are times when we don't have any choice. Here is an example. This is how it was for me—it is the source for the material that follows.

It is generally believed that as we go through life we don’t really change. We just become more of the same. Barring the usual exceptions that, as we say, prove the rule, when we look around d us as the years go by, this seems quite valid. On the whole, people don’t change, and most of us strongly resist change.

Nevertheless, all our worries and wars are based upon change. We fear that something will happen, or we fear that it won't; so we fight to prevent change or to speed up the process. But whatever we do, change is 100 percent guaranteed. The only question is its rate. Slow change we interpret as evolution, fast as revolution. Changes are the epitome of Unknowns—the greatest of fear generators.

 

In my own case, there seemed to be no choice. I fell, unknowing and panic-stricken, into the process that engendered the new recognition of reality—what I call the Different Overview—that I now carry with me. The change in my life was not simply more of the same. It was something that hadn't worried me beforehand because I had no idea that such things existed. Was this change in my life accidental or evolutionary? To me, it was revolutionary.

 

In 1958, without any apparent cause, I began to float out of my physical body. It was not voluntary; I wasn't attempting any mental feats. It was not during sleep, so I couldn't dismiss it as simply a dream. I had full, conscious awareness of what was happening, which of course only made it worse. I assumed it was some form of severe hallucination caused by something dangerous—a brain tumor, a stroke, or impending mental illness. Or imminent death.

The phenomenon continued. I had no control over it. It occurred usually when I would lie down or relax for rest or preparatory to sleep—not every time, but several times weekly. I would float up a few feet above my body before I became aware of what was happening. Terrified, I would struggle through the air and back into my physical body. I was sure I was dying. Try as I might, I could not prevent it from recurring.

 

At the time, I thought I was in reasonably good health with no major problems or stress. I was fully occupied; I owned several radio stations and other businesses, had offices on Madison Avenue in New York, a home in Westchester County, and, not the least, a wife and two small children. I was taking no medication, used no drugs, and drank very little alcohol. I was not particularly involved in any religion, nor was I a student of philosophies or Eastern disciplines. I was completely unprepared for such a radical change.

It is impossible to describe the fear and the loneliness that took over during these episodes. There was no one I could talk with about it, not even my wife in the early days because I didn't want to alarm her. Strongly attached to Western culture and science in general, I automatically turned to conventional medicine and orthodox science for answers. After extensive examinations and tests, my doctor reassured me that there was no brain tumor or physiological factor involved. But more he could not tell.

Eventually I found the courage to talk to a psychiatrist and a psychologist, both of whom I knew as friends. One assured me I was not psychotic—he knew me too well. The other suggested indeterminate years of study under a guru in India—a concept wholly alien to me. I revealed to neither of them, nor to anyone else, how extremely frightened I was. I was a misfit in a culture of which I thought I was a part, a culture that I admired and respected.

 

Yet the drive for survival is very strong. Slowly, very slowly, I learned to control the process. I found that it was not necessarily a prelude to dying, that it could be directed. But it took a full year before I came to accept the reality of the out- of-body experience—now familiarly known as OBE. This came about as the result of some forty carefully validated OBE “trips,” giving me—and no one else—extensive documentation. With this knowledge the fear soon receded, to be replaced by something almost as demanding—curiosity!

 

Still, something had to be done. I needed answers, and I was sure I would not find them in an Indian ashram. My thought processes were the product of Western civilization, for good or ill. Therefore, to provide systematic help to me and also to gather information related to this strange “Unknown, “ I set up a research and development division in the corporation privately owned by me and my family. This division later was detached and became eventually what is now The Monroe Institute.

Thus the original purpose was solely to solve my own personal and urgent problems: to convert my fear-producing Unknowns into Knowns if at all possible. That meant learning how to control and understand the out-of-body experience. To begin with, I was the only one I knew who needed such help, so the motive was personal and selfish, not profound, idealistic, or noble. I offer no apology for this; I was the one who paid the bills.

 

In a contemporary view, the OBE is a state of consciousness where you perceive yourself as distinct and separate from your physical body. This separateness can be two inches or two thousand miles, or more. You can think, act, and perceive in this state much as you do physically, although with some important exceptions.

In the early stages of OBE activity, you seem to retain the form of your physical body—head, shoulders, arms, legs, and so on. As you become more familiar with this other state of being, you may become less humanoid in shape. It is similar to gelatin when taken out of the mold. For a short period it retains the form of the mold; then it begins to melt around the edges and finally it becomes a liquid or a blob. When this happens in an OBE, it takes only a thought for you to become totally human again in shape and form.

From this description it is clear that this “second body “ is extremely plastic. However, it is very important to know that, whatever the shape, you remain you. That does not change—except that you discover you are more than you realized.

 

As to where you go and what you do, there seems to be no limitation. If there is, we have not found it. In an out-of- body state, you are no longer bounded by time-space. You can be in it but not part of it. You—your nonphysical self—are comfortable in another energy system. You have a great sense of freedom. Yet you are not totally free. You are like a balloon or a kite on a tether. At the other end of the cord—the invisible cord—is your physical body.

 

Early in our investigation, we realized that we live in a culture and civilization where waking physical consciousness is the most vital of all qualities. It is not easy to make a case for any state of being that is different. A little inquiry soon produces any number of anomalies which cannot be fitted or answered within the confines of current Knowns or belief systems—bearing in mind that “belief” is a currently popular label for anything that cannot be fully understood or identified.

 

We began to work on questions about consciousness in general. What happens to it when we become unconscious through a hit on the head, shock, fainting, alcohol or drug overdose, anesthesia, sleep, or death? Is consciousness akin to a magnetic field produced by an electromagnet that ceases to exist once the electricity is cut off? If so, does it get weaker or stronger if we vary the “electrical” current? If we do this, we are doing it without any awareness of the “how“ of it. How can we control such action, if at all?

It is easy enough to raise these questions, which simply beget more questions with no trace of an answer. We soon became aware that a huge information gap exists. We needed some premise that might indicate a direction to follow.

 

We moved away from seeking materialistic explanations to look at the other end of the spectrum. What if consciousness does continue when the current is reduced? Immediately we began to find examples.

The problem is that when out-of-body we have lost consciousness and yet we haven't, our memory is or is not impaired, some of our physical senses are working and some are not, and so on. At the least, we don’t have total consciousness as we like to think of it, and therefore we don’t regard this state as valid. One body of thought holds that if you can’t move your physical body, or if it doesn't respond to stimulus, you're not conscious as we understand the term. Or if you cannot communicate by current standards you're not conscious. Yet there have been many comatose human beings who have continued to be conscious—they simply had not the means to communicate physically.

 

Thus to explain, or explain away, all of the many physical functions we perform without conscious awareness, our culture had to invent non-conscious systems. These are identified as autonomic, subconscious, limbic, and so on, including sleep. Any activity we cannot willfully control is not within consciousness.

At The Monroe Institute in the 1960s we began not only historical research into aspects of consciousness but also study of out-of-body events, mine and others'. We discovered that many OBEs have been related to the sleep state and thus dismissed as simply dreams—except that they do not fit the hazy and unreal quality associated with dreaming. Other spontaneous OBEs have occurred under anesthesia during surgery, when the patient found himself six or eight feet above the operating table and later reported accurately what he heard and saw from this vantage point—a physical impossibility. Events such as these happen frequently but for the most part are never publicly reported.

 

Other incidental OBEs occur during what are regarded as unconscious periods caused by accident or injury. Mostly these are categorized as freak events and are tucked away in memory as anomalies—or something that didn't really hap pen. Our belief systems would not allow it to be otherwise.

Some of the most striking of the spontaneous OBEs are now often identified as near-death experiences. Again, these occur frequently, usually during surgery under anesthesia. Most have the effect of changing completely the belief systems of the patients, providing them with a genuine Different Overview. They return knowing that not only are they more than their physical bodies, but that, without equivocation, they will survive physical death.

 

Our history is full of references to what we now call out- of-body experiences, including the language we use. You are “beside yourself,” “out of your mind, “you “fall” asleep, wake “up,” pass “out.” One of the very few relevant surveys in the past ten years showed that over 25 percent of our national population recall having at least one spontaneous out- of-body experience.

If you think about it, you may be among that 25 percent. Can you remember having a “flying” dream, with or without an airplane? Can you remember dreaming of looking for your car among many others in a parking lot, finding it, and waking up immediately after doing so? (We often subconsciously look upon our car as an additional body.) Can you remember having a “falling” dream, where you wake up instead of hitting “bottom”? This is quite common when reentry into the physical body is hastened by the ringing of an alarm clock! Until 1970 the whole research effort operated quietly, if not covertly. After all, I was the head of a conventional business dealing with conventional people. I was sure that any public revelation of my secret life activity would bring doubt of my ability to conduct responsible business affairs.

 

But I could not remain silent forever. With the publication of my first book, Journeys Out of the Body, our work began to attract much attention. We were able to select a number of volunteers as subjects in our laboratory. Most of them were able to replicate the out-of-body state so familiar to me, using the methods we had developed.

During the 1980s, talks on out-of-body experiences were given at various colleges and universities, on radio and TV, and even at the Smithsonian Institution. Three papers were delivered on the subject at the annual convention of the American Psychiatric Association, the presentation being sponsored by the University of Kansas Medical Center and The Monroe Institute. Currently there are occasional cartoon jokes in magazines based upon the out-of-body state as real. T-shirts have OBE themes and even Bob Hop e had an out-of-body joke on a TV appearance. The reality of the OBE is slowly becoming accepted, and the term “OBE “ is now part of our language.

 

What are the Knowns regarding the out-of-body experience? First, while there is nothing new about realizing that you are more than your physical body, you now have a means of proving it to yourself. We also believe that by applying other criteria it can be proved to the scientific community, and to the rest of humankind. To date, however, we know of no way to do this except through individual personal experience, but we do know that the tools are available to perform this verification.

A controlled out-of-body experience is the most efficient means we know to gather Knowns to create a Different Overview. First, and perhaps most important, among these Knowns is survival of physical death. If there is a better way than the OBE of knowing that this takes place—not just hoping, having faith, or believing, but knowing—we are unaware of it. All of those who become only mildly proficient in the OBE soon reach this stage of knowing. In addition, such survival takes place whether we like it or not, and without any consideration as to what we do or are in physical life. It makes no difference. Survival of self beyond physical existence is a natural and automatic process. We wonder how we could ever have become so limited in our thinking.

 

Next, the greatest barrier to proficiency in out-of-body experiencing is fear—fear of the unknown and of physical death. The attachment of our mind-consciousness to the physical environment is very strong. Virtually all of what we think is expressed in time-space terms. But now we find ourselves faced with the need to translate something completely alien into something understandable here and now.

The only way we have learned to ease these fears is to move into the OBE process one step at a time, in slow motion, as it were. This permits the novice to absorb and become accustomed to small changes, and learn to know that such changes are not dangerous or threatening to physical life. As these changes accumulate, we help the student to look back continually to complete physical awareness, so that there is an ongoing, familiar point of reference. Gradually the basic fears are released.

Most important, the mind-consciousness present in the out-of-body state is significantly different from that in physical wakefulness. Initially, intellectual and analytical focus does not seem to be present, at least not in terms we understand. However, the insertion of physical consciousness changes this. Conversely, the emotional extremes of the symbolic right brain are often totally absent and are usually more difficult to activate. (Love in a strict interpretation is not considered an “emotion“in this context.)

In the out-of-body mind-consciousness, all of what we are shows “upfront” and out in the open, so to speak. There is no sub- or non-consciousness hidden under layers of restraint. Thus there cannot be any deceit or deviousness because all of us are on display. Whatever we are, we radiate the facts. There is always some carryover from our physical thought and conditioning, which we eventually release and reject if it gets in the way.

 

It is perhaps equally important that we learn in the OB state just how much more we are than our physical bodies. The answer to exactly how and why we exist is readily available if we have the desire and courage to find out. When we search for information we may not like the answer we receive, but we know we have the correct one.

If you want to prove—to yourself and to no one else— that we survive physical death, you can learn to move into the out-of-body state and seek out a friend, relative, or someone close to you who has recently died. To find them, all you need do is tune in on your memory of what that person was or represented. Several such meetings will be enough. You will have your proof—not for anyone else, but for you. You will need to make this contact relatively soon after their passing because most of them rapidly lose interest in the life they have just completed.

 

Moving into the out-of-body state is an excellent means of gathering information. One of the easiest information runs you can make is checking on the welfare of a loved one. It is also probably the most simple of OB targets. If you are separated from your spouse or mate because of a business trip, for example, it's very comforting to home in on her/him to be sure everything is all right. For example, when one of our daughters was away at college, I would occasionally drop in during an OBE to see how she was getting along. However, I made the mistake of telling her about this on one of her visits home. A year later, she told me that after this disclosure every night just before bedtime she would say to the ceiling in her room, “If you're around, Dad—good night!”

Voyeurism is almost nonexistent in the OB state. There is much more exciting action available.

 

You can go anywhere in any time, past, present, or future, via OBEs. You can go directly to any chosen place and observe what is there in detail and what is going on. At your target site you can move around the area to observe from different perspectives. The only problem is that you cannot pick up physical objects—your hand goes right through them.

With this freedom you can follow the route our explorative research at the Institute has taken. You can go anywhere on Earth, or in it and through it. You can move outward and play around the moon and the solar system. It is beautiful and awe-inspiring, but it can become monotonous. Thus we saw and knew the other side of the moon before the NASA probes took their pictures. It was the same with Mars, where we were looking for artifacts such as buildings or structures that might indicate some form of intelligent life. Some of us even made a number of runs outside the solar system and usually got lost, in the sense that we could not establish where we had gone in relation to Earth. Getting back was no problem. The explorer simply focused on his physical body. There is no speed-of- light limitation.

 

If there are intelligent beings in the physical universe, we failed to find them. Either they were hidden, or more likely we didn't know what to look for. Of course, our exploration was infinitesimal. Perhaps if we had investigated the further galaxies we would have met someone out there. One day maybe one of us will.

In the nonphysical universe, it was an entirely different matter. We encountered hundreds, if not thousands, most of them nonhuman. Exploration out-of-body is a prime means for functioning outside the physical universe. The “second body“ of the OB state is certainly not physical. It is part of another energy system that commingles with the Earth Life System but is out of phase with it. The clue lies in how easy it is to find those who have left physical existence.

 

When you look for action in this other energy system, in the There, the effect is near-instantaneous. The system is very well populated and you meet some special friends when you become proficient in OBEs.

The highways and byways of out-of-body adventures and exploration are broad and varied, for the most part beyond ordinary time-space concepts. We can understand only that portion which relates directly to the Earth Life System. We may attempt to report the rest of it—and it seems limitless —but we have no acceptable or comparable baseline of knowledge and experience to do this accurately. The problem lies in trying to understand it and to translate what you find— to bring it back. Never be surprised when you return to the physical to find tears running down your cheeks.

 

What has happened is that you have gone off the edge of the Known map, and have returned with some previous important Unknowns now converted to Knowns. You may or may not convince others of this reality. Most do not try; the individual knowledge is enough.

Think how such knowledge—not belief or faith—would affect your own life pattern; the knowledge that you are indeed more than your physical body, that you do indeed survive physical death. These two Unknowns converted to Knowns, with no conditions or contingencies—what a difference that would make!

A Different Overview—a clear way of perceiving—can make these into personal Knowns. And more, much more. So unlatch your Security Belief Belt, grab your climbing spurs and perhaps a machete—and let's hit the high road.

 

2

The Long, Long Trail

Throughout history, labels have been developed for those who won't leave well enough alone: infidels, mystics, sinners, rebels, revolutionaries, misfits, neurotics, anarchists, adventurers, traitors, explorers, visionaries, researchers—add to the list what you will. Any deviation from the accepted norm genders risk. All of these individuals have been for the most part aware of the risk. If they were not, ignorance was no excuse. If there was a price to be paid in reaction or effect, they must or should have known about it before they took action. No sad tears for the wounded or the dead in such cases. I know this well, and you may discover it for yourself.

So it must be said: the Different Overview you are beginning to consider can be at most only a belief until you begin to test it for validity within your own ongoing experience during your life as an active Human Mind. As small beliefs convert to Knowns, perhaps larger Different Overview beliefs will follow the same path—until you are free.

From this point on, the delivery of a personal narrative seems the most convenient and definitive method of explanation. What to me are Knowns can produce only beliefs in you unless you have had or are having similar experiences that demand verification. Let me therefore attempt to tell it “like it is“  for me, allowing you to form your own beliefs which experience may in time convert to Knowns.

In my personal run, thirty-plus years of out-of-body activity had brought me to a calm state of satisfaction. A cycle has been completed, or so it seemed. My own Different Overview was well in place and eminently rewarding. Or it should have been.

I knew where I came from, how I got here and became a human, why I hung around, my final departure schedule, and where I would go when I left. What else could have had any importance? Anything else was mere detail.

And there was my INSPEC friend.

It was one thing to talk with such mind-consciousness in sessions in a laboratory, as simply a voice speaking through someone physical that you knew well. It was something quite different to encounter one face to face. Either in fun or fact, we had chosen the acronym INSPEC (for Intelligent Species) to identify this energy form, which implied that we Human Minds were something less.

But this INSPEC was not the same as those I had previously met. Over the years I had experienced many nonphysical meetings, communication and rapport with those who were obviously very human, those who still possessed a physical body, and otherwise. This INSPEC, however, was different.

Our usual meeting place was just past the H Band Noise. The H Band Noise is the peak of uncontrolled thought that emanates from all living forms on Earth, particularly humans. If you consider it as truly all, even in a current time frame, you get a better idea of the magnitude of this disorganized, cacophonous mass of messy energy. The amplitude of each segment of the band is determined by the emotion involved in the thought. Yet our civilization does not even recognize that the H Band exists.

My impression is that it contains not only current time thought patterns, but all that ever existed. They are continuous and simultaneous, and it may be that the older radiation is layered over so all one perceives is the current emission.

To study it objectively, if one is so foolhardy, as to want to do so, all one needs do is move to that state of disassociation just beyond the last vestiges of any direct Earth-related Human Mind activity in the nonphysical There. It appears much like a reflective layer, beyond which the effects diminish rapidly. Passing through it quickly is advisable, just as one would try to work through a screaming, angry mob—for that is what it sounds like, in a multitude of accents and tongues.

Now back to my INSPEC friend. Here is an excerpt from one of our earlier meetings when I had phased out of my body and moved to a point just beyond the H Band.

I wonder if this being understands how strong his or her light is. Could it be an E.T. (extraterrestrial) after all?

You will become accustomed to the light. You have the same radiation to us. .. and we are not the extraterrestrials as you mean it.

You read what I am thinking?

That is true. Just as you can with me.

I can?

You are doing it now in part, but only the surface part.

Yes, you are right. It is certainly not word s and sounds. .. no air to vibrate. .. but simply in the mind. .. yes.

What you call the core self does remember.

You know, I do remember. .. I remember you. .. the feel of you. . .

It is good that you do not express fear. We can do much when that barrier is removed.

Oh, I have a few fears left. . .

But they do not rule your perception. For example, why are you not filled with fear at this moment?

I don’t know. But I'm not afraid. That' s true. Right at this moment I am here, talking with you in a rational way. .. with you, someone who is very familiar to me. .. a brightly glowing figure that some people would interpret as a god, an angel, or at the very least some extraterrestrial. Yet we are here talking just like two ordinary people. .. except that we are not using words!

The difference is the lack of fear.

There is so much potential. .. Who are you actually? Or maybe I should say, What are you? Now I do have the courage to ask.

It is beyond your experience to understand at this time. But you will understand, and very soon.

Can we meet again?

 

All you need do is ask for our help.

You mean meditating? Saying prayers?

The words and rituals are meaningless. It is the thought. .. the emotion. .. that is the signal. If the proper signal is given, we are able to help.

Let me be sure of this. You are not the god. .. a god. .. but perhaps someone from another planet?

No, not from another planet.

Are you the one, or one of those who may have created us. .. the Earth?

No. We are sorry to disappoint you. But we can give you what we have in regard to the creative process. Do you desire it?

Why, yes. Yes!

This is what we have. . .

I was filled, almost overcome, with a surge of enormous energy, an immensely powerful vibration of very high frequency. This I knew as a ROTE, short for Related Organized Thought Energy, a sort of ball of condensed thought and ideas.

It is so much! I can't understand it all at once. . .

You will, when you can examine it at leisure.

Thank you.

There was a pause before the INSPEC communicated again.

 

You are uncertain as to your progress, your growth.

I am uncertain, that' s true. I think I know my goal, my purpose. The uncertainty is what lies in between.

What do you perceive as your goal?

Well. .. I guess. .. service to humankind.

That is indeed a noble goal. It is the ever-present desire of your human self to attain perfection. When you are no longer human, desire focuses in another direction. But there are other goals.

A desire more important? No, I don't mean that. .. a desire different from the human experience?

You are doing very well.

I often wonder about that.

 

You will find an answer. .. Now I perceive you need to return to your physical body.

You do read my mind! I don’t know what it is, but I have to go back. How do we meet again?

All you need do is hold this moment in your awareness, and I will be here.

Thank you.

The return to the physical was uneventful. The signal had been generated not by the usual full bladder but by my favorite cat lying on the pillow beside my head. I was sure I had checked the room but somehow she must have sneaked in. In my excitement, I wasn't in the least irritated.

* * *

After this particular INSPEC encounter, I began to take another look at my goal of service to humankind. This had been my target for many years, to help humans attain peaks of perfection as physical beings not even contemplated by our contemporary culture. To add a goal beyond this was indeed exciting stuff. My Different Overview was a major factor in this stimulation.

So I took a very hard look. To help someone else live better while in physical form is open to serious possibilities as to motivation. The implication surfaces that any such action cannot help but be or become tainted with drives from what I think of as the Animal Sub-Self, brought about by existence in the Earth Life System. This is the very essence of the process. The allure for Human Minds is near-inescapable.

 

I realized that the prime fallacy lay in a simple fact. Whatever I did, whatever I wrote, whatever I said, would have little if any effect upon human destiny. It was good to be of service to those around me, but this was no more than passing ego-gratification. Two generations later it would all be forgotten, footprints in the sand washed away by the tides of time.

The INSPEC was right. There had to be other, broader goals. My search for a broad goal that drives every human brought out one that was all too obvious. The nostalgia, the yearning to go Home. It could be the physical place where you were born and raised, the house where you lived, the town, the city, the countryside. This could be no more than the homing instinct that is present with variations in virtually all animal species. Or it could be the many forms set forth in assorted religious beliefs.

It might well be that much of our scientific endeavor is inspired unconsciously by such motivation. The rationale that billions spent on astronomy, space probes, radio telescopes, and the like will affect our lives constructively in the predictable future is a very thin premise. The unconscious desire to find Home fits much better.

 

Eagerly I took what was a Known to me. My memory was very vivid as to my source. My new goal became to go and be in what I construed as Home. Twice I had been there for short visits many years ago. All that I had learned while being human might be of immense value if I returned. Such information could indeed effect major changes. It was a joyous concept and I reveled in it.

Immediately I wanted to share this discovery with my INSPEC friend. Late at night I phased out of my body and headed for our usual meeting site beyond the H Band. Just out in the clear, the shining figure was waiting at our contact point. The INSPEC knew my thoughts instantly.

 

Your wish is to return Home. Yes, that is a different goal.

After this life, I will stay at Home and return to being human for one last time, some thousand or more years from now. After that, I will return Home to stay.

It is good that you understand the difference between yourself visiting Home and yourself returning to being human, as you put it.

Yes. But I'm not sure. About not being human, I mean.

As you remember more, it will become clear to you. You are being human when your fundamental focus remains fixed within such concepts of consciousness. If you change this fundamental, you are no longer human.

I see. .. Thus I stay being human, awake or asleep, in or out of body, physically alive or dead, as long as my reference point is human .

 

That is correct.

But I retain all of my human memory and experience in whatever state of being.

Yes. You have learned much. This experience is of great value as a nonhuman. It is one of the basic purposes for your sojourn. You will draw upon it in many ways nonhuman, but your attention will be in another direction. The graduate from the human experience is very respected elsewhere.

 

Does this mean that in what I remember as Home, I will no longer be human?

 

You will be as you were before, but the human experience will be added.

It comes down to being in the war m and familiar place where I truly belong.

 

Your desire is very strong.

Yes.

 

You wish to be there again?

Sometimes I become emotional about it. But I know I haven't completed this cycle yet, so it will come in time.

As you are now, time does not exist.

Is that an inference I can go Home now? For a short visit? I've done it before, long ago.

If that is your wish. You desire to do this?

Yes. For a visit, yes!

You will learn much as a result. Are you ready?

Yes!

 

Stretch your mind to there, what you know Home to be. Then release from here and you will be there. I will observe and assist if needed.

I thought of Home as strongly as I could, and released as the INSPEC told me. There was sensation of movement. .. a sound like the wind flowing around me. Before me. .. around me. .. the scene came into view. . .

.. . many-hued cloud towers, just as I remember, only they are not clouds. .. flowing in shades of glowing color, every color I ever thought of and some I only remember but can't express. .. let me just stop in the cloud and watch, feel. .. not seeing, but feeling. . .

.. . and there is the music. .. a thousand instruments, thousands of voices. .. melody weaving upon melody. .. perfect counterpoint, the harmonic patterns I know so well. Just stretch out and let the clouds enfold me, and the music is all around me, inside me. .. a thousand years is but an instant. .. but an instant. .. so relaxing and absorbing, just as I remembered it. How great it will be when I return to stay forever. .. forever. .. yes. . ... . a little worm intrudes upon my ecstasy. ..

 

Is something wrong? No, it's not a signal to return to my body. But what? What' s wrong with the clouds? Watch carefully.. . there, the large bright blue, followed by two smaller yellow ones. .. It's familiar! Others, and they are familiar too

.. . What? That' s exactly the same cloud frame. .. and the others, they are all the same! It keeps repeating, over and over again—the same patterns in a repeating loop!

.. . The worm, my analytical worm, gets larger. The music, check the music. .. it can't be. .. but yes, it's repeating. .. the same as I felt an hour or an eternity ago .. . exactly the same. Let me try another spot, another perspective. .. move to another part of  Home. .

.. . Here is good enough. .. this will make it different. But no. .. it's just the same as it was. .. it's not different at all! I'll move far away. .. far away. .. but still here in my  Home. . .

 

.. . There, that ought to do it. No, it's still the same.. . nothing new, nothing different. The same pattern over and over, the same clouds, the same music. .. Let me go in deeper. . .

.. . There they are, a bunch of curls, curls of energy playing games. That' s more like it! I was such a curl once

.. . let me join in the game! Round and round. .. u p and down. .. in and out. .. round and round. .. up and down. .. in and out. .. The game is like an endless loop. . round and round. .. up and down. .. No more, that' s enough for me, that' s enough.

.. . How about playing a new game? How about.. . ? Oh, happy with what you've got? Don’t want to change? All right, keep doing what you're doing. . .

 

Where do I go now? Where. .. ? That' s all there is! There isn't any more. But I don’t want to lie around in the same clouds forever, with the same music over and over. . .

I don't want to play the same game over and over. .. How could I have dreamed of. .. ?

There's nothing here for me now. .. nothing at all. Now I remember. .. this happened to me before. This is why I left. .. and I can't come back! I don’t want to come back!

I had better leave. .. I know how. .. I know how to do it. . .

There was a feeling of movement, with the wind around me again. Then silence. .. then fading easily into my physical body. I opened my eyes and looked through the tears. Nothing in the moonlit bedroom had changed. But I had.

I was unable to get to sleep for several hours, too stimulated, too depressed.

 

 

3

Along the Interstate

It took me many weeks to adjust to the idea that I would no longer be able to go Home. I had thought I would be returning to a hero's welcome, bringing back valuable information from Here to change and improve There. But it was not to be.

I made no attempt to try to go Home again. I recognized finally and sadly that this option no longer existed for me. It became much on the order of a childhood recollection; something to hold dear as it was, but not to relive. Clearly much ego and ego-gratification were involved.

But one Known did emerge. I knew why I had left.

A further visit with my new INSPEC friend helped greatly. He—or was it she—or both—was waiting, a familiar bright spot in endless blackness.

The sense of loss will pass. It is not lost because you remember.

I don't belong there now. Everything was the same, just as it was. But I didn't fit. It was as if I tried to put on a coat or glove I had outgrown. I can't go there and be— I'm too different.

And that saddened you.

Yes. More than that. It is as if a part of me no longer exists. I've thought of it so many times. .. going Home .

It is the reality of returning that does not exist. You need to release the illusion that you could do so.

I have. And I think I know what the actual difference was. It was exactly as I had remembered it. Nothing had changed. I guess I expected some kind of progress. But what made me face it was the repetition. If you watched long enough, if you listened long enough, everything repeated itself. There's no excitement, nothing new.

That energy pattern. .. you did not learn that from being human.

 

No. That is why I left Home, the limiting factor of repetition. There was no growth, nothing new to learn or experience. You learn all the time in living on Earth—change and new learning go on constantly. But the fact that I can't go back Home will take getting used to. It is not easy to handle.

Yet you will adjust. Just as you will when you reach a point where you recognize that you can no longer return to being human. Perhaps it is better put that you not only cannot but you do not need to do so when you have outgrown what you call the human coat and glove.

 

That will happen? That I won' t want to be human? How will I cope with that?

When that point approaches, it will be easier than you can perceive as you are now.

Well. .. if you say so, I believe it to be so.

You will know instead of merely believing, as you are fond of saying.

Thank you for your help. .. which is a weak way to put it. . .

We understand. You are welcome.

 

The glowing figure began to fade and then winked out. My return to the physical was without incident.

Things for me changed greatly after this meeting. I became aware of another, wider goal: to grow and evolve somehow into the awe-inspiring yet war m being that I happily called my INSPEC. With this desire and decision, I accepted the gentle encouragement that was being offered. The result was a strange mixture of peace and excitement, simple and complex at the same time, a form of knowing and belonging beyond description.

 

This was heightened exponentially when I was escorted on a short visit to the fringes of INSPEC space at my request. Although I was able to perceive very little other than the massive empathy and love that radiated through me, there was also the strong impression of many beings in happy residence. There was even a flow of newcomers joining this community which I felt as Layered Intelligence-Forming Energy (LIFE). The strange part was that it seemed like a new home to me, as if I already knew the residents. Yet it was more than knowing. It was as if I were a part of them and they of me.

 

The combination of excitement and serenity there left me bemused. Why could there not be some way that humans living on Earth could exist in such harmony? At the next meeting, I brought the question to my INSPEC friend as we drifted beyond the outer edge of the rings that make up what I was later to realize were the Belief System Territories, parts of the (M) Field spectrum adjacent to the Earth Life System where many Human Minds reside after completing physical life experiences. We could perceive the Earth in the center with semitransparent radiant globes around it, each larger and thinner as the distance increased. It took some effort to recognize that we were “seeing” the nonphysical energies in the structure rather than electrons and molecules.

It is interesting that your civilization knows nothing of this aspect of the structure, as you put it.

I wonder if they ever will.

 

Not in the completeness that you would wish.

If they did know this, it might clean up the mess. So much of it seems without purpose. The pain, the suffering, the violent emotions. It is very hard to accept that mess as a design of some sort.

Perhaps you will have what you call a Different Overview when your opportunity comes.

My opportunity? You mean I will have a chance to do something about it?

Yes. .. you and your friends. It might be helpful to you to visit the potential of states of being that are very different from the one you are experiencing. For example, to visit an era where human organization is different and conforms more to the way you believe it should be.

 

I can do this?

If that is your wish.

Can you be with me?

It will be my pleasure. Are you ready?

 

If you move slowly, I might be able to learn the technique.

You already know it. It is the same as the one you used to move to what you called Home. It is only the destination that is not a part of your knowledge.

You are right. If you lead, I will follow.

The glowing figure began to move. I stayed close by until suddenly it started to dwindle. My response was automatic. The energy pattern of the Earth dissolved into blackness. . . then out of the blackness a landscape emerged. Just ahead of me, the glowing INSPEC waited motionless.

 

We were some thousand feet over a wide valley, which appeared to be eight to ten miles long and about five miles wide. Snowcapped peaks surrounded the valley on three sides. Beyond the open side were forests and fields extending to the horizon. A bright sun hung in a blue sky studded with small cumulus clouds.

Directly below us was what appeared to be a large settlement stretching nearly to the base of the mountains. There was a mass of trees of a variety of shapes and sizes with variegated foliage in every possible shade of green. Among the trees was a complex and extensive network of narrow paths. But there were no houses or buildings, no smoke or smog. The air was totally clean and clear.

I turned to the INSPEC.

 

No houses? No buildings?

Sleeping quarters are underground, and the places for artisan activity.

Where are all the people?

They are among the trees. Each is performing an individual function.

How many are there?

Just over two million, as we understand it.

Two million!

That is so.

How many settlements are there like this? It is our planet Earth, isn't it?

It is indeed and it is the only such place. These are the only humans in residence.

The only ones on all of Earth?

That is correct:

I won' t ask what happened that brought the numbers down from billions. .. So this is what we can expect in the future?

You are thinking in the wrong direction, my friend.

What do you mean?

 

This is a place of the past, as you express time.

The past! There is nothing in our history that remotely resembles this! It must be very far back.

It is. Nearly a million of your years.

The inhabitants. .. are they human? Such as I am?

Slightly different but definitely human.

Can we go down?

We can indeed. That is our purpose.

 

Will they be able to see us? Can we communicate with them?

Yes, with no difficulty.

They won' t resent our intrusion?

On the contrary. They will welcome us.

We drifted down toward the trees and then into an open area about the size of a football field. It was a park, or perhaps a huge flower garden, with neat, irregular beds of flowers and plants, none of which I recognized. Wide, grass-covered walks wound around among the beds in sweeping curves. I even thought I could feel the grass under my feet.

You do feel it. Just as you are able to see, in a physical manner. But you are not physical.

I turned. The glowing figure of the INSPEC was beside me. Walking rapidly toward us were four people. They seemed about five feet tall, each with a different tone color of hair and skin. Their hair was uniform in length, just below their ears. Their faces and bodies were those of active, athletic thirty- year-olds, but without bulging muscles. Two were men and two were women. It was easy to tell, because they wore no clothes.

 

They have no need for clothes.

What about keeping warm? Or protection from the weather?

Each has an individual control system for that purpose.

I don't see anything.

It's all in the mind, as you would say.

I gather you have been here before.

That is so. .. in a manner of speaking.

The four approached and stood before us, smiling happily. They had beautiful bodies, in perfect condition. I wondered how we could communicate—what language they used. Could they even see us?

One of the men took a step forward and nodded.

 

“Yes, we can see you, Robert. And communication is easy. We will use your English. OK?“

The OK was what got to me. There was something wrong here. How would he know American slang from the future ?

“We absorbed it from your mind. No problem.”

Then I noted that his lips had not moved, and saw the twinkle in his eyes. We both laughed—mentally. I had found a new friend who could read minds, probably every last bit of what I thought or felt. From then on, all of the talk was mental—thought transference, you might call it.

“This is a beautiful place,” I began.

 

“The weather is very pleasant. We stir up a thunderstorm every afternoon to clean off the leaves and provide water for the plants.”

“With lightning?”

“Yes, but we direct the intensity and where it will make contact. The electrical charge is vital to all carbon-based life.”

“And the wind. .. do you control the wind too?“ “The wind? Would you like it stronger?”

“No, it's all right. .. it's fine. . .”

He smiled broadly. “You are wondering what we eat.” “You all look well fed and healthy.”

“Healthy?“

“No sickness or injuries, and so on.”

“You come from a strange world! Do you really have difficulty maintaining your physical body?“

“That is our major difficulty.”

 

“How sad. Our history has a record of such problems many thousands of years past.”

“No bugs? No viruses? No one is killed or injured?”

“I understand what you are saying. The bugs and viruses work with us, Robert. There is no conflict. As for being killed.. . we stopped what you call dying long ago.”

Thoughts and questions flooded my mind. One rose to the surface.

“Then you must control your ... reproduction?”

“Oh yes. And as for the rest of that thought—we still enjoy the ritual!“

“But no children. ..”

 

“We have many children. Would you like to meet some of them?“

“Yes, I would.”

“I will call them.”

A series of different whistles sounded in my head, like songs of birds, almost a form of music. Out of the trees came several kinds of animals, large and small, all bounding up to the four people, who rubbed and patted them. Some resembled cats, others were reptilian, like small alligators and large snakes. Others were monkey-like, and still others could have been deer, but with long manes and tails. A swarm of huge bees surged out of a tree and made diving, playful swoops past our group. Overhead, a pair of large, brilliant green birds soared in circles, looking down at us. A small blue bird dropped down on my friend's shoulder and chirped in his ear. He turned to me.

 

“Our children.”

“I would like to call my own animals children so easily.” “You will remember the sound, and with practice you can.”

“Is all of the earth like this? The animals, I mean?“ “Only here in the valley. The rest is much what you would expect, from reading your books. You know of the food chain system?”

“I do. So the animals die.”

“Yes, in the natural order of events. So do these, our children. A balance is achieved and we do not disturb it.”

“Then what do you eat? Vegetables?” “Eat? I will show you.”

My friend turned to one of the females in the group, who stepped over to a garden plot and scooped up what appeared to be simple black dirt. She brought a handful back and stood beside us. Suddenly I knew what was going to happen.

“Would you like some of your favorite corn, silver queen, as you call it?“

 

I nodded. The girl stared at me intently, then put her other hand palm-down over the handful of dirt, still holding me steadily in her gaze. I knew she was reading my mind. After a moment, she lifted her hand and uncovered a pale-white and perfect miniature ear of corn. She held it out to me.

“He can't take it,” said my friend. “He doesn't have a physical body with him.”

I sensed the girl's laughter as she turned and tossed it to one of the little brown fawns, who sniffed at it suspiciously. They do have laughter, I registered, so they must have emotion.

“We have experienced every emotion you can remember, Robert. We treasure emotion, but it controls us only when we let it.”

I felt an outflow of gratitude. “We thank you for the warm welcome and letting us visit you. It is very rewarding. No conflicts, no anger, no competition...”

 

“We do have competition. But we never get so involved that we forget it is a game.”

I did not ask about love. There was no need to. The radiation from the four of them was evidence enough. But there was a tinge of sadness mixed with excitement.

My friend smiled again. “Your visit is well timed, for we will be leaving very shortly. We have to adjust to be without our valley and our children.”

“Leaving? Why?“

 

“We received the Signal nearly a hundred years ago. We had waited several thousand years for it, and it finally came.”

“ I don’t understand.”

“It is rather that you don’t remember. You will, when it is time for you and yours. We have experienced and known all the patterns of change in our part of this physical universe. We have gone to the stars and back, moving just the way you are doing. We found nothing that we did not have here, nothing truly new.”

 

“I think I have it. You know there is more. . .” “Perhaps that is one way of saying it. Another is. . .curiosity. .. yes, curiosity.”

“Yes! This has happened to me. But are all of you going?”

“Why would we leave anyone behind? Would you leave your hand, or even a finger?”

“But where will you go?“ “The Signal will guide us.”

 

“What is this Signal? Can you describe it?“  “It is made by arrangement.”

“By arrangement with whom? Or what?“

“With one of us who went ahead. They all agreed to send us the special Signal when it was time for us to follow. One finally did so after these many years.”

“He was. .. you are. .. like an explorer, looking for new worlds to conquer.”

“Not to conquer, Robert. To be in and to understand.” “How do you know where to go?“ The questions kept flooding in.

“We simply follow the Signal.”

 

“Are you receiving it now?“

“O h yes. It has been with us continuously since we first perceived it.”

“Why don’t I perceive it too?“

“I do not know. Perhaps your attunement is different.” “You have waited so long. Why is that?“

“It was necessary to train our animal children to live without us. Now that we have completed this, we are in the process of saying goodbye to all of them. We cannot nor would we take them with us.”

I understood that it was time now for me to leave.

 

“I am glad that we came. Somehow, I think we shall meet again.”

“We shall. I could tell you more. .. but that would, as you might say, spoil the fun.”

I waved farewell, and all four waved back as I began to lift off the grass. I could not see my INSPEC fellow traveler, but at least I knew the way back. I phased out gradually and dwindled into blackness. Then the glowing INSPEC figure was beside me.

You found them interesting, did you not?

 

They were much like humans in the future that I have met before. Except that those were living just outside of Earth, not in it.

Because of your love of animals, we felt you would sense a kinship.

I did. Now, is there somewhere else we can visit?

What is your desire?

Somewhere where there are nonhumans. But intelligent. And nonphysical.

There are many choices, if they will permit it.

 

Permit it? That doesn't sound comfortable. . .

Some would look upon you as a. .. a pest. Yes, a pest.

But you have told me I am indestructible! I cannot be harmed!

That is so.

I think I need something less serene, a little more exciting. Does that sound foolish?

No, not if that is what you desire.

And this time will you stay with me?

I am always with you. Follow me closely.

 

The bright figure began to dwindle rapidly and I was right behind, using the method I had learned to keep up, and homing in on his energy field. It could have been an eternity— or only an instant—that period in the blackness with just the pinpoint of light ahead of me. Then there was an explosion of bright colors in tiny dots which formed what appeared to be several irregular shapes. .. first bright green. .. then yellow. .. and then I was pulled into one that was bright orange. I waited motionless as the orange pressed around me, holding me in a tight grip. I made no attempt to struggle nor was I afraid. I had learned much.

Suddenly a series of beats pounded into my awareness, like a succession of electric shocks. They were not severe, but irritating, demanding. I could only interpret them as a sort of computer-ese, a binary code. But what was communicating was a living organism, of that I was sure.

 

The beats continued, thudding into my head. I could not read them, so I tried to send my own weak version of nonverbal communication. I thought of an inner model of our solar system, then mentally pushed an arrow emerging from the third planet and ending where I was. This produced in response a long succession of beats—they reminded me of a primitive form of Morse code but did not translate into letters. But as my mind became accustomed to them, a picture began to form. .. a flaming sun, with an arrow pointing not from it, but into it. Was that where we were now?

 

The beats stopped. Then a short pattern began and repeated. Was that affirmative—did it mean yes?

The pattern repeated. It seemed a safe assumption. I created and sent a picture of myself in a physical body, followed by a rising inflection. This produced a different pattern in reply—negative, I assumed.

“That means no? You have not met my species? Let me show you.” I transmitted a picture of a group of men and women, as best I could.

 

The response was negative.

“Are you interested in who and what I am?“ Negative again.

“But you understand me?“

Positive this time, if I interpreted correctly.

“But I can't understand you. Only yes and no.” Negative.

“Do you want me to understand you?“ Negative.

“The n let me go and I shall move out of your energy.” The beats increased in speed and volume and then faded away. There was what seemed a quick and violent movement—and I was in deep blackness with my glowing INSPEC friend beside me.

 

You were in communication with but a small part of the whole.

You mean like a finger?

That is a good image.

There is not much personality in a finger.

But there are some who do communicate with such entities.

I wonder if I will ever be able to.

 

I believe you may, if you so desire.

I have this problem—curiosity. Tell me, are there any physical nonhumans I can meet who will communicate with me?

You are presuming that I am not of physical matter and that I am human.

Somehow I sense you did have a physical body, but not now. You're too free. You have never said you were once human, but I suspect you were. For one thing, you have a sense of humor. Sly and satirical, but it's there. Very human stuff.

There was a pause. The INSPEC glow seemed to flicker momentarily.

 

I perceive you need to return to the physical now.

Yes, I think I had better. Thank you for the guided tour!

It is my pleasure.

I returned to the physical to empty a full bladder. The signal—my signal—was all too familiar! How small it is to be human—but how much fun!

 

 

4  

Hail and Farewell

My curiosity was still not satisfied. I was feeling full of myself, impatient and ready for more new experiences. However, I discovered that not everything I asked for could be granted. A man who lived nearby died—or exited as I preferred to regard it—following a heart attack and his family asked me if I could locate and contact him. On my next visit to my INSPEC friend I asked for help with this but I was told such access was not possible at this time. A report in the form of a ROTE was all that could be obtained and I accepted this as satisfactory in the circumstances.

 

Then a new question came immediately to mind, which had much to do with my own physical experience in the Here I asked the INSPEC if I could be shown one nonphysical, nonhuman intelligence which I could talk with easily. Somewhat to my surprise, my friend offered to lead me to one and we set off through the darkness. In what seemed only a moment we flashed into a space filled with stars. Just below us was what I recognized as our moon and in the near distance was the huge blue and white marbelized globe, the Earth.

I looked around. Where was this super-nonhuman intelligence? Reading the question, the INSPEC told me to look behind and above.

I was astonished. Just twenty feet above me and stretching for what seemed to be miles was a huge, circular, saucer- shaped object, a typical “flying saucer” as so often described, but a thousand times larger. Much too big to credit—but as I had that thought, it shrank instantly to some two hundred feet in diameter.

 

Then a door in the bottom slid open and a figure. .. a man. .. a very human-looking man, emerged and walked— yes, walked, across to where I floated. As he approached, I recognized him. Short, round, and chubby, dressed with a sort of shabby gentility and wearing a gray top hat, his nose red and bulbous, his mouth a leering grin, he was an exact replica of the star of so many comic movies I had enjoyed in the physical when I was young—W. C. Fields!

This replica, projection, hologram—whatever it was— spoke like Fields as well, with the same intonations and repetitions. He invited me aboard, and showed me into what appeared as a large, domed room with pictures on its walls of every comedian I had ever heard of, and many more of whom; I hadn't, together with thousands of scribbled jokes and cartoons. He described all this as his cargo.

 

I framed the question in my mind.

“Cargo? What do you mean, cargo? And, “ I continued, “you can drop the impersonation. I can take you exactly as you are.”

“You really mean it, don’t you. .. But I'll keep it if you don’t mind. It helps me to think like a human. Or would you prefer someone else? Groucho Marx, perhaps?“

“No, no. Stay as you are. Tell me, what are you doing, hanging around Earth?“

“M y boy, I'm an exporter.”

“I see. What do you have that we need—apart from this spaceship?”

“I must have used the term wrong. I export from here, not to, my friend.”

 

“What possible thing could we have that is valuable to you? You're obviously way ahead of our technology. You use thought communication. We have nothing you could want or need.”

He scratched his nose. “Well, sir, it's not easy to get it, but I do, yes sir, I do. We don’t have any, and you can' t imagine how valuable something is if you don’t have any.”

“Don’t have any what?“

“I've been gathering it for ages. It used to be very rare, but there's more of it about now.”

 

“You've lost me.”

“Sometimes you need to know the civilization to understand it, that' s one of the problems.” “I still don’t see. . .”

“You humans have it, and it's very rare and valuable among the rest of the intelligent species in what you call the physical universe—and elsewhere. Very rare and valuable, sir. I'm a specialist in collection. You don’t understand, I see! Let me explain.”

“Please do.”

“It' s a one-in-a-million product and you humans have it. A sense of humor! Jokes! Fun! The best tonic there is for overloaded mind systems. It auto-erases the tension and pressure almost every time it's used!”

“So. .. you cruise around among us looking for the newest and latest. .. ?”

 

“Exactly! You human s catch sight of Our collection units every now and then and get the wrong idea. You even make UFO jokes about us! All we want to do is look and listen— nothing else. Apart from the odd practical joke—just to keep in training. And now, if you'll excuse me, sir, I must be on my way.”

Suddenly I found myself outside the spaceship, which was rapidly diminishing into the far distance. I homed in on my INSPEC friend, who was waiting for me in the deep darkness. Now I knew that at least humans have one unique quality.

You managed that well. But there is another matter that occupies your mind. You have a hidden desire that you are trying to express.

Yes. .. there is one that I would like to visit. You know what I mean.

 

The most mature and evolved human in physical earth, living in your time reference.

That is so. Can it be done?

Yes, but the result may not be what you expect.

I wish to try, all the same.

I shall lead you.

 

I followed the dwindling curl of light through the darkness, for I don’t know how long. Suddenly I was in a room, a normal sort of room, sparsely furnished with a few chairs and easy chairs and a table. Two large windows allowed in rays of sunlight; outside there appeared to be a stand of tall trees. It could be anywhere on Earth.

At a desk on one side of the room sat a person. I couldn't tell whether it was male or female; the face and body structure could be either. The face was almost unlined, the hair light brown and down just around the ears; the age somewhere between thirty and fifty, as far as I could tell. The clothing was simple, a white shirt and dark slacks.

 

But it was the radiation that stunned me. It was like standing in bright spring sunlight that was filled with every human emotion that ever existed. It was almost overwhelming —and yet familiar. It was equally balanced. One moment it was male, then I was sure it was female. A true equal—a He / She. Heshe!

The radiation closed off. Heshe—there had to be a name—looked up. The eyes were bottomless; I could detect no expression or emission. The control was perfect, yet I could not understand the reason for the restraint.

The lips didn't move, but I heard. I was expecting this now. There was a war m chuckle in what I understood.

“Heshe? I've never had that name before.”

 

“I meant no disrespect. I didn't know what to call you.”

“One name is as good as another. Now, do you really believe I can be of help to you?“

“I always hoped that you could.” “In what way?“

“To answer a few questions. . .”

“What good would my answers be to you?“ “ I. .. I don’t know. ..”

“You insist others obtain their own answers. Why should you be different?”

This struck home. It was as if my bluff had been called. You're right. What I'm really interested in is you, not answers to my questions.”

 

“I am only one of your statistics. One of the one- in-a-million types. Your friend has done well in locating me.” “I perceive you as occidental, yet no one on Earth really believes you exist. But. .. we have met before. .. just once. .. haven't we?“

“You see? You are answering your own questions.”

“Yet. .. you have lived only one physical lifetime. You have not been recycled, like the rest of us. But. .. how do I know these things?”

“You are reading my mind.”

 

“Only a part of it, and with your permission, I'm sure. One continuous lifetime, for eighteen hundred years! How do you stay. .. young?“

“I keep changing jobs. That keeps anyone young. Is that a good answer?“

“A great one. What a pleasure to meet you this way! What is your job now, if it may be called that?“

“You might call me an organizer, or facilitator, whichever you like.”

“With your ability, I would think there is much you can do at this very moment.”

“I keep busy.”

 

“What. .. ? No, I can read it. .. you drive an ambulance, you're a late-night bartender, a psychiatric counselor

.. . and you're just on your way to teach history at the university. And there's more.”

“I like people.”

“Wait. .. you flew gliders once, at Harris Hill. .. I think I remember you. That' s where it was!“ “Just having a little fun.”

“Where do you eat and sleep?”

“I gave those up years ago.”

“You must conduct fascinating lectures in history.”

“I try to amuse, and confuse, with contradictions.”

“Your next job. .. what kind of job will it be?“

 

“Organizing, naturally. Introducing a Variable, just as you do. Such as this book, or the mind-altering programs you disseminate—all add a Variable into the lives of those who encounter them. Now, instead of all the questions, why don't you read what needs organizing and the goals to be achieved? I can give you what you call a ROTE about that, about a plan that doesn't involve communism or socialism, capitalism or dictatorship.”

“They say it can't be done.”

“That is what makes it worth the effort. It needs a unified worldwide human endeavor. This will happen through recognized necessity, not through religions, race, or political beliefs, or force of arms.”

“Necessity is severe stuff. The world would have to be in rough shape.”

 

“That is the reason for waiting. The time will come.” “But worldwide, humans have never agreed on anything.”

There was a sudden surge of energy, similar to what I had felt previously. As it faded, I knew the ROTE was in place, ready to be unrolled when the time was right. I had one more question for Heshe.

“When you have time, what about organizing the energy where we work? We need it.”

“You do not really need it, but I will do my best.” “Will you be in physical form?”

“Certainly. But you will not recognize me.” “You know I will try.”

 

“Of course, Ashaneen. And I will be ready for you. You cannot find me again unless I agree. And now I am due at the university.”

“Thank you so very much. Will I see you again soon?“ “No. Not for a while.” Heshe, the Organizer, turned and left without a backward look. Reluctantly I searched for my INSPEC friend, but I could not obtain a fix on any radiation. I was aware it was time to return to the physical, which I accomplished with no trouble. Once there, I sat up, stretched my arms—and suddenly realized I had been given a clue. Heshe had called me Ashaneen. Or was it a clever misdirection, just for the fun of it?

Now I look carefully at every stranger who comes to visit us. Perhaps I should have made a bet!

 

* * *

 

After this experience, I knew I needed good, solid information more than ever. Several nights later, I focused again on my INSPEC contact point and used the customary technique. The brightly glowing figure was motionless as I approached, but I could feel the radiation, now familiar and comfortable, that had so overwhelmed me when we first met. I remembered my feeling of awe, and how I had nearly prostrated myself in obeisance that first time.

But you did not. Instead, we shook hands.

So we did. I did not know what else to do .

You are doing well now with your tuning process. The vibrational adjustment is no longer needed. You understand me clearly and your thoughts are crisp.

 

And I'm finally able to handle your bright light without shrinking.

That is interesting. To me, you have the same radiation.

The mind reading, your reading my thoughts. That took getting used to.

You read my thoughts as I read yours.

Then you perceive my preoccupation with our world changes.

Certainly. However, it is, as you might put it, not our department.

 

But how do I address these events? My own system demands an explanation, if not understanding.

You have begun to find your answers. Although it will seem difficult, the rewards will be great.

You evidently know more about this than I can gather from you. And for some reason you cannot or will not tell me. Why?

There is indeed a reason. In your terms, what we relate becomes only a belief to you. Instead, it is crucial that you know what you seek. We cannot provide such knowing.

You mean I have to experience it, whatever it is, and reach my own knowing.

That is correct.

 

But you do have knowledge of all I am encountering—and will encounter?

Up to a point. Beyond that point, the information is not available to us. Soon the reason will become clear to you.

I assumed you knew all of it. I was wrong.

Because you are seeking other knowledge, your path is changing. You will be moving in a new direction. We will no longer be able to meet you as we are doing now.

What. .. what do you mean?

That which you desire can only be reached in another form. You are well prepared for it.

But. .. I don’t understand. .. Have I done something wrong. .. incorrectly?

It is the opposite. This coat and this glove, as you put it, will no longer fit that which you need.

Do you mean I have outgrown you? That is impossible!

We shall always be with you. That will not change. But you will alter your polarities. Such communication as this will no longer be needed.

Alter my polarities? But I don’t know how to do that!

You have done it already. Your return from what you identified as Home was performed solely by you. You learned as you repolarized to achieve the change. You did remember. You have been using it.

You mean. .. that method of moving out of and back to the physical? As if in slow motion? What I call a quick switch?

That is correct. And there is more. There is also a Basic, an essential knowledge, as you would describe it, that you have yet to discover and explore. We wish you well on your journey.

But. .. we will meet again?

Yes. But not as we are at this point.

I. .. I don’t know what to say. .. to think. . .

Nothing need be said or thought.

The glowing light winked out. I waited alone in the deep blackness for an eternity before, sad and confused, deciding to return.

The feeling of loss was overwhelming. And. .. a missing Basic? A new direction? But in my loneliness, there was no place to look.

 

 

 

5

 Recoup and Regroup

At first, I found it impossible to get over the loss of my INSPEC friend. I tried many times, in desperation, to meet again at our contact point, but it was empty. There was simply nothing, not even a whisper of energy radiation. The feeling of abandonment and lack of direction was overwhelming.

It was difficult to keep the resultant depression from permeating my daily life, but eventually I managed more or less to succeed. With the INSPEC connection seemingly dissolved, my goal of becoming a member of that species dimmed. But it was certainly not forgotten. Gradually I restored balance as everyday questions demanded answers. And, as I knew of no one who could help me, I kept the problem to myself.

 

I was supposed to be taking a “new direction,” but I had no idea or clue as to what that meant. Linked to this was the question: what was the Basic I had missed? However, there was one item I was sure of: whatever the direction, it was an integral part of a learning process whether I liked it or not.

I turned again to the Basic. What could it be?

Something, I realized, was missing from my own Different Overview. The only approach I could think of was to go back to Basics in an attempt to discover what the missing one was. I had no choice.

What was needed was a solid baseline of well-tested “knowing “ before I could venture into the unknown areas where I hoped to uncover the missing Basic. To begin with, I needed to establish a first priority—a clear understanding of the here and now, of physical life just as it is without philosophical and emotional discoloration. This would make a firm foundation. So with all this in mind, I settled down to put my thoughts in order.

 

 

The Earth Life System

When carbon-based life began to appear and expand into various forms, every form had a prime directive: survive. In detail, this meant physical survival in a highly organized and balanced system of reciprocity and symbiosis. Survival of the individual unit guaranteed survival of the species.

At another level, the Earth itself received a similar instruction, which throws a new light on phenomena such as wind and ocean currents, earthquakes and volcanoes. Thus mother Earth meets many of the criteria for an existent life- form. This implies a mind-consciousness far different from that of the dominant carbon-based species, which had not— and still has not—become aware of this facet of the system.

 

Survival was and is the first law of the system. In order to survive, each life-form needed to absorb its own daily quota of nutrients. Those that for whatever reason were unable to do this either mutated or became extinct.

As the elementary life-forms expanded into various species, a pattern emerged. The bigger, faster forms found the slower, smaller, or stationary forms good eating. In response, the smaller forms learned to move faster, to reproduce more frequently and copiously, or become discarded in the scheme of things. Conversely, the slower big forms found smaller but faster forms emerging with sharp teeth and the ability to act in concert. In reality, no life-form was absolutely safe from others. Danger, crisis, stress, and death became the general pattern. Fear of individual non-survival as danger manifested itself minute by minute triggered action—fight or flight—in the typical Earth Life System participant. And, as the whole pattern and process expanded, a balance emerged, a balance which we now know as the food chain.

 

The Earth Life System was and still is an exquisitely self- adjusting, auto-tuning, self-regenerating organization of energy. The more we investigate the interactive symbiotic relationships contained therein, the more fascinating and complex they become. The entire structure is one of polarities, yet each part is interconnected.

Looking again at the Earth Life System, we see that the underlying competition theme seems to be a product of the command to survive. Each and every living unit competes for the basics of physical survival: food, water, oxygen, warmth, and sunlight. Often this translates into living space, on and in the ground, in the water, in the air. We have various names for this: territorial imperative, room, home, lair, den, hunting preserve, personal property, real estate, cities, nations. Life- forms fight for these, and die for them.

Set against this is the delicate assignment of living space on the basis of capability. Each species can survive only in its appropriate environment. In water and air, the system remained in fair balance with the food chain operating efficiently, often to the point where changes became no more than a small shift or tune-up. On land, however, the balance was harder to sustain. Hence the variety of life-forms evolved more rapidly, with impressive ingenuity being used to solve the problems of replication and survival.

 

Now my baseline, where I am operating from at this time, included the following points.

1. On entry into the Earth Life System, each life-form is imprinted, probably through DNA, with a prime directive: survive! This is the underlying drive behind every action taken by the participants. The goal is survival of the species, expressed first as survival of the individual unit. This directive is geared specifically and limited to physical existence, with no other implications. Success equals physical survival. Failure equals non-survival or physical nonexistence—death. Fear equals the possibility of non-survival.

2. The Earth Life System is impersonal in that each life-form competes with all others for life-maintaining nutrients. This competition takes place both between species and within the species itself. Cooperation among and within species is standard operating procedure; the system often forces cooperation as a necessity for survival. The whole is a system of predation.

3. Any awareness not related to physical survival is denigrated. Any emotion expressed is an aberration as it does not relate to the prime survival directive. Fear is not treated as an emotion.

4. The basic pattern of the system is change. Stasis is entropy. Entropy is death. Thus imbalance is constant, which creates a steady adaptive response at all levels. Polarization or differential is an integral force at work throughout the system.

 

For our Different Overview, the Earth Life System is seen as a food chain predator system, although it is rarely accepted as such. It may appear chaotic and complex, but it is organized and operates under a few simple rules:

Grow and exist as long as you can. Get what you need to exist. Maintain your species by reproducing.

There are no limitations or conditions in applying these rules. Strength, speed, deception, sharp sensory awareness and response, all are great assets. Symbiosis and parasitic patterns are highly acceptable. Honor, ethics, empathy, and the like are nonexistent. Every participant is a predator and the process cannot be altered or changed as long as the Earth Life System exists. Survival is difficult if not impossible without predatory action.

 

 

The Aliens

Amid the smooth-running, efficient process of the Earth Life System, an unusual spark appeared in one life-form. It could have happened to any one of thousands of other species, but why it happened to this one no one as yet knows. It resulted not in a new design but in a modification of the old. Thus all of the original Earth Life System patterns remained strong and only partly under control in this new unit.

 

To make this mutation endure, it would have had to occur in more than a single instance, and in various locations. Evidence uncovered by archaeologists and anthropologists reveal that, in the context of time since the system came into being, it occurred nearly simultaneously in different areas.

This newly modified species found it difficult to survive | in the early stages. Its design forced it to develop its own unique methods. It was comparatively hairless, except on its head, which meant it had to take special action to get protection from cold, heat, and the bites and claws of others. It had neither fangs nor claws, which was a major disadvantage in self-protection and aggressive food gathering. It had no tail, which meant it could not climb trees to escape attack and, more important, it lacked this means of expressing emotion. Two legs instead of four brought unbalance, ungainliness, and a vertical spinal column that was originally designed to be horizontal. Finally, it possessed an addition to its animal brain, somewhat resembling a tumor, that really made the difference.

 

Other animals were bigger, faster, and stronger, could climb better, swim naturally, and withstand the elements much more comfortably. It took many generations for the newcomers to figure out why and how, with this awkward and inefficient physical body, they managed to survive. Gradually the realization came that they were different from all other animals. Hundreds of thousands more years passed before they became aware—or some of them did—that they were indeed more than just another animal. But some still regard their species as no more than intelligent animals.

This new factor in the Earth Life System proved disruptive and disturbing. It had the same drives, motives, and limitations of other life-forms, plus restrictions in body size and capability. Yet in a relatively short time it came to dominate all others. The only area that stayed resistant was Earth energy itself. The basic patterns of land, air, water, and fire remained, for the most part, uncontrolled and unchanged.

 

The conquest had a significant and vital price. By devoting virtually all of its energies into the Earth Life System, the new species disregarded or discounted any direct knowledge of what might lie beyond. So it became heavily locked into the reality of the Earth Life System concept. But in direct conflict with this massive accumulation of and preoccupation with earthly knowledge, was the most essential characteristic of the species—a mind-consciousness foreign to the system itself. It was this developing mind that provided the means to overwhelm all other species, that continued to take the original “survival command “ to extremities and absurdities totally inconsistent with and beyond what could even remotely be construed as need.

 

At some stage the new species gave itself the label of Human: Human “Beings.” Homo sapiens.

From early days, the Human Mind learned much from its heritage. It found the animal herd instinct for cooperation highly workable. It adopted the mating concept, pulled from animals who protect their young until they can take care of themselves. It took over the team action in hunting. Organized cooperation enabled it to compete successfully with other animals. So the species developed into the greatest predators the Earth had ever known and made the process an art and a science, and even a sport.

The animal concept of leadership was recognized early. At first the strongest took charge; then the qualities of cunning, intelligence, mental ability were added. The leader had the first choice of the females, the caves, the best part of the kill; so competition turned inward for who got the job. Intra- species predation became the norm, as in the animal pack or herd.

 

Throughout history, whenever humans organized into groups of any significant size, the concept of a god-being emerged to become a prominent factor. One simple explanation as to why this occurred is that when the Human Mind moves into adulthood it no longer has parental figures to lean upon, blame, provide help, or set the rules. So it conjures up suitable replacements. The need for a god or gods, therefore, may have simple, rational origins. As children, we grow up under the authority of a local father and mother, the immediate representation of the power and the glory that created us. When we ourselves become adults and parents, we look for or fantasize a bigger Father or Mother to assume this role. The god-being concept is a convenient way to explain the unknown and to relieve the human being from various unwanted responsibilities. The price, however, is to give up large areas of authority. Some developing human egos that maintain that no one or nothing is greater than I am find this difficult to accept.

 

To clear up and put Unknowns into the Known category, the Human Mind also moved in another direction. It took direct, repeatable experiences and, using the rule of cause and effect, turned them into Knowns which it passed down from father to son, mother to daughter, then from the spoken to the written word, and eventually into what became known as schools. Only relatively recently were crude and simplistic Known-seeking processes established and given a label: science.

With the passing of time, the new dominant human species developed the predator-driven process far beyond the simple kill-for-food fundamental. It set up its own rules and laws, which were often in conflict with the Earth Life System, lea r was still the major tool of the trade, with greed, ego, sexuality, and other such being important components. Yet despite the distortion and discoloration, the alien thinking seeped through.

 

Again and again, the alien Human Mind began to express and demonstrate elements completely incompatible with the Earth Life System. These were: first, concern and empathy as to other members of the species; second, concern and empathy as to members of other species; third, a growing curiosity and uncomfortable suspicion as to the limitations apparently imposed on all participants in the system. History and philosophy are full of curiosity seekers and suspicious Human Minds. There has always been, as there is today, a very thin layer of Human Minds who have the time and the energy to sit back and think. They have moved past the immediate need for survival effort.

 

How many are there? One in a thousand? One in ten thousand? In one hundred thousand? Instead of planning and plotting how to exploit their fellow species or to pull riches from the earth, these curious and suspicious Human Minds sought for patterns beyond the Earth Life System in themselves and in others. They found enough to strike responsive chords in their own being, and they passed along what they found. The message was that human beings are more than mere animals living and dying in the Earth Life System.

Yet, to date, little has been achieved as a result, beyond such conceptions as hope, faith, guilt, simple belief, and a poorly defined collection of hints and suggestions under the general heading of love. So the species as a whole remains unfulfilled and restless.

This, then, is the Earth Life System where we are now, and the state of Human Minds. These are the Knowns, and this is where we begin, according to our current scientific overview.

But. .. the missing Basic? Even as the light increased, I still did not recognize it!

 

 

6

 Inside and Outside

So. .. Where is the missing Basic? And what is the new direction? Both seem well hidden. Perhaps it would help in the search if we first find out and pin down what we really are.

As Human Minds, we are what we think. We also are what others think. Most of this has little to do with our physical bodies when we go below the surface. To deal with this more closely, let us create a model of the Human Mind as it is and operates in practice—a pragmatic model, if you like. Imagine it as structured in layers, something like an onion, and let us work from “in “ to “out.”

 

Core Self

This is the intrinsic, original Human Mind. Starting from this inner core, we are the essence of the sum of our experiences, without limitation. The inner core is composed of the following:

what we have lived and consciously thought to date; the emotions we have experienced; the love we have expressed and experienced; the dreams we have experienced, whether we remember them or not; the pains and pleasures; the daydreams, wishes, and hopes; all of the above during our nonphysical activity (sleep, etc.); all the above during any and all previous life activity; unidentified elements.

Animal Sub-Self

This is the layer or element that is most difficult to control. All of the expressions of the Human Mind route through here and receive data in the Earth Life System through here as well. This is where the filtering, discoloration, and contamination take place. The problem is that we think we need to rely on it or we cannot remain physically human. Physiologically, it comprises a cluster consisting of the mammalian brain, the reptilian brain, and the limbic system. Its signals taint almost every facet of human life; almost, but not all.

 

Conscious Mind

The next layer can be identified as what you think you are, which is entirely different from knowing what you are. The reason is that only a part of the inner core is available to the conscious you; hence there is much distortion, as expression has to pass through the Animal Sub-Self. The conscious mind may be wholly accurate; but in some areas local concepts and customs give an opposite interpretation from that of your Core Self.

Although much of this layer is deliberately hidden from others, a considerable part is expressed in our outer self. Because it is so strong, we have no choice in this. This layer is further complicated by belief systems; for many of us the complexity becomes a maze. It is no surprise that most don’t find a clear way out.

 

Human Mind External

The next outward layer is what we think others think of us. This is a grand mixture because part of it is intuitive—nonverbal communication—which gets confused with what Our sensory and analytical perceptions tell us. This layer is in a constant state of flux, changing constantly with new experience and new perception.

In this section, which is controlled heavily by cultural context, we develop artificial and synthetic drives and motivations which probably lead to most mental and physical dysfunction. Attempting to keep up, or leading a totally reactive existence—which is what many people do—can, if you allow this lifestyle to take over, lead to a veritable hell on earth.

 

 

Human Mind Role

Moving outward, you have the skin: what you want others to think of you. This is usually fairly simple. Mostly it is set by the acceptability and needs of the world around you, superimposed hopefully with waves and pulses thrusting out from your inner core. The presentation of self is careful and usually covered with a sheen of deception. In hard cases, no sign of the inner layers ever appears, even under great stress. Such cases die with their false faces on, grimly and stoically.

 

Human Mind Radiation

The outermost layer, much larger than you might expect, is composed of others' thoughts of you. Consider yourself as existing wherever and whenever any other person or being thinks of you, even only occasionally. You may get some idea of the magnitude by recalling all of those you think of, even only occasionally. Add (as just a belief at this point) all of those who still think of you but who no longer inhabit a physical body—who are now “somewhere else”—plus those who know you from any other existence, whatever and wherever it may be or have been. You would be astounded at how big and how much you are.

Very little of this radiation of you, as perceived by others, is aware of the content of your inner Core Self. The disguise and filtration are in the way. But a problem does lie in our deep concern as to what others think of us.

 

* * *

 

So much for this model of the Human Mind. Now it might seem that we can sharpen our Different Overview greatly if we focus solely on the signs of the Core Self as they make their way through the many layers of what we are. But we have to beware of imitations; there are those dedicated to the Earth Life System who can produce a mass of simulated Core Self so cleverly done that it conceals the real Earth Life System action and motivation. It is easy to be deceived.

 

It may help to accept, as a belief to be converted into a Known, that we, as Human Mind-Consciousness, have bot h an individual and a species purpose, or purposes, for being in the Earth Life System which is not usually an understood part of our physical waking awareness. Conflict arises when the Human Mind demands an action and the Earth Life System self has trouble handling it. There is a growing suspicion that much of Our mental and physical dysfunction is the result of this conflict. The least of the conflict is external; most lies in the habituation and motivation struggle within the Human Mind.

Now here are a few of the common signs of the Core Self that may emerge through the layers. These are strictly non- Earth Life System and non-animal, and are not listed in order of importance.

 

Emotion

Any expression of emotion: sadness, joy, anger, grief, ecstasy, hate, exaltation, depression, and so on, all subjective and spontaneous. The key is to experience and subsequently to learn to control and direct them as desired.

In the Earth Life System there is no emotion beyond survival responses such as protection of young—responses which are purely aggressive or defensive in motivation. The nearest simulations include possessiveness, dominance, jealousy, pride, etc.

 

 

Empathy

Appreciation and even understanding without necessarily having any related personal memory or experience to draw upon. Empathy is a recognition of oneness beyond physical species. It is also a reflection of the knowledge that such experience is essential to the individual's learning process; therefore nothing can or should be done to attempt to change the problems others must face. Sympathy and compassion are specific versions that are colored by emotion to varying degrees.

The Earth Life System has no knowledge or understanding of this area. The closest approximation may be herd or pack instinct, which is strictly survival-based. It is possible that current dolphin investigations may have some relevance here.

 

 

Soft Smile

A direct information flow from the Core Self level. It is a form of what can be called nonverbal communication—multiple and total simultaneous transmission/reception that cannot be expressed in words. The facial expression is an autonomic response: “Got it, loud and clear!”

The Earth Life System has nothing comparable. The closest may be relationships developed between Human Mind s and pet animals—a hand lick or a purr. But simulations are all over the place!

 

 

Big Grin

Another thrust direct from the Core Self. This radiation cannot be translated into words or graphics. “Joy“ and “fun“ are too mundane. There are many imitations and because it is so disarming the indicator is widely used to manipulate. Go past the indicator to the radiation itself.Again, there is nothing comparable in the Earth Life System. In this framework, anything similar is a warning or prelude to predation.

 

 

Beauty Beholding

This is clean Core Self. It is pure appreciation of the inspiration and creativity of not only Earth Life System constructs but also of Human Mind patterns, from soaring bridges and buildings to a cappella choirs and Human Mind performance. It is an information/experience-gathering process that your Human Mind cannot resist. The Earth Life System has no comprehension of this and nothing comparable, so there can be no imitations.

 

Nostalgia

This is a welling up from your Core Self of origin memory, which is best rationalized as emotional values from previous experience in your present lifetime. In this way it is possible to divert away from the underlying and implied plea: show me the way to go Home. The Earth Life System has no comprehension or comparable pattern that is not system-based. The closest are migrating birds and salmon, but their motivations are practical system patterns.

 

A Gentle Touch

A very simple Core Self expression. A touch instead of a grasp, a pa t instead of a punch, a stroke instead of a shove. Even animals understand and know the difference. In the Earth Life System animals do learn a crude version. But all they can do is lick or rub, which may be enough.

 

Anonymous Giving

A true demonstration of the Core Self in action. Altruism and agape are working illustrations; service to others with absolutely no recompense or recognition, except to your Human Mind core. In the Earth Life System this is totally beyond comprehension. If it happens, it's by accident, not design.

 

Thinking

Human Mind s are thinkers to a degree not found elsewhere in the Earth Life System. Once we get past the lures of the system, we discover a flow of ideas, inspiration, intuition, invention, innovation, all sorted through for us by our magnificent processor, the mind. These are products of Core Self directives and are often sparked by curiosity, a great catalyst for change.

There is nothing remotely close in the Earth Life System. All we find is some rudimentary tool-making, some instinctive processes that are usually attributed to keen physical sensory perception. Some animals do have curiosity, which often proves fatal.

 

The Big Nugget

Because this item of universal interest is so misunderstood and misconstrued, it took a special extended investigation to reduce it to anywhere near a rational level. The following ROTE, passed to me by a friend, is at least a beginning. Once it is absorbed, it will expand as it is contemplated.

 

“Love can't be taught, can't be bought. Love can't be learned. It is generated within the individual in response to an external stimulus. The individual has no control over this generation. Once initiated, it may be layered over or sublimated but never destroyed. Physical death has no effect upon the reality of its existence, as such energy is neither dependent upon nor a part of time-space.

“It is a radiation that cannot be grasped and held on to. Instead it is perceived, experienced as it passes through the individual, who adds to it that additional portion which has been generated by this passing. The energy is thereby enhanced and the individual becomes a constant contributor and recipient thereof.”

 

With the heavy emphasis on sexual arousal and the myth of romance, it is no surprise that so many claim to experience what we may call the Big L in their relationships. Not so. The only way you can obtain it is through shared life experience, and even then there is no guarantee. On the other hand it will grow on you. You don’t have to work at it, despite what the books say. Time is not a vital factor. The deeper, more intense the shared experience, the less time it takes.

Other attractions are not necessarily destructive or valueless but they do fall into another category. The difference is that the Big L is indestructible and eternal, and never dependent on local habits and customs. Friendship, for example, might be construed as a shadow of the Big L, or at least a kissing cousin.

 

The greatest problem lies in misidentification. We become entrapped into believing we have found the Big L, often with disastrous results, when the ideal is not adhered to by the “loved“ one.

The most consistent and visible facet of the Big L is probably mother love. It meets the tests admirably, although it often gets heavily layered with protocol.

 

Me n find the Big L in other men and women in other women usually as a result of profound experience over some time, although extended experience does not automatically evoke the Big L. Yet when it does happen, sometimes effortlessly and without conscious awareness, it is permanent in the full meaning of the word. If you work together, play together, live together, fight, suffer, laugh, and team together, the probability is increased.

 

The main characteristic of the Big L is that it does not diminish with physical death and you cannot extinguish it during physical life. Out of necessity, propriety, or for reasons beyond your control you may sublimate it, yet it will always be there, glowing quietly within you. Why the expression “till death do us part “ became part of our culture is a mystery. Perhaps it was inserted so that the physical survivor would feel emotionally free to remarry and beget more offspring to further ensure the continuation of the species. Otherwise it makes no sense.

The Big L is the Core Self at its finest distillation. Reflecting on all this, I think that the source of the missing Basic is now clear—the Core Self. But how do you really get to know you?

 

7

Tour Guide

As the search for the missing Basic continues, we, as visitors and participants in the Earth Life System, might now assess and summarize what we have learned so that we may be in better condition to survey and then travel the road that lies ahead. Our Different Overview is beginning to firm up, but all the same the question still arises: why do we bother? Why continue with this hard journey when we could simply relax into the comfort of an appropriate belief system? We shall see later if the journey brings its own reward. In the meantime, let's have a look at where we are, and at what our new and Different Overview reveals.

 

The Earth Life System, for all its shortcomings, is an exquisite teaching machine. It brings into focus for each of us in our own way a wide understanding of energy, and the control and manipulation thereof, that is generally unavailable except through a structured environment such as time- space. The Earth Life System is a set of tools, and we learn to use them.

 

In the Earth Life System we learn measurement. It is a polarized environment where comparatives are possible. We learn what are hot or cold, strong or weak, hungry or full, fast or slow, sad or glad, male or female, friend or foe, love or hate—the list goes on.

We learn energy applications in a useful manner in many different forms. We operate physical energy both inside and; outside our bodies. We experience and direct mental energy without ever truly knowing the details of how because it comes so naturally to us.

 

Through application of our Human Mind we learn to create in ways and methods we didn't know existed because they are unique to time-space, and some are peculiar to and available only in this system and are not available elsewhere. These provide avenues of expression beyond description.

 

Similarly we learn appreciation of beauty. We find it in a lowly rock, a stately fir tree, a thunderstorm, ocean surf, a cloud-tinted sunset, a soft-spoken word, a sweeping skyscraper tower, a musical chord, the leap of a leopard—again, the list is endless. Most of all, we find it in what other humans think and do, in their and our emotions. And we learn to laugh and have fun.

Every single thing we learn, no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential, is of immense value There—beyond time-space. This is fully understood only when one encounters a graduate of the Earth Life System process of being human who “resides” in the There. You then know, not just believe, that it is worth any price to be human, and to learn.

 

Now to effect the greatest change in your overview and to provide a simple and understandable purpose for being here in the Earth Life System, we need to be specific. This involves looking closely at something unique to the Human Mind—our thinking process.

Current concepts have it that, aside from our animal- driven activity, our thinking is divided into two basic categories which we identify as left brain and right brain. Bear in mind that this identification is only symbolic and the separation is nowhere near as distinct as left-right would seem to indicate.

 

Our left brain process is the part of us that gets things done. It is the intellectual, analytical area of function. Here lie our mathematical and speech centers, our logical reasoning, our scientific method, our organizational talents and teaching skills, and much more. It is our left brain activity that makes us different from animals. It is the source of our “can do“ optimism.

 

Our right brain is opposite. From this come our perception of form and space, beauty, intuition, emotions, plus everything else the left brain cannot understand or categorize, including love, friendship, inspiration, etc. The right brain is horrified at the idea that a left brain formula can be produced to quantify and qualify love and friendship. That is right brain sacred territory. Paradoxically, our right brain is the generator of our feelings of negativity.

 

More recent concepts hold that our human consciousness flickers back and forth between left and right brain as situations arise during our daily physical life. When we perform calculations, Our left brain is dominant. When we listen to music, our right brain takes over. Peak performance comes when both left and right brain thinking are integrated, unified, synchronous.

A kind of cultural sub-war has been going on for centuries and has come to the surface only in recent years. The dominant-left-brainers consider the dominant-right-brainers to be basically unfit for existence in the Earth Life System and tend to regard them with contempt or disbelief. The dominant- right-brainers look on the others as unimaginative, dull, over-materialistic, unfeeling, and lacking in “spiritual values.” It is time now to declare peace in this battle and to set right this dangerous misunderstanding.

 

Our prime and fundamental purpose, aside from learning through experience in being human, is to acquire and develop what we label intellect: left brain consciousness. We do not need to act similarly with our right brain abilities because we already have them. We brought them with us; somehow they were inherent.

 

It is the left brain capability that is of exquisite value when we visit or return to the There, beyond time-space. It is the left brain that removes the limitations on our growth that were present prior to our sojourn here. Only left brain function can make Unknowns into Knowns, dissolve fears, enhance experience, open new vistas, clean out the false belief- system refuse. It is the left brain that takes any idea, information, or inspiration emanating from or via the right brain and puts it into action. By any standards, something of value can- not become real unless and until the left brain takes over.

 

For millennia the human right brain has not changed. It has not grown or evolved. It is the same as it always was. In contrast, left brain consciousness has been steadily evolving, either by design or necessity. In the past century, this growth has become an exponential curve, not simply in one or two individuals but in literally millions of humans throughout the period. Today the left brain has probed so deeply into the rime-space phenomenon that there seem few areas left to explore without recycling and repetition. The energy fields in the There are ripe for exploration. By its very nature, the left brain cannot help becoming involved in constructive evaluation and application. The right brain is forcing it to do so— and the right brain is in charge.

What has happened is that our left brain has become so thoroughly entrenched—and justifiably so—in providing means of survival in the Earth Life System that it resists anything and everything that may interfere with or interrupt the process. What occurs beyond time-space, in the There, does not calculate by ordinary Earth Life System standards. more important, information from There appears to have no value for Earth Life System inhabitants. Only when our left brain recognizes that such knowledge is a most vital tool for growth in the There will specific interest be generated.

 

Our Different Overview includes most emphatically the maturing talents of our left brain. As we have said, that' s what we came here to acquire. Dominant-right-brainers find this difficult, or impossible, to accept.

As it is the boss, the right brain often forces the left brain to perform in a way that tends to destroy thousands of years of evolution. Meanwhile, our left brain continues to pick up the usable ideas and inspirations of the right brain and make them into something of value. It tolerates the nonproductive right brain patterns as long as they don’t get in the way. It also heavily distorts some right brain patterns to convert them into the Earth Life System survivor-predator organization.

 

For our Different Overview, here are two definitions:

Left Brain = Human Mind modified by the Earth Life System.

Right Brain = Expression of the Core Self, the timeless, nonphysical part of us, untouched and unaffected by the Earth Life System.

The trick is to get both left and right brain into simultaneous and synchronous action, nudging the left brain more and more into taking part in the There activity. You should never abandon one for the other.

 

* * *

 

Once all this is in place, you may find that the following points will help:

1. Always know and remember that you are “more than your physical body.” This will provide instant perspective on any Earth Life System activity. The agony becomes tolerable, the ecstasy more profound. Locally induced fears evaporate.

2. Recognize and control your survival drive. Use it instead of allowing it to use you. Here are some suggestions:

a. One part of the formula (Physical Life = Good) is needed for the Earth Life System and is acceptable during your stay. The other part (Physical Death = Bad) you can discard because you will know better.

b. Remember that your ultimate goal is not physical survival. Thus, while it is valid that you are here to do certain things and there are functions you must perform to be here to do them, you don’t need to be desperate about it. Accidents may happen, but you cannot lose; you have had the experience of being human.

c. The sexual reproductive drive is the most powerful animal instinct of the Earth Life System. Designed specifically for physical survival of the species, it controls and is manipulated to control most aspects of human behavior. Enjoy it, but there's no need to live or die for it. And enjoy the manipulations for what they are; succumb only knowingly.

d. Physical assets (material, food, tools, toys) are great for local use, but ownership is only a matter of temporary convenience. You not only cannot but you would not want to take them with you—not even your physical body.

 

3. Maintain your transient status. You are being human at your own option in the strictest sense. That option remains in force throughout your visit. You may pack up your experience and leave whenever and for wherever you desire, with no censure or penalties from any source that matters. If your Human Mind is satisfied, you will do this in spite of local custom or effort. Earth Life System addicts may not understand, but that is their problem.

4. Enjoy your life in the System, maximize your highs and lows—but don’t become addicted. Get through being angry at how the system works, the seeming inequities, the unfair advantages, the brutalities, the callousness, the deceit. It's a predator world by design—and it's a superb teaching machine.

5. Exercise your Human Mind as fully as possible; knowing it is only an exercise. Build beautiful artifacts, solve “problems,” smell the flowers and watch the sunsets, compose music, explore the “secrets” of the physical universe, savor the input from all of your five senses, absorb the nuances of close relationships and situations, feel the joy and sorrow, the laughter, the empathy, compassion—and tuck all of the emotional memory in your travel bag.

 

6. Most important, let the Human Mind of you seek out, experience, and add to your flow of consciousness where and when you encounter it. Drink it in, but watch out for the tendency to wallow in it due to the reminders of Home contained therein. Beware of illusions and collusion which make it sometimes difficult to sort out the real in the Earth Life System environment.

7. Your Human Mind has a natural and normal proclivity to try to make things in the Earth Life System much the way it is accustomed to in the There. History is full of such attempts, but in the end the system always wins. An edge may have been frayed, but the predator animalism simply comes back, sometimes a bit smarter than before, and takes over. That does not mean you don’t try in your Human Mind expression, and it is possible that you might change a part of it, but you will never change it all. If you did manage a complete overhaul, the system wouldn't and couldn't exist. Yet who knows how much longer it will exist anyway?

All the above points are Knowns to others and are easy to verify for your own knowing through direct logical working of your left brain on each question or belief. Solidify your Different Overview by proving these for yourself—and for yourself only.

 

 

* * *

 

 

At this point, the Earth Life System theme seemed complete— but it was not. Another part of me who knows deeply the Earth Life System from another overview demanded to be heard:

.. . It was a long walk through the forest to reach the ocean. Along the way, the path was quiet except for the hum of insects and the occasional call of a crow high in the tall trees. In the lush undergrowth, a slight crackling of dry leaves told of small residents, if one listened carefully. Under the fresh smell of growing green lay the deep aroma of moist earth and decaying vegetation, both silent signals of the life cycle in progress.

There was little wind as the soft rumble of surf grew steadily in strength. Then the forest ended and the gray-green sea spread out to the horizon, stately cumulus cloud towers drifting overhead through a clear, clean azure sky. The grassy bank where the white beach began gave an irresistible invitation to ease down, lie back, and relax. The waves were gentle, placid; the breeze cool and soft; the sun war m and fresh.

All comes to this, the beginning and the end of an aeons-long period of time. This living mass of air, water, and land— what it gives and what it takes—what it produces.

 

It is more than awareness; more than consciousness; more than experience. It is more than intelligence, knowledge, truth, and understanding. The whole is so much greater than the sum of the parts.

It is such a wonderful learning process; learning to separate this from that, and the differences and comparisons: heat from cold, light from dark, noise from silence, strength from weakness, pain from comfort, thick from thin, rough from smooth, hard from soft, balance from instability.

 

There is the learning of cause and effect, action and reaction, price and paying, authority and responsibility. And the options you learn to recognize: stop or start, hold or release, sink or swim, laugh or cry, friend or enemy, reward or retribution, success or failure, love or hate, win or lose, organization or chaos.

There is the learning to think: to coordinate, count, calculate, and communicate; to remember, connect, plan, and have ideas; to daydream, create, hope, believe, and know. And the ability to experience and express emotion: joy and ecstasy, sadness, compassion, loneliness, communion; righteous and irrational anger—and the appreciation of the beauty of form and movement.

 

And there is the learning to learn: words and numbers, writing, passing experience, knowledge, and wisdom from parent to child, generation to generation, without the trauma of reenactment. Learning to establish systems, laws, and rules that insure this learning will continue and expand.

It is all there beyond the forest. It is in the ripening carpets of grain, the neat, multimillion rows of nourishing plants, and the mills that reshape matter into more usable form. It is in the many different shelters that are labeled home, the tall and slender towers that reach for the sky, the motor vehicles that become a substitute body, the ships sailing around the world atop and beneath the oceans, the winged carriers that draw white lines in the sky, and the metallic birds that hover and circle the globe hundreds, thousands of miles above its surface, each delivering innumerable items of information every second, day and night.

 

And it is in the invisible yet measurable network of controlled radiation that serves for communication and local direction-finding.

And there is more, such as the amplification of perception through lens and mirror and electronic ears to search the universe for a signal, just one signal, to assuage the loneliness, searching through stars, constellations, galaxies, novas, and black holes. There is the illogical thrust away from our blue planet to the nearby moon, where an indelible footprint was left in the dust. There is the ranging and reporting of surrogate explorers to view and land on other planets, and thence moving on into the blackness of deep space.

Learn too of the steady unfolding of the patterns that once seemed inviolate in land, water, and air; of alloys, compounds, elements, atoms, molecules, nuclear particles, radiation, and waveforms; of gravity, inertia, momentum, centrifugal force, polarity; of the organic and inorganic, the living physical structures and their processes.

Learn of the search for mind and creator; of belief systems, sleep and dreams, visions and visionaries, philosophies and religions.

 

Learn also of Love.

This then is the wondrous package of achievement through millennia of evolutionary effort that we may carry lightly and easily but with triumph into the far reaches beyond; a heritage of inestimable quality, to be evaluated and applied in the There.

Yet. .. and yet. .. among the clouds and the clamor there is an uncomfortable sense of a missing factor, vital and important. Turn your attention, and a small face appears amid the mass of other knowing. It is shaped less than human and more than monkey. The eyes are luminous with emotion.

It is there, all of it, in the eyes. From across the span of timelessness, the carrier of that first spark of intelligent consciousness, the original ancestor, looks out and observes with quiet pride and joy, with appreciation but not total comprehension, and with awe at the growth of the spark. It is the parent of a prodigal child.

Here, seen clearly and cleanly, is one missing factor—the animal base. Non e of this could have happened but for its presence and provision. It was the living demonstration from which to learn, providing the flesh to be consumed, the milk to drink, the hides and furs to give warmth, the stronger back to share the burden, oil for light, and trinkets and amulets from tusk and horn. There was loyalty too and a form of friendship, while there were some who found that fur and bare skin do mix and bring forth patterns of understanding far beyond anything envisioned.

 

This animal energy was the driving force behind the spark. It provided not the catalyst but the needs, motivations, and raw physical power. It is not to be hidden or demeaned but included warmly and surely as the underlying essential without which nothing would have taken place. We must hold it up with pride for all to know .

And with the knowing, the little face smiles slightly, softly, even wistfully, then fades.

It is time to move on. The walk back along the path through the forest is filled with greetings. A squirrel on a low branch looks down and chatters. A bottle-green fly lands on a hand and enjoys gentle back-stroking with a finger. Three turkeys stand aside and watch the passage curiously but without wariness. A gray fox wanders onto the path and sits down, undecided as to whether to pay his respects. A thrush glides down, settles on a shoulder, and chirps softly into an: ear until the edge of the forest is reached. With a final peck on the cheek, it pulses its wings and returns to the middle branches.

Goodbye, my friends. But I do take you with me.

 

8

Recall and Review

At this stage, it seemed sensible, before going any further, to search for the new direction and missing Basic in the area where I spent most of my effort. After all, I had been involved with this left and right brain stuff for many years. Was there something that I had missed—something that, even if it did not answer the questions, might point the. way? Perhaps a review of what we had been—and still are—doing would be in order.

I mentioned earlier my first out-of-body experiences in 1958, which turned my life around. At that time, the Research and Development Division of the corporation which I headed, whose speciality was the sound production of network radio programs, had developed an efficient means by which sound could be used to induce sleep easily and comfortably. In the same year, a discovery was made that changed the entire direction of investigation and eventually of the corporation itself: that certain patterns of sound will induce different states of consciousness not ordinarily available to the human mind.

 

In the following decades, a continuing program of research brought additional verification of the effects produced by these states and of the specific sound combinations and frequencies needed to produce them. Methods and techniques were found to enable the individual to maintain and control various mind patterns. In 1971, The Monroe Institute was created out of the Research and Development Division to supplement the research effort. Later the Institute became an in- dependent educational and research organization. Thanks to the cooperation and input of hundreds of specialists and volunteers, including scientists, doctors, psychologists, educators, computer programmers, corporate executives, artists, and many others, the Institute is now internationally known for its work in this field.

 

It should be made clear that the early research effort and expenditure were not aimed at the betterment of mankind, nor intended to prove any point to the scientific community or the world at large. It was simply an attempt to control learning patterns during sleep, and later to understand the relationships between mind, brain-body, and consciousness phenomena. Thus, until recently, no academic papers were published and orthodox scientific methods, though followed wherever feasible, were often ignored when they proved unworkable. The methods developed contain no dogma or rituals, nor do they espouse any particular belief systems, religions, political or social stance. No drugs or chemicals are involved, nor are hypnosis, subliminal suggestions, or anything remotely resembling brainwashing. They are noninvasive, and the individual is always in charge, exercising his or her own will and not under the command of another.

 

Using the results of many thousands of hours of research, subjects are able to learn conscious control of many different and productive states of consciousness, and the fall-out from this exploration of consciousness has produced valuable contributions in a host of other areas. These include physical and mental health, learning and memory, physical coordination, creativity, problem-solving, and stress management. The process, known as Hemispheric Synchronization, or Hemi-Sync for short, provides its users with a self-controlled tool to accomplish their own goals by facilitating and sustaining a purposefully focused, highly productive, coherent mind-brain state.*

 

* An account of the methods and techniques of the Institute, and of the practical applications of its technology, will be found in the Addenda.

 

Over the years, new approaches to ways of thinking have emerged at the Institute. Together they form, as we might say, a Different Overview.

 

 

Consciousness Is a Continuum

In our focused wakefulness, we as Human Minds employ that part of the consciousness spectrum limited to time-space. This is made possible by the device we identify as a physical body, with its five physical senses. This physical body permits us to express externally our mind-consciousness through physical activity and communication.

 

When this focusing is affected for any reason, our mind begins to drift along the consciousness spectrum away from time-space perception, becoming less aware of the immediate physical world. When this happens, we become conscious in another form. The fact that we often have difficulty in remembering correctly our participation in that other part of the consciousness spectrum does not negate its reality. The problem lies in perception and translation, diffused and distorted as they are by the use of current time-space systems of analysis and measurement.

The spectrum of consciousness ranges, seemingly endlessly, beyond time-space into other energy systems. It also continues “downward“ through animal and plant life, possibly into the subatomic level. Everyday human consciousness is active commonly in only a small segment of the consciousness continuum.

 

The Phasing Concept

The methods and techniques of the Institute can be identified as means to establish and control phases of consciousness. In the waking physical state, the untrained mind makes these phase shifts frequently each day with little or no control.

Primary Phasing is the state where the mind is fully focused on physical sensory input or activity. Any deviation from this condition can be regarded as a phase shift, where some part or percentile of consciousness is, to a certain degree, aware in another form. One example is inattention, where physical sensory input remains strong but part of the mind has “wandered.” What we call daydreaming is another. Introspection, where attention is turned away from physical awareness, is a more deliberate phase shift, as are certain meditative states. Sleep is a shift in phasing to another state of consciousness where very little awareness of physical sensory input is taking place.

 

Ingestion of alcohol and certain drugs evokes split phase shifts, where part of consciousness is “here “ and part in another area of the continuum. In these cases, when the stimulus is removed, the phasing fades. Psychoses and dementia are inadvertent instances, and in these conditions drugs or chemicals may be employed to dim or eliminate the nonphysical area.

To understand the process clearly, we may consider the physical body as a tuning mechanism through which the human mind can operate in physical consciousness. As such, it contains circuitry that converts physical sensory patterns into forms that can be perceived by the mind, much as a radio or television receiver is tuned to a particular frequency band in the electromagnetic spectrum. In these receivers, there is a discriminator section that filters out for the most part any distracting or distorting signals or harmonics from other parts of the spectrum. As we tune a radio receiver gradually from one station—or frequency—to another, one signal fades and another is faintly heard. The receiver is shifting out of phase with the original station to the point where another station can be heard simultaneously. As we continue retuning, the original station is no longer heard and the other signal takes over.

 

The human mind, which also has access to a “discriminator,“ acts in a similar way. The mind untrained in the tuning process drifts slowly out of control from one phase of consciousness to another. As it does so, signals are received partly from the physical mechanism and partly from a different segment of the consciousness continuum. The signal input from the physical state diminishes until no such signals reach the mind, which moves into the state generally known as sleep or unconsciousness.

The learning systems devised at the Institute offer a means to place these phase shifts under willful control of the individual. In the early stages of this learning, the mind becomes completely at ease and feels little fear or anxiety in the resulting changes. The reason for this is that these states of consciousness are familiar territory. It is the presentation in a new and organized form that makes the difference, where any changes are made deliberately by the mind itself.

 

 

Left Brain/Right Brain Symbols

The Institute's investigations led to a path being taken which ran in the opposite direction to that followed by some others involved in mind research. Almost the whole effort has been and is directed to the utilization of left brain methodology, of the intellectual, analytical portion of the mind, to explore the right brain, the intuitive, abstract side.

In exploration of consciousness, most of the research has been conducted by placing the subject in a booth that insures an isolated environment. Through methods and techniques employing varying patterns of sound, the subject is given the means to enter into different states of consciousness. Outside the booth, a technician operates the audio and various items of electronic measuring equipment and records the subject's brain waves and other physical responses, while a monitor is in voice communication with the subject in the booth. The stereo headphones worn by the subject give the effect of the monitor being inside the subject's head. As such, the monitor becomes a surrogate left brain of the subject, encouraging the subject to utilize more of his or her own intellect to know and understand what he or she is doing.

 

By this method the subject learns to become objective in his or her experience, and it becomes possible to gather information and details not ordinarily available in purely subjective states of awareness. The result is whole brain thinking of extreme value; cohesive, integrated, without dominance by either part. All of our training systems, whether live or on tape, are nothing less than surrogate left brain devices that enable the user-participant to hold on to his analytical capability during unusual and even exotic states of consciousness. They permit growth through familiarity and understanding, and enable the penetration of the greatest barrier of all—fear.

We have discovered that right brain territory without limitations is a rich and fertile ground for mining operations by the left brain. It is the coherent whole brain consciousness that produces the precious nuggets.

The work is by no means finished. The Institute is still evolving ways to produce replicable physiological data that identify forms of human consciousness generally unknown or unrecognized by contemporary cultural standards. To take one specific example: we are looking for ways and means to bring to accessible levels the various extraordinary human capabilities that have appeared, seemingly at random, throughout our history. By investigation of individuals who possess these abilities, inherent or acquired, such as composers of music, top-flight mathematicians, outstanding athletes, especially talented therapists, and so on, we seek to discover techniques by the application of which such abilities may be learned.

 

Continuing investigation along these and similar lines offers the prospect of bringing into understandable and accept- able form the true nature of unorthodox mind phenomena. The inclusion of these into the contemporary cultural context could become a significant event in human history.

 

But as I look at my work and the work of the Institute, I hear a small voice, a voice that insists on being heard. “Well now, “ it says—and I cannot say I feel comfortable to hear it— “if that' s all there is to your life's work at this point, then there's certainly something missing. Here you are, showing people how to use the whole of their brains and have a so- called Different Overview, but you don’t seem to be doing anything to prepare them for what really matters. This Earth Life System stuff is all very well, but they don’t stay here forever. They expect more and, I have to tell you, they expect it from you. So—what about it?“ What about it indeed.

 

9

The Hard Way

Both the work of The Monroe Institute and the Earth Life System itself were strong Knowns to me. Yet there was an uncomfortable feeling that clues and traces of my missing Basic were there. I simply wasn't able to perceive them.

I turned again to my own personal activities. One of the Knowns emerging through repeated examination was that moving into out-of-body no longer had for me what could be called “movement.” Experienced subjects in the Institute laboratory had reported this many times, but it was not a part of my personal pattern until I began what I called the “quick- switch” method. Thereafter what happened was a fading out of one consciousness state into another. To describe it as “going out-of-phase” seemed more accurate and satisfied better my left brain classification system.

So this became a repeating pattern. However, I had begun to notice that whenever things were going so smoothly a major change was gathering energy. The forewarning was usually so obscure that only in retrospect could it be verified.

This time, what shook me out of my complacency was a series of incidents that began to occur more and more frequently when I phased out-of-body during the sleep state. They were remarkably similar to the “tests “ I had encountered years before. These tests were learning procedures whereby, when I was in an out-of-body state, a given experience was repeated several times until a particular response was evoked in me. The experience was not repeated thereafter.

 

These tests were nonverbal and were apparently conducted by a nonphysical, presumably my INSPEC friend. We would meet shortly after I left the physical state, and I would be asked if I were ready. With complete trust, I would agree. Immediately there would be a loud click, and I would find myself fully immersed in the experience. Gone and forgotten was the fact that it was not “real, “ and I would live it totally. At a crucial point where a significant decision had to be made, I would make it. Then there would come another loud click and I was back with the INSPEC. If I had performed satisfactorily, that particular test would not be repeated. If I had not done so, I would have to go back and try again until I did.

 

It never occurred to me to question why I was being tested and who judged what the correct decision had to be. Most if not all of the tests seemed completely unrelated to this physical life, although many of them were couched in human- Earth settings and situations. I assumed that “someone “ smarter than I needed my kind of answers and I, sometimes shakily, was glad to oblige.

This new version seemed much the same, except that there was no supervising INSPEC that I could determine. The episodes occurred months after our last meeting and there had been no sign of the INSPEC's presence despite my continuing hopes. As before, the identical situation would be presented in various forms, all with the need for a decision. It would have been easy to dismiss them as simply vivid dreams if they had not been preceded by INSPEC-structured modality. Moreover, I had not had ordinary dreams or nightmares for years.

 

These incidents became so strong that they could not be ignored. The direction change that was coming had been in place long before. The blow that got my attention was the discovery that various physiological and mental states were beginning to reflect in my physical waking consciousness as a result of these activities. In all my previous out-of-body adventures, there had been no aftereffects such as these. There had been excitement and exhilaration, or sadness and joy— and these would be expressed in my placid and relaxed physical body upon return. But there had never been stomach nausea, aching arms and legs, rapid heartbeat, the entire nervous system pulled tight. These effects would often last as long as fifteen or twenty minutes after returning.

Thus it wasn't curiosity but necessity that again pushed me to find answers—the same motivation that years before had led me to explore the out-of-body experience. But this time there was a difference. I was not overloaded with fear and I had tools and friends to work with. And I had at least the beginnings of a map of the territory.

 

The first step was to review events and actions in the past to try to determine what had caused this change in direction. In doing so, perhaps I would get a clue as to the missing Basic.

 

I have described earlier that, contrary to my own expectations, my whole history of OB experience was left brain dominant. This neatly verified earlier findings as to the value of acquired left brain abilities during Human Mind sojourn in the Earth Life System. One automatically assumed that OB was all right brain stuff because it was not of time-space and therefore was totally unrelated to the logical, analytical thinking process. But this assumption was wrong. In every one of my OB activities, the reasoning part of me was present to some degree. Moreover, the greater such participation, the greater the growth that took place. Growth in this instance can be construed as “understanding leading to familiarity resulting in application.” Without this acquired ability, it is likely that I still would be wallowing in the air above the bed or existing only via a prescribed daily dose of tranquilizers.

A typical illustration: In the very early days, I was returning confidently to my physical body from a “local“ out-of-body trip, with everything under control, everything working as I was sure it would. Suddenly I slammed against a barrier and came to a stop. I tried to push through it, but it was as hard as plates of steel. I was positive that my physical body was on the other side of the barrier, and thus it was vital that I go through to it. I went up a vast distance but could find no break in the wall. I went down, with the same result, and to the right and the left. There was no way through. I was thoroughly frightened, envisioning spending all eternity plastered against this impenetrable wall. I tried every prayer I could think of, screamed for help, and finally draped myself against the barrier sobbing much like a lost child—which I was.

 

After what seemed an eternity, when my sobbing had worn itself out, I leaned back and began to reason. If I couldn't go through the barrier, if I couldn't go over it, under it, or around it, that left only one option—to go back in the direction whence I had come. No matter what I had believed, it could be the only answer.

I did so. .. and moments later I was back in my physical body with ridiculous ease—thanks to left brain logic.

Every succeeding barrier I encountered eventually gave way to the information-gathering, probing, syllogistic analysis of that learned-on-Earth part of me. Vast differences in situation and setting had to be taken into account, but the investigative and learning processes were exactly the same. Nevertheless, once the situation was in place answers and solutions did not appear magically. The analytical tool we call the left brain neatly provided them. I may not have liked them as they evolved but I could not deny their accuracy.

 

What we need to do, whether in- or out-of-body, is to ignore or tear down the No Trespassing signs, the taboos, the notice that says Holy of Holies, the distortions of time and translation, the soft black holes of euphoria, the mysticisms, the myths, the fantasies of an eternal father or mother image, and then take a good look with our acquired and growing left brain. Nothing is sacred to the point where it should not be investigated or put under inquiry.

 

We must grant that this requires a quantum leap for our Different Overview. It can be compared to getting out of local traffic with its confusion, snarls, and stoplights and taking the Interstate—a major highway into the Unknown. The map that we are developing will cover the route as far as our active consciousness patterns can extend it.

But mapping the Interstate is one matter; traveling it is something else. It cannot become an absolute Known until it is actually traversed by the individual with the left brain in full and active mode. Unless, that is, you begin to remember what it is like. All the same, the map and a Different Overview may help you to construct a more accurate belief that may eventually be easier to convert into a Known.

 

Now to return to my new development, the penetration of my physical self by out-of-body responses. My left brain insisted that the physically distracting new signals were caused by some important detail that I had missed. Was this, I wondered, the clue or cue to the missing Basic?

I had two options. The first was, now that I understood better, to go back to the beginning to pick up what I had missed. The second was to lie around in a beautiful cloud of love and keep on wondering: what if. .. ? The first seemed more constructive.

 

Having made my choice, I began to move out of phase at about three the following morning. Then I used the quick- switch method to the earliest point in my conscious memory. At once I felt a signal vibrating within me. I followed it—and came upon a scene I remembered well. There was someone beside me—it felt like a brother. He seemed nervous. I was pointing at the figure of a man lying face down in the middle of a dusty road. He was a youngster, no more than eighteen.

 

A battle was going on all around him. Some fifty or sixty men in short brown togas with wide leather belts around their waists were fighting an approximately equal number of dark, bearded men, small in stature but who seemed to have incredible strength. Both sides were armed with short swords, spears, and round shields. There was shouting, moaning, and screaming, the clanging of metal against metal, clouds of dust, blood spurting, confusion. The wide belts, it seemed, were losing.

The eighteen-year-old, who wore a wide belt, was struggling to pull himself up. The problem was the spear which was holding him down. The spear had penetrated his back, gone all the way through his body and deep into the dirt of the road. His efforts became slower and weaker,, until they ceased.

 

Suddenly, I remembered that years ago I had felt the pain of the spear in my back, but this time it was different. I turned to the man beside me. He was in obvious pain. I asked him if he understood. He nodded, then turned and moved away, and disappeared.

There was nothing for me to do but to try to help. I bent over the youngster and shouted for him to get up. I saw his head—no, not his physical head—lift out of his body, and I reached over, grabbed it, and pulled. He slid out easily.

I told him to stand up. He did so, and looked around at the fighting. Then he noticed a sword lying at his feet. He reached down and tried to pick it up, but his hand went through it. Puzzled, he tried again.

I told him to take it easy. He looked at me angrily.

“I must get back into the fight. My friends are dying.” I told him that was impossible as he himself was dead. “What are you saying? I am strong—I can think!”

 

I pointed behind him where his physical body lay in the dust, blood congealing around it. He turned and stared at it, dumbfounded. He bent over and peered intently at the dead face. Then he looked up at me.

“But. .. I'm alive! I'm not dead!”

(same 'problems' convincing they are 'gone/dead' - is described in this book of the Brasilian wellknown medium Francisco Candido Xavier)

I asked him exactly what had happened. He answered vaguely; his interest was still focused on the raging battle.

“We were marching quickly along the road, looking for the enemy, eager to join battle. There was shouting—then something hit me in the back. I was down in the dust, and I couldn't get up—something was holding me down.”

“What happened next?“

 

“I gave up trying because I was so weak. I heard you calling—and there was a click. And I stood up.”

I pointed to his body in the dust. He glanced at it, then turned back to me.

“But I'm not dead! How can I stand and talk to you if I'm dead?“

I suggested he try to rejoin the battle, but that was a mistake. He rushed away into the thick of the swords and spears, into the tumult and confusion. When a sword swing he couldn't dodge went through him with no effect, he watched in fascination.

 

A moment later a short, bearded man attacked him from behind and the two fell to the ground punching and gouging one another. It took me a second or two to realize that the bearded ma n also had dropped his physical attachment in the battle. They might still be rolling on the ground centuries later, trying to kill each other!

I went over to the struggling duo and shouted that they were wasting their energy. They were both physically dead, I insisted, and there was no way they could hurt each other. I repeated this until they finally got the message. They rolled apart and looked at me. The bearded man got on his knees, bent forward, and touched his head to the ground, moaning an unintelligible chant. The youngster looked at him bewildered, then at me.

 

“He thinks you're a god. Are you?“ “No, “ I replied. “Just a friend.”

He felt the place where the spear had penetrated. “There's no hole, no blood. .. Are you sure you're not a god?“

I laughed, shook my head, and told him I had to be leaving. Around us, the battle was less intense. more forms were moving out of destroyed and dismembered bodies. Soon the place would be crowded with ex-physical humans, all with bewildered expressions on their faces. The youngster touched my hand.

“Can I go with you?“

I hesitated, but a deep inner surge immediately gave me the answer. I grasped his hand and started to move upward. He looked uncertain.

 

“I. .. I'm not a bird—I can't fly!”

I gently pulled on his hand and slowly we rose above the battlefield. It took but a moment for his anxiety to drop away, and we both shouted in joy as we sped up and out. In my mind I hit the return code on the quick-switch system. There was a flare of light and we hung motionless in the lighter grays of the intermediate rings. I felt the youngster's hand in mine. The question was, where do I drop him off? Just as I was about to ask him, I became aware that the pressure of his hand had gone. I whirled around. Nothing. No youngster. Nobody. What was going on?

This event was similar to a previous happening in an out- of-body experience many years earlier, but with some basic differences. Then I was the person who was being shown the dying youngster because I myself had experienced an inexplicable physical abdominal pain. Now I was the one who was showing the “old me“ the reason. I had, it seemed, answered an earlier call for help—from myself! And the youngster? Where did he go?

 

I was about to return to the physical to think it over when another signal came in strongly. This time I understood it more clearly. It was much like hearing someone call for help, or a telephone ringing when you know it's your phone. It was not difficult to home in on it.

Below me appeared a small building, with a hole in the side of it and wide steps leading down inside. I walked carefully down the steps because the signal was coming from inside. There lying on a cot was a man thrashing around wildly. Hanging on to his back were two children, about four or five years old, riding out the bucking and pitching. The man was sobbing in fear and desperately trying to pull the two little ones off his shoulders.

I reached over and gently pulled the children away from him. He lay back in the cot whimpering in relief. I looked down at the children lying quietly, one cradled in each of my arms. They were not children but cats—pets I remembered well. Cats in an OB state! I put my two old friends on the roof, walked back up the stairs, and once at the top, pulled the quick-switch phasing just slightly.

 

I returned to the physical, feeling that this would have to be thought through logically. It was easy for me to remember the two experiences I had, as it were, revisited, but the perspective in both was different. What was the change common to both?

 

Logic had an answer, although I did not know how I could accept it.

In the first incident many years ago I was taken by someone and shown the primitive battle to explain a pain in my physical body that I was suffering at the time. I knew then that I was the young warrior impaled in the dust by a spear. Upon realizing this, I had returned to the physical in relief and understanding.

This time, however, I was the one who was doing the showing. I was the one who took the then worried me to the old battle scene hundreds or even thousands of years ago to explain the pain. So I was the one who was helping me. Also I was the young warrior dying in the dust—that was the only- way it made sense. That meant, therefore, there were three versions of me at the same place at the same time!

 

In the second event from years back, I had been the one screaming for help, trying to dislodge the little demons who wanted to ride me like a horse, who seemed to own me. And then a serious-looking man came down the steps and took them off me, held them in his arms, and suddenly disappeared. I remembered that he had looked familiar, like a cousin I had known. But this time I was the one who came down the steps and helped by taking the little cat friends away. I had come to help when I screamed for it! This, I thought, was a little less complicated—there were only two of me present!

Were all of such current nonphysical events simply calls or screams for help from other I's in different times and places? Who was this I that had the audacity to answer these calls? Have I been helping me through all these years?

The apparent multiplicity and interchangeability of self had yet to fit a pattern I could accept or understand. Nor did it provide an answer to the uncontrolled events that were so disturbing to my physical life. Were they all cries for help? From an earlier me? The prospect was overwhelming.

 

What my left brain told me was happening was that If from the future had been going back in time to help the I of the past when needed. The signals for help were coming from earlier versions of me, not only in this life but in previous ones. I wondered if this was the same for everybody. I wondered what had happened to the young warrior I who had followed me out of the battlefield. Why did he disappear?

 

Somewhere in the maze was the answer. If I began with the Knowns, the whole thing would fit somewhere along the way. What I needed to do was to move into that area in the There that was familiar, and look around. For the time being, however, I sought and managed to keep things under control.

Then one night several weeks later, I came to a decision. At the start of a sleep cycle, I rolled out-of-body, moving less out-of-phase than usual, and taking care about what I was doing. I found myself exactly where I expected to be if I really needed to take up the threads again—in the gray area just beyond the entry point from time-space. Immediately I received a signal. I was attracted to a house in the suburbs of a large city. The house seemed vaguely familiar, wide and spacious but empty of furnishings.

 

I slipped in through the front wall and in the foyer encountered a woman about fifty years old, gray-haired, small and thin. She was wandering through the house from room to room and when I put out my hand to intercept her she seemed surprised that I was there and was paying attention to her.

 

“Are you here to hang the pictures again?“ she asked. I said I was not and that I was interested in her.

“They took all the pictures down, out of my house. My house! Now no one even speaks to me.”

I asked her why she stayed there. Why didn't she leave? “This is my house. This is where I belong. I don't care if no one notices me anymore.”

Didn't she feel anything different? I asked.

“Only that nobody will do what I ask them to do. They ignore me as if I wasn't here.”

I asked her if she remembered dying.

“Dying? Of course not! I was sick, but I got well. One minute I was sick and the next thing I knew I was up and walking around!“

I remarked that nobody saw her and that she was all alone. She tossed her head.

“No one ever sees me. They never paid me much attention when William was around. Now he's gone, they ignore me completely.”

“I bet you can't pick up that dining room chair,” I said. “Your hand will go right through it. You'll see!”

“That' s ridiculous!” she exclaimed. “Of course I can: pick it up. I'll show you.”

She tried several times, and each time her hand went through the chair back. She looked at me in confusion.

“ I. .. I don’t know what' s the matter. I thought it was some sort of hallucination you get when you're old. But. .. you can see it too.”

 

I showed her that my hand went through the chair back just as hers had done. She looked amazed.

“You have the same problem!”

People have this problem, I explained, when their physical body dies.

“But. .. but I'm alive!”

It is the body that dies, I told her. The body. Not you.

She was quiet for a time but she didn't seem to be in shock. Then she looked at me anxiously.

“I was waiting for William to come back, but he hasn't. And I love my house so much. He built it just for me. I don’t want to leave it, I love it so.”

 

I suggested that we go and look for William.

“Oh no, we can't do that! He passed away five years ago.”

I repeated the suggestion, adding that I thought we ought to try. She looked at me steadily.

“I really am. .. dead?“ I nodded.

“And you are. .. an angel? You don’t look like one. You're real normal.”

I was, I assured her, just a friend. She shrank back.

“I've never met you before in my life! You're not a friend! You must be one of Satan's devils.”

I didn't try to convince her otherwise. I said I was sorry to have bothered her and started to leave.

“Wait! Please wait!”

 

I turned and stood quietly. She regarded me speculatively.

“If you really were a devil's helper, I couldn't possibly chase you away, could I?“

I told her I didn't know because I had never met one. “It's been so lonely. .. Can we really find William?” We could try, I said. I reached for her hand and started to lift out toward the ceiling.

“I can't do that! I don’t know how! Your hand is real—I can feel it—but I can't just float up in the air!”

I pulled her hand gently and she began to rise easily. Excitement glowed in her.

 

“Oh, what fun! Is this being dead? My, my! Let's go find William! Won't he be surprised?”

We cruised slowly more and more out-of-phase. I remembered the previous point where we had met, many years before. It was in a rented house in Westchester County, New York, where I lived temporarily. She was still hanging around the house months after her physical death. At the time, I had gently backed away from the contact. Now I knew better.

 

I kept us moving slowly outward because I figured that, somewhere along the way, William would be attracted by the bait and would take over from me. But she held on firmly, making excited comments as we passed through the inner rings of the Belief System Territories. I was becoming impressed. William had more to him than I had estimated, based upon her perceived radiation of him. He should be here. But now the only place he could be was in the outer phases. He had kept his progress well hidden from his wife, that was certain.

 

I was about to ask her more about William when I no longer felt her hand in mine. I turned instantly, but she was gone, completely disappeared. There was no sign at all of her radiation. The only answer I could come up with was that William was very good indeed if he was this far out in the rings. I phased back into the physical to think it over.

 

A few weeks later I tried again. The process was becoming so smooth that it was hard to define when I actually left the body. It was more the fading out of one state of being and into another, similar to falling asleep and staying conscious while doing so. I was still hesitant to use the quick-switch method for “short hops.” It would be like taking a Concorde to fly from Newark to Kennedy!

 

In the deeper gray area another signal was waiting. It seemed too easy; perhaps, I wondered, I was reading it wrong. I was about to home in on the signal when somebody called. I turned and saw an odd kind of glow. It resolved into a man, small, sharp-featured, somewhere in middle age, with a squinty frown and curled lips.

 

“Hey, you—where are you going?” I approached cautiously.

“Where you going?” “Hello.”

“Out looking for the secrets of the universe, is that it?“ “I guess that's what I'm doing.”

“Good luck! I'm having a hard enough time without looking for anything more.”

“Why, what' s the matter?“

“The matter? I went and died, that's what' s the matter!“ “What' s wrong with that?“

“Nothing wrong, except I sure wasn't ready for it.” “Maybe we never are ready.”

“Well, I could have been but nobody told me! Nobody told me it was going to be like this! Those bastards yelling and screaming about gates of heaven, hellfire and damnation— they didn't know what they were talking about! Anyway, I wish you luck, because they could have told me like it is instead of giving me a bunch of hogwash!”

“Well, what' s the problem?“

 

“The problem? Look around you—that's the problem!” “There's nothing there that I can see. Just the usual deep blackness.”

“That' s what I mean! Nothing, absolutely nothing! Hey, you know you're the first person I've met? Nothing—but nothing—and then you come along!”

“I' m sorry you're disappointed.” “You're like me, eh?“

“Like you? What do you mean?“

“You died—you just died—and you don’t know what the hell to do!“

“It isn't quite like that. . .”

“Come on, come on! You're either dead or you're not!” “I' m pretty sure I'm not.”

“You're not dead?“ “No.”

 

“The n what the hell are you doing here?“ “That' s a long story.”

He looked at me in disgust.

“I bet it is! You wouldn't be here if you weren't dead!” “It's a little more complicated than that.”

“Tell me about it! Hey, I know! Somebody sent you!” “No, no one sent me. I was just passing by. Tell me, how did you happen to die?”

 

“They made me do it, that's how! Lying around in a hospital for weeks and weeks. .. I wanted t o g o home—but no, they kept me there with all the tubes and needles stuck in me. So one night I just yanked them all out. On the night shift —nobody ever came around to see me on the night shift, nobody. You know?“

“Then what happened?“

“I started coughing and then I stopped. I thought, well, I'd better slide the hell out of bed and get going. I must have jumped a bit because I went right out through the ceiling and kept on going until I found myself here. When I went through the ceiling, that's when I knew I'd gone and died. Pretty smart, huh?“

“That' s right. Maybe you ought to come along with me.” “You would help me? You? Why?“

“It ought to be better than staying here forever.”

 

“I' m so damned mixed up! No heaven. .. no hell. Nothing!“

“Here, take my hand.”

“No you don't! Every time somebody tried to help me, it just meant trouble! You get out of here!”

“I' m not forcing you. I'm only trying to be helpful.” “You keep your hands off me! You keep away!“

“All right, all right. Whatever you say.”

“G o on, get out of here! And you get somebody to tell you straight! Don’t you get taken in with the fancy talk. Nobody told me. .. and they could have! I would have listened—but no! Now I've got to find out all by myself and I sure as hell don’t know how to do that! Don’t even know where to start. . .”

I backed away and the strange glow faded. When I returned later it was gone. I have wondered since how he did get help. Enough was enough sometimes.

 

 

Perhaps recounting these events will bring a little better understanding as to the idea of a bridge or bypass over these areas—with Caution signs posted along the way. It takes experience and finely honed reason to operate in such conditions, and mine were marginal at best. Any help comes from the top down, I thought—not from the bottom up .

 

And I had discovered another facet. Not all of the signals I received came from an earlier me. William's wife was not a part of me, nor was the angry little man, as far as I could determine.

So I came to a conclusion. Helping others goes with the job. While you're helping yourself, you automatically lend a hand to others, if you can do so. But I was missing an important element. Why did this sequence of events suddenly pop up in my activity pattern? Was this another key to the missing Basic?

What about my new Different Overview? Something was definitely left out!

 

 

10

Detached Retinue

It was beginning to seem a never-ending task, this answering of signals for help each time I went out-of-body, and it was certainly an inefficient way to do whatever was needed. I could spend the rest of my available physical life period doing this and nothing else and still make no perceptible dent in the mass of such signals.

The question was: why had I suddenly become exposed to these signals after so many years? And another question: why were they causing distress in my physical body?

It seemed that most if not all of these signals were originating in areas off the Interstate (as I was now accustomed to regard it) immediately adjoining the termination of physical existence, or death as we humans call it. I knew something of these areas but was not familiar with them. Further exploration was needed.

I began the next morning, about three o'clock, by taking a methodical, slow-motion approach. Feeling rested and relaxed, I started the phasing out of the physical and into the blackness of the out-of-body state, with left brain mode on full alert. I was now at the beginning of the Interstate, or rather on my entry ramp into it. Then, as I was about to bridge over the close-in areas with their obvious exit ramps, as I usually did, one of the strange signals pulled hard at me. Reluctantly, I followed it.

 

 

The signal flashed me to a city, then to an apartment building, and tightened in to a bedroom in one of the mid-rise apartments. There was a large and fancy king-size bed with three naked people in it, two men and a woman. One of the men was having very active sex with the woman, while the other was attempting to get in between them, with no success. Each time he tried, he fell through the bed to the floor beneath. I knew he was the one who caused the signal, and wondered why he didn't keep falling right through the floor.

I caught his attention on his next cycle from under the bed to the top of the copulating couple. He stared at me in surprise, his glistening erect penis waving up and down as he shook with excitement.

“Who the hell are you?“

 

 

I told him it wouldn't work. He might as well come with me.

“What do you mean it won' t work? I've been waiting ten

years to get this piece of ass, and now I'm going to get it!” Again I indicated that it was no use. Things were different with him now.

“You better believe they're different! I'm free now! I don’t know what happened, but I'm free! And as soon as I found out, I came here. Now if she would just stop having it with Sammy, I could get it on with her!”

I asked him what made things different.

“Oh, that! I'd just come up out of the subway at Fifty third and Madison and suddenly I felt a pain in my chest. I fell down. I wasn't down on the sidewalk long, just a minute maybe, and I got up. Man, did I feel different! What business is it of yours, anyway?“

I told him as clearly as I could what had really happened. “I' m dead? The hell you say! Do I act like I'm dead?“

 

 

I reminded him about his falling through the bed, unable to touch either the man or the woman. He looked at his hands, then down at his replicated body.

“But I'm still me! I still feel like me! I guess I still act like me!“

He laughed and I joined in. I remarked that we don’t change that much when we die, at least not right away. He looked at the couple on the bed, who now had relaxed and were lying back apparently contented, and then at his own deflated penis.

“Buster here won' t like being dead!”

I told him there were compensations and he brightened up.

“I must have had a heart attack then. .. But I never had trouble with m y heart. ..”

I was about to reply when I noticed the woman in the bed. Her eyes were open and she was staring straight at me. She was actually seeing me! Her eyes widened with astonishment but she didn't seem afraid. She looked straight into my eyes, and there was knowledge in her stare. I turned to the man standing beside me and told him I had to leave. He was shocked.

 

“What do you mean, leave? What about me? What do I do?“

I suggested he come along if he wished. He laughed again.

“You can't get rid of me! There's no action here—I should have known that. Besides, I want to find out about those compensations.”

We laughed some more. I took his hand and started to lift out, and he followed easily. Just as we went through the ceiling, I looked back at the girl in the bed. She was still watching, and our eyes met. I knew I wouldn't have to come after her. She already knew.

A few moments more we went slightly out-of-phase. I felt the man tugging at my hand.

“Let go of me! Will you let go!“

 

I looked below. There was the Pile, the huge mass of ex- physical humans, writhing and struggling in an endless attempt to have sex with one another. The man' s heavy radiation had diverted our path.

Suddenly he wrenched his hand loose and dived into the mass.

I should have been alert to the diversion. Well, win a few, lose a few, I said to myself. I moved away, thinking that I would get him out of there tomorrow, if I could. But before I could return to my body, there was another signal. I turned and followed.

This one was easy to identify; it came from a hospital room complete with life support systems and electronic gauges. There was a small figure, a woman, in the bed with all the gadgetry attached to her. She was folded up in a near-fetal position. Her hair was gray and stringy, her face wrinkled. She looked very old. As I approached I could perceive her moaning and gasping. Yet the sheet was over her head. I moved close to her and asked her what the matter was.

“Can' t you see I'm hurting?“ I asked her why.

“I' m dying, that's why. I've been dying for years but nobody would believe me.”

I believe you, I told her.

 

“That' s all you doctors say, but you don’t mean it.”

I told her I wasn't a doctor, and that I did believe her. “If you're not a doctor it doesn't count. It's the doctor

who has to believe me.”

Why is that so important, I asked.

“So that they'll let me die. Then I won' t have any more pain.”

I suggested that she didn't need a doctor to believe her. Did she really want to die? I asked.

“Of course I do! Why else would I be going through all this pain?“

There was no need to wish for death, I told her. It was all over. She was dead.

For the first time she turned her head and looked at me. “No, I'm not! I still hurt!“

The pain will be fading away quickly, I said gently. All she need do was to move away from her body. She stared at me.

 

“But. .. I'm still alive! I'm just the same!”

I told her that being physically dead doesn't change you much at first. You just don’t have a physical body anymore— you're only remembering the pain now, but you don't have the pain itself. Look around, I said; see for yourself.

She did look around, very slowly. Then she turned back to me.

“It's all black. .. just deep black. . .”

 

Except for me, I reminded her. She opened her eyes wider, and her body slowly began to straighten out.

“Ernie. .. ? Is that you, Ernie?”

I reached for her hand and suggested we go where friends were waiting. She held back.

“Why didn't you come before? I've been calling for you night and day to come and get me.”

I said that she had to die first. Now that she had died, it was all right. I held out my hand again and she took it firmly.

“Ernie. .. Ernie!”

 

We started to move up and out slowly. I asked her about the pain. She looked puzzled.

“The pain? Oh, the pain. It isn't important now, is it?“ No, it isn't, I said. We went more out-of-phase and out of blackness into the light. I took it slowly as we moved further out-of-phase and into the area of the Belief System Territories because I wanted to see what was happening. I was trying to determine exactly where we were—somewhere above the midpoint—when I could no longer feel her hand in mine. I refocused as fast as I could but it was too late. She was gone. Picking up pieces and dropping them along the way was surely not how it was supposed to be. It was certainly not productive.

I had better try again. The problem was that I didn't know precisely what I was looking for, but I was not going to give up. Several days later I made an afternoon run. I lay down on the cot, relaxed, and phased out slightly—and, sure enough, there was another signal. This was a frantic one. I focused on it and used my quick-switch method.

 

There was a flash and I was over an alley in a small town. I looked for the reason—and there it was, just below me. He was hiding behind a cluster of trash cans in the alley. On the street nearby a pair of police cars, red and blue lights flashing, had angled up to the curb. On the sidewalk in front of a store entrance lay a crumpled form in a pool of blood. A crowd of morbid spectators was gathering, held back by a yellow band of plastic.

I went directly to the trash cans. The skinny boy crouched behind them couldn't have been more than seventeen, and he would never get any older. Not this time anyway. I asked him to stand up. He did slowly, uncertain, alert, ready to run if he got the chance.

 

“How d'you know I was here, man?“ I told him I wanted to help him.

“I don’t need no help, not from no fuckin' cop.”

I asked him why he was hiding if he didn't need any help. “What do you mean, why? That shithead in the store had a piece and he started shootin'!“

 

I suggested that he didn't need to worry about that anymore. He looked at me warily. “Gonna take me in, are you?“

Not exactly, I said. He didn't have to pull any more heists, I told him, and nobody was ever going to shoot him again. He didn't have to worry about going to jail either. He stared at me.

“You're crazy, man!“

 

I told him the bullet had caught a corner of his heart which let him live just long enough to stagger out of the store and fall dead on the sidewalk. His face portrayed a mixture of emotions.

“What kind of shit is that? If I'm dead, what the hell am I doin' standin' here and talkin' to you?“

I pointed to the street behind me and suggested he take a look for himself. Still keeping one eye on me, he sidled to the corner of the alley and peered down the street. He forgot me completely, fixed on what he saw. Eventually he turned and slumped down to a sitting position and buried his face in his knees.

I could feel his sobbing. I moved over to him, looked down, and gently touched his shoulder. It was time to go, I said. He gazed up at me.

“They still got cops after you're dead?“

I smiled and shook my head. But there were better places to be than hanging around in a back alley, I said. He looked at his hands.

 

“I remember puttin' out my hands to break the fall when I hit the concrete. And before that, I remember lettin' go of my piece when the cashier shot at me from behind the counter. So I couldn't shoot back. It was like somebody hittin' me with a tire iron in my chest. Then I got out the door and I remember hittin' the sidewalk. It was like there was a big click in my head—and I got up and ran into the alley. But. .. but who the fuck are you, man?“

I told him his Uncle Ben sent me. He laughed.

“Ben? Ben the boozer? Come on, he didn't even know I was around! He died when I was a kid! I know! It's all a new shtick you cops put up to get me to roll over! You come on— take me in and stop all this shit about bein' dead!“

If he wanted proof, I suggested, we should take a close look at the body on the sidewalk. He resisted at first, so I told him to hide behind me and nobody would see him. I turned and walked out into the street and strode through the crowd. I knew he was right behind me.

 

We got there just as the ambulance was arriving. We stood directly over the body—there was blood all over the place—and watched as they rolled the body over, checked for any vital signs, and put it on a gurney. They threw a cloth over the face, but not before the kid beside me had got a good look. Anyway, I knew he could still see the face, cloth or no cloth.

 

As they rolled the gurney into the ambulance and closed the door, the kid started sobbing again. I gently took his hand and began to lead him up over the street. Now he didn't resist; he simply wept uncontrollably as we moved up away from the street and more out-of-phase. This time as we approached the middle and upper rings I kept him under constant observation. Whatever was happening, I reckoned I would be ready for it.

 

I wasn't. At a given point, the kid disappeared. One moment he was there, and then he was gone. Not even a wisp of radiation remained. Wherever I searched—nothing.

Whatever I was doing, it wasn't coming out as I expected. I was getting some action, but it was incomplete. I returned slowly until I was back in phase with the physical, still looking for answers.

There was just one clue. That night there were fewer penetrating signals. My sleep periods were less hectic. Was it cause and effect? Perhaps I was taking the right path—but even if I was, my left brain was screaming out for more data. I certainly wasn't cut out for this job. I kept losing them!

 

Then, several weeks later, another change surfaced. I was lying down and relaxing easily when I was suddenly hit by a strong help signal, on what I understood to be my own frequency, even before I was out-of-body. My physical body responded with a strong sense of heat. Quickly I rolled out and followed the signal. Somewhere over the Belief System Territories the signal led off down an exit ram p that I could only just perceive.

 

It did not take me long to find the source. The belief system radiation gave me a picture of a steep rocky cliff with a heavy, humid jungle below. I wondered why it was so clear and real to me. This was unusually rare; the belief system activity is generally dim and hazy to me at best.

A small mature female stood at the edge of the cliff. Behind her were some fifty or sixty assorted males and females of all ages. They were humanoid, partly dressed in animal skins, with heavy, Neanderthal-like heads and facial structures.

 

Reason immediately wanted to know why I was buying into this particular belief system. The only answer was the obvious one: at some time it was part of me. The scene brought back what I called “the lure of tropical Pacifica” that I had half-suppressed throughout my life. The call of the ocean was reflected in my sailboat adventures and scuba diving. Then there was my going to Hawaii for a weekend and staying for three weeks; going to Ecuador for three weeks and staying for three months—and almost taking up a career in the tropical lowlands. I always felt immense nostalgia in tropical settings.

As I positioned myself on the ledge beside the female, the group behind her shrank back and covered their eyes. I turned to the female, who was staring at me with calm appraisal. Could we communicate, I wondered. At my thought, she smiled.

 

“You came.”

“Yes, I did. But why did you call me?“ “I called a picture.”

“Why did you do that?“

“Are you Megus?“ She looked at me carefully. “No, you are not.”

“You called for Megus. Why?“

“Because Megus does not know something is wrong here.”

“Where are you? Where is here?”

“I am here. In the Sky Land of Megus.” “Do you know how you got here?”

“Oh, yes. I came out of my mouth with the bubbles when my body sank to the bottom of the great water.”

“Why were you in the great water?“

 

“It is the rule for a female when she does not make as child.”

“And after that you came here.” “Yes. But there is something wrong.” “Wrong? With you or with the others?“

She shook her head. “With me. When we jump off this hill into the valley, we must fall onto the rocks below and die, again and again. That is the rule of Megus.”

“Who is Megus?“

“Megus is Sky God. He came to us many suns past and told us of his Sky Land. This is what he promised. .. but something is wrong.”

“Tell me just what is wrong.”

“When I jump off the hill, I don't fall and I don't die. The others do, but I don't. I just float.”

I lifted up slowly until I was just above her head.

“Like this?“

“Yes! Yes! You are Megus, you are! Help me keep your rule! Help me fall so I can die and live again!”

I reached out with my hand.

 

“I am not Megus, but I can help. It can be good to float. This is a new rule. Come, try it!”

She grasped my hand with both of hers and we lifted slowly up and out. The structure of the belief systems began to fade rapidly as we approached the Interstate, and was gone completely when we went up the entry ramp. I moved us more out-of-phase when the change was indicated, observing and reassuring my Neanderthal friend. She was calm, relaxed but expectant. I was pondering why I seemed to be so compulsive in my rescue pattern when the expected unexpected happened again. She dissolved, faded into nothing as I watched.

This time I accepted the phenomenon without question, but I wondered why I had received her signal among all the others. Alone, I moved slowly past other exit ramp s that were dimly familiar. I knew that at some point in distant time I had visited and turned off each of these ramps and was a part of each of the belief systems they led to. But there seemed no reason to go through again what I had already experienced and presumably outgrown.

 

Although I felt I needed help, I did not consult any of my philosophic or psychiatric physical friends. Instead, several weeks later, I did what they would have prescribed. After three cycles of sleep, some four and a half hours, I awakened rested, relaxed, and fully alert at three in the morning. To use the quick-switch technique, roll out-of-phase with the physical, and head for one of my pre-INSPEC friends seemed absurdly easy. A smooth vibration and I would be there.

 

But it was not as easy as that. Somewhere deep in the Belief System Territories a strong and demanding signal hit me. I resisted, but to my great surprise a part of me overrode my resistance. When I stabilized, I found I was lying on a cot in the corner of a small room .

I pulled myself up to a sitting position and stood up. I was in a physical body, it seemed, or a good facsimile of one. It felt quite normal. On the far side of the room was a closed door. Beyond it I could hear a strong humming sound. I opened the door and stepped through.

 

Close by it was dark; beyond was a brightly lighted area and the humming came from somewhere beyond that. It was made by many human voices, not chanting, just humming in harmony. A hand touched my arm and I turned. A woman stood by me, beautiful, ageless, very familiar. Her face and eyes were radiant with joy.

“I've been waiting for you. I knew you would be here if all of us met together as one. Come.”

She led me out of the darkness and into the light. Then she stepped back. The humming gradually faded away. On the edge of the range of the light were faces looking up at me, many hundreds, as far back as I could perceive. They were expectant. The radiation I know as love was overwhelming.

I stood still, altogether unsure of the situation, of what was expected of me. Then, as I stood there, another part of me took control and I relaxed. That other part began to speak.

 

“I had no idea there are so many of us. This is one of the few points where we have gathered as one. As all of us have discovered, it took a belief system to get us here—and therefore we are somewhere on the outer edge of the Belief System Territories. Thus we have several Knowns. That we are, and can be, here. That we do not need a physical body to exist and be. This alone has freed us from the constraints and restrictions that all of us encountered in our sojourns on Earth. Even though each of us has a few beliefs left, we can release them at will.

 

“Now we are awakening from the dream.

“The important Known is the one that brought us together. That not only were we more than our physical bodies, but we can be free of any and all Earth-life-generated beliefs, without exception. This freedom is the exciting part because we now have no limits. This Known, without fear, gives us a full range of choice.

“M y role is another Known. It is not that of leader. Leadership is not necessary in the old sense of the term. Perhaps my part has been, and still is, as a recruiter. But to me the role of scout, information gatherer, trailblazer, seems to fit much better. This has been my pattern. .. for thousands of Earth years and lifetimes.

“Now it seems we are finally at the point of fruition. When we meet again, the move into various options will begin.

 

“The love we share is the greatest Known of all.”

The I-There of me—the IT that each of us has, containing all previous and present lifetimes—reached upward and I moved off the floor and passed slowly over the sea of upturned faces. Somewhere from deep in the multitude an arm reached up and a hand grasped mine. A man moved up and joined me. Side by side we rose in a slow spiral, higher and higher. I looked over to see a big grin as he winked at me. Was it Agnew? Lew? Rodius? Cheng? It was none of these. It was my old friend from my early days of OB exploration—the friend whom I knew as BB!

I should have known; I should have remembered. BB, who followed me from Home, from the cruise an eternity past.. . It could have been no other.

The phasing was complete and the eager faces disappeared. With them went the feel of BB's hand in mine. I looked and he was gone.

The return to the physical was without incident.

 

11

 Turning Inward

If an impasse is reached, it seems likely that somewhere on the way a distortion or misconception has taken place. A sign along the road was missed or misunderstood, the wrong turn was taken—there are many possibilities. Perhaps some small detail was left unnoticed.

This is how it happened. I still had the help signals, the learn-by-being lessons, but all without satisfactory explanation. The retrieval of those who had just died and my susceptibility to their signals—and especially to my own in the past—insisted on my attention. Was this to be my “New direction”?

I felt that I had lost control. Some part of me that I wasn't aware of had taken over, and I certainly didn't understand it.

I decided that the far reaches of infinity would have to wait. The prime need was to know myself without equivocation. The more I came to know myself, the more I would know what I am in nonphysical expression, and the closer I would come to the reason for the path I seemed to be taking.

Experience is definitely the greatest of teachers. Now my experience came into constructive use again, with my left brain abilities in the foreground. The route or access to the nonphysical I, what I now thought of as the I-There, surfaced almost immediately.

It had started over twenty years ago. Frustrated over my seeming lack of any ability to explore more than just the time- space continuum, I had turned inward and asked for help. From that moment, an entirely new spectrum of being and doing emerged. I was free.

 

Through all the succeeding years I went happily on my way. I had not realized that, in spite of my apparent ego, the I-There of me had been doing the driving and navigating since that point. Never once had I taken the trouble to look under the hood, as normal curiosity should have led me to do.

Now, in pursuit of the missing Basic, instead of following the usual steps after phasing into out-of-body I put a hold on all of the urgent signals and began a probe around me, inward instead of out. Man y such sessions spaced over a year were involved to get the information into workable form.

This is what I found.  The move out of physical phase and into my I-There was slow and careful. I formed the impression of an all-powerful, all-knowing giant who watched bemused as one of his fingers began an independent, self-willed exploration of the rest of his body. I felt no fear because of the Known: I was I-There, I-There was I. Can one be afraid of oneself?

 

The Memory Layer

Turning inward and penetrating the I-There of me, I immediately encountered the expected: a layer—or file, library, or mainframe—containing every moment of my life to date, with more pouring in that matched exactly my thoughts and actions as I conducted the investigation. Other signals were still coming in from my physical body. This was far more than memory, as we consciously think of it. This was the reception point of the uplink from the present I-Here—the I that functions in the physical world—now only an operating physical body without consciousness.

 

I tested the storage system several times with great fascination. Upon selection of a given point in the past, I relived the event in every detail, down to each minute sensory input, thought, and emotion. I soon realized such super-memory was not altogether pleasurable. With such intense hindsight, one becomes all too painfully and sadly aware of the many irrational decisions made, the stupid mistakes, the missed opportunities. The exciting incidents were no longer exciting because I knew the outcome. The joyous moments often seemed infantile, and the infantile sad and amusing.

As an example, I had a very young memory of hiding under a big bush just outside my grandmother's front porch. Afterward, I could never understand why I had been hiding there. I wasn't afraid, but something kept me there. Now I knew. I had feces in my pants, and I didn't want Mommie to find out. A big moment for a four-year-old!

 

More relevant and revealing items were easy to find, among them incidents that in their ways were early precursors easily overlooked. One such occurred in 1934, when I flunked out of Ohio State University in my sophomore year with a less than 2.5 grade average. This was partly due to a severe facial burn which meant spending some time in the hospital. After I recovered, feeling restless, I hit the road looking for work. I began hitchhiking, but after about a week I discovered that people wouldn't pick up a dirty-looking kid so I became a hob o riding freight trains from place to place.

 

In St. Louis during mid-December the cook in a small hash joint saw me staring through the steamy window at the food frying on the grill. He waved me in and fed me without charge. As I hadn’t eaten for two days, it seemed a miracle. Then, later that night, in a Salvation Army-type flophouse, an old man died quietly on the cot next to mine. I had never been that close to someone dying. I felt no fear, but curiosity.

After nearly a year, I returned to Ohio State in Columbus, pleaded and was granted conditional reinstatement. During my junior year, Strollers, the campus dramatic society, offered a prize for the best original one-act play. The one I wrote received second prize. The first three were produced and presented to a campus audience. Perhaps the peak moment in my college career came as I stood offstage in the wings as some five hundred people sat in a you-could-have-heard-a-pin-drop state during the climax of my one-act drama. The reviewers said it should have placed first!

The play was based on exactly what happened in the flophouse, except for the addition of the climactic moment. What was it? In dying, the old man passed to the boy a Special Purpose, a Goal, a Plan far beyond ordinary human thought. The boy was transformed into something or someone else.

 

This came from an eighteen-year-old who had never taken a course in philosophy, and was not religious—as were none of his friends at the time. So where did he get the idea, and why? This incident had evidently been long hidden as not important. It took place at least twenty years before there was any such occurrence as an OBE in my life.

Likewise relegated into the same category of non- importance was another long-hidden memory that perhaps I had earlier regarded as some sort of hallucination. The location of this was an old farmhouse we owned in Dutchess County, New York, during the late forties. The well had run dry. It was not the new type of drilled well, but one that had been hand-dug a hundred years ago or more. It was about three feet wide, seventy feet deep, and lined with rounded fieldstones wedged together without mortar.

Listening, one could hear water running far below, but the pump couldn't bring it up through the pipe. Usually one doesn't hear running water in a well. My curiosity was caught, so I got a rope out of the barn, tied it to a nearby tree, and skittered down inside the well like a mountain climber rappelling down a cliff.

 

When I reached the bottom, I immediately found the problem. The water table had lowered and the end of the pipe was above the new water level. The interesting part was that there at the bottom was not still water but a running underground stream. If a few rocks were put in the right place the water level would rise again.

Then I looked up and panic set in. Far, far above me was a tiny circle of light. Between me and that point of safety were seventy feet of loose rock, any chunk of which I might have disturbed in climbing down. At any moment that chunk could drop away and trigger the entire wall to collapse on top of me. There was evidence of the possibility on the rocky bottom on which I stood. Several large, basketball-size rocks lay there, having fallen from the wall sometime previous.

A feeling of intense claustrophobia came over me, with some justification. If I could not get out quickly, I might well be buried in a seventy-foot grave—and no one would know. With an effort, I sought to control my panic. I knew I would have to be ultra-careful in climbing up to avoid dislodging any of the rock wall. I sat down on a large fallen rock to think about it. Reaching down with my cupped hand, I took some mouthfuls of the running water. It was cool and fresh.

 

As I sat at the bottom of the well, listening to the gentle tumbling of the water, my eyes adapting to the dim light, I began to relax. There was something very calm and serene and comfortable about being where I was. I even looked up at the circle of light far above me and the sense of peace was not disturbed. I felt no more panic. I closed my eyes and leaned comfortably back against the rocky wall of the well. There was no need to hurry now. I relaxed even more, and for a moment I thought I was asleep, but I could hear the water and feel the stone against my back. My physical awareness was still complete.

Then the pattern changed. Slowly, the feeling of a war m intelligence seemed to surround me, flowing very gently into my body. It seemed to blend into every part of me, body and mind. I became a part of that intelligence, or the intelligence became a part of me. There didn't seem to be any difference.

And there was a message. I could translate it into word s only crudely.

 

My son of sons of sons, you have found joy in my winds and sky. We have shared the excitement and peace both on my waters and deep within them. You have reveled in the beauty and ingenuity of my other children spread across my surface. Yet it is only now that you have taken a moment in my bosom to be still and listen. In that stillness, hold this song forevermore. You were born of me, yet it is your destiny to become more than I can ever be. In this growth, I revel with you. My strength is your strength; thus you take with you the glory of me to express in ways that I will not understand. Not understanding, I nonetheless support and share happily that which you become. Go with this truth within you, my son of sons of sons.

That was it. The warmth continued for a while, then slowly faded.

I stood up, took the dangling rope, and climbed effortlessly to the top of the well, scrambling out into the sunlight, was astounded when I discovered I had been in the well for over two hours.

Now I remember that special Basic. Mother Earth, I love you! How could I have forgotten?

 

Further investigation into the memory layer revealed a near-identical dream that had recurred monthly at least for a number of years. I was at that time an active airplane and glider pilot, and in this dream I would find myself turning my aircraft onto the end of the runway, applying power, and beginning the takeoff run. As soon as I was airborne, the runway turned into a street with buildings lining it on both sides. Crossing from one side to the other overhead was a network of cables and wires, much like those still found in older downtown business areas. Try as I might, I couldn't find a hole or gap in the network through which the aircraft could fly. After a period of anxiety and frustration, I would wake up. This dream did not recur once my OBEs began.

Some psychologists with whom I discussed this dream suggested that the downtown street setting was a symbol of my commitment to the business world. Others speculated that the network of restrictive wires represented my cultural belief systems. All agreed that it was a well-assembled logical metaphor tailored neatly to meet what I was at the time. Searching again, I found a clue as to what might have been the evoking mechanism or trigger for what happened afterward. My company, seeking a new area for diversification, was investigating whether sound might be used for learning during sleep. As professionals in sound, having produced several hundred network radio programs, we tried a number of different audio patterns with various subjects to study the effect of these patterns upon sleep. Beginning in 1956, I had been the chief subject in this testing and underwent at least a hundred sessions lying in a darkened booth and listening through headphones. But my two children, and many others, had also spent many such sessions, yet with no comparable effect. Was this my OBE trigger?

Thus I passed through the memory layer, knowing that total recall would be available if and when needed. All the same, reliving the past without the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia is not my idea of a fun afternoon!

 

The Fear Layer

Moving inward to the next section of my I-There, I found an area I had definitely not expected. I discovered that I was indeed far from fearless. I may not have been consciously aware of these fears, but there they were, large, ugly blasts of raw energy, embarrassing to me, and to no one else, in their intensity. There were old fears and a constant inflow of new ones. They ranged from little items, such as anxiety over the effect of a rainy day on our construction project, to big worries about the world changes developing. Even the fear of physical death was there; not of the process and what lay beyond, but of what might be left undone here in time-space. I realized action would have to be taken to clear up this mess.

 

The I-There of me already had a better system at work; The tests I had been undergoing during the past five years, where I non-physically experienced an intense event that engendered a familiar fear time and time again until the fear dissipated, were still in place and operating. Moreover, the battle was almost won. Many more fears were being dissolved than the number of new ones which were being generated by my current activity.

With this awareness came a major revelation: I-There had instituted this process and kept the fear-dissolving operation flowing as needed. No outside source was providing any assistance, as I had wrongly assumed. I was helping myself!

 

Thus the finger became a hand. I preferred the feel of the hand.

How this was taking place aroused my curiosity. Recognizing that I-There provided me (I-Here) with more than a casual connection, I began to search in my present mind-self for other evidence of ongoing participation by my I-There. It was very easy to move deeper, but initially the effect was near- disastrous. I learned what I am! And much adjustment was required to become used to the reality of “what I am.”

 

The Emotional Layer

This was the next inward cloud of energy that I met. I knew all of these emotions, not those that had been repressed, but those past and present that I had lived and treasured, both joyous and sad, and the irrational angers that were now so amusing to me. As with the fears, there was a constant incoming pattern, mimicking what I felt at each moment. The interesting part was that this layer seemed so neatly organized.

 

The Broken Barrier

This was much like a ragged hole in a gray wall. As I attempted to go through this enticing gap, there was a slight resistance and then I was through. As I penetrated the gap, the texture of the original restraining energy of the wall was absolutely clear to me.

I also understood what had happened in my own pattern, what had made that hole. The answer was simple erosion through repeated experience. The amusing part was that in my eagerness I had never paused to notice the very real existence of the barrier.

What was the barrier made of? Earth Life System addiction and the multitude of belief systems generated therein. Evidently I had once slipped through a crack, either by accident or otherwise, and kept widening the opening by usage— probably through gathering information and increasing experience—until that part of the barrier crumbled.

 

The Repertory

So. .. What am I? Beyond the barrier there were hundreds and hundreds of what appeared to be waving beams of multicolored light. Uncertainly, I reached out and touched the nearest one. A rich male voice rang in my mind.

Well, well! Curiosity pays off again, Robert!

I pulled back quickly, but the chuckling stayed with me. Immediately another brightly glowing beam, mauve in color, came close. This voice was female!

Of course! You're not all male, Bobby!

That was only the beginning. The process was repeated again and again. Each time it became easier. Now I realized that every beam of “light” was one of me, one of my I-There personalities complete with a different life experience. Lodged within my I-There was a corresponding life pattern of each personality in great detail. This, I realize, is an inadequate description, because each is a conscious, sentient being with an individual awareness, mind, and memory. Communication was easy because I was holding forth with myself! However, there was so much that I could only skim the surface. The emotional elements were too strong to go deeper.

When I phased over into the I-There of me, finding each one required merely the thought of that pattern in my present life activity. Some of them were familiar, as I knew of them as driving forces in my present life experience. Here are the most salient:

 

The Architect/Builder

This was in the era of cathedral and castle building during the twelfth century in England and the continent of Europe. I was dismissed in disgrace when I objected to the appalling cost in lives of worker-friends when huge stones fell from crude scaffolds and crushed those on the ground beneath. I refused to comply with the irrational whims of those in power. I emigrated to France, where the same sequence took place but with a different ending. Someone in angry authority had me beheaded.

This part of me was reflected early in life, before I was ten, in the building of wooden shacks two and three stories high. Later came the design and construction of theatrical stage sets, and then the design, engineering, and construction supervision of various buildings in Westchester County, New York, and then in Virginia, which gave me such deep satisfaction.

This also explained the deep sadness, amounting to physical illness, during a recent trip to England and France when we visited various cathedrals and other ancient buildings. The effect was so marked that we cut short our stay in both London and Paris. In my I-There the details were completely available, but the emotion was much too great for me to go very deep.

I tried to learn what my name was at that point, but received only an amused, repeated response.

“You were you! You!”

For a time I could make no sense of this, but an interesting verification came in 1990. During a summer vacation in Europe, my younger brother Emmett and his wife went to Scotland to visit what is known as the Munro Fields just north of Inverness. They took photographs of Foulis Castle there, returning home without comment to me about the trip as they didn't think I would be interested.

In November, Emmett received a notice from our Institute regarding activities for the coming year. In it was a photograph of the tower in the new East Wing of the Center. Astonished at what he saw, he made copies of his Munro Fields pictures and sent them to us. In his Scotland pictures, the distinctive feature of Foulis Castle is a tower that matches ours beyond coincidence. Both have four stories, are octagonal and embedded into the side of the main building, have the same general dimensions, the same roof pitch, and both even have similar iron fencing at the top, tied into the building roof, although this is not visible in these photographs.

I didn't know of the existence of Foulis Castle and its tower, nor had I ever been to Scotland. My brother had never seen or known of the Institute tower because it had been built since his last visit to Virginia.

Who built the Foulis Tower? According to Munro clan history, Donald Munro and his son Robert, in the mid-twelfth century.

So there was some hard data. I was I after all!

 

 

about the author, from wikipedia:

 

Robert Allan Monroe,also known as Bob Monroe (October 30, 1915 – March 17, 1995), was a radio broadcasting executive who became known for his research into altered consciousness and founding The Monroe Institute. His 1971 book Journeys Out of the Body is credited with popularizing the term "out-of-body experience".

Monroe achieved world-wide recognition as an explorer of human consciousness. His research, beginning in the 1950s, produced evidence that specific sound patterns have identifiable, beneficial effects on our capabilities. For example, certain combinations of frequencies appeared to enhance alertness; others to induce sleep; and still others to evoke expanded states of consciousness.

Assisted by specialists in psychology, medicine, biochemistry, psychiatry, electrical engineering, physics, and education, Robert Monroe developed Hemi-Sync, a patented audio technology that is claimed to facilitate enhanced performance.

He is also notable as one of the founders of the Jefferson Cable Corporation, the first cable company to cover central Virginia.

Robert Allan Monroe was born in Indiana, weighing twelve pounds. He grew up in Lexington, Kentucky and Columbus, Ohio; his mother, Georgia Helen Jordan Monroe, was a non-practicing medical doctor and cellist and piano player. His father, Robert Emmett Monroe, was a college professor of Romance Languages who led tours to Europe in the summers. Monroe had two older sisters, Dorothy and Peggy, and a younger brother, Emmett, who became a medical doctor.

According to his third book Ultimate Journey, he dropped out of Ohio State University in his sophomore year due to a hospital stay for a facial burn that caused him to fall behind in his studies. During almost a year away from college, a desire to find work led him to become a hobo who rode freight trains. He returned to Ohio State to graduate after having studied pre-med, English, engineering and journalism.

He had an early fascination with flying and music and had great mechanical aptitude. He displayed some ability to read music by age four without having studied the subject, perhaps by listening to his mother and sisters playing piano.

He married Jeanette, a graduate student and daughter of a lawyer, in 1937 and divorced her in 1938 or 1939. He married Mary Ashworth, a divorcee with a daughter Maria, in 1950 or 1951, They had Bob's only biological child together, daughter Laurie. They divorced in 1968. He then married Nancy Penn Honeycutt, a divorcee with four children. They remained married until her death from breast cancer on August 15th, 1992.

Monroe developed ulcers in young adulthood and so was classified 4F (unfit for service) during World War II. He spent the war years working for a manufacturing company that designed a flight-simulator prototype. He wrote for an aviation column in Argosy magazine and was given a job with the National Aeronautic Association (NAA), for whom he produced a weekly radio show called "Scramble!", the primary purpose of which was to interest youth in aviation.

In 1953 Mr. Monroe formed RAM Enterprises, a corporation that produced network radio programs, as many as 28 programs monthly, principally in dramatic and popular quiz shows.

In 1956 the firm created a Research and Development division to study the effects of various sound patterns on human consciousness, including the sleep state. Monroe was especially attracted to the concept of sleep-learning. This was a natural direction to take, applying to this new area the audio production methods used in the firm's commercial activity. The purpose was to find more constructive uses for such knowledge than was ordinarily available, and the results of this research have become internationally known.

First out-of-body experiences

According to his own account, while experimenting with sleep-learning in 1958 Monroe experienced an unusual phenomenon, which he described as sensations of paralysis and vibration accompanied by a bright light that appeared to be shining on him from a shallow angle. Monroe went on to say that this occurred another nine times over the next six weeks, culminating in his first out-of-body experience (OBE). Monroe recorded his account in his 1971 book Journeys Out of the Body and went on to become a prominent researcher in the field of human consciousness.Monroe later authored two more books on his experiments with OBE, Far Journeys (1985) and Ultimate Journey (1994). Out of body experience is akin to astral projection, although it may or may not involve that.

The Monroe Institute

In 1962 the company moved to Virginia, and a few years later changed the corporate name to Monroe Industries. In this location it became active in radio station ownership, cable television, and later in the production and sale of audio cassettes. These cassettes were practical expressions of the discoveries made in the earlier and ongoing corporate research program.

In 1985 the company officially changed its name, once again, to Interstate Industries, Inc. This reflected Monroe’s analogy of how the use of Hemi-Sync serves as a ramp from the “local road” to the “interstate” in allowing people to go "full steam ahead" in the exploration of consciousness, avoiding all of the stops and starts.

The research subsidiary was divested and established as an independent non-profit organization, The Monroe Institute, later in 1985. Interstate Industries, Inc. remains a privately held company, now doing business as Monroe Products.

Robert Monroe's leadership of the entire program of development were supported for more than 50 years by many specialists who continue their participation to this day. His daughter, Laurie Monroe, continued her father’s research into consciousness and the mind’s potential until her death in 2006. Under the current direction of another of Monroe's daughters, Maria Monroe Whitehead, Monroe's stepson, A. J. Honeycutt, and Teresa West, president of Monroe Products, the company's objective is to continue to expand the Hemi-Sync line of products and their benefits into markets worldwide.