Robert Monroe - Journeys out of the body, Practical Guidebook

My vision was dim, as if through a veil. But then, the rest of the sensations I felt reached the verge of reality. This is when I went to the window. For some reason, it was summer outside, and not winter. There was a red fire-truck outside the window. There were really low clouds in the sky. The sun was above them.

Next, everything quickly faded away and I found myself back in my body. Then, I got up and looked at the time. It was 2:15 PM.

Mistakes:

1. When the phantom wiggling worked, I should have aggressively tried to increase the range of movement, and not simply done wiggling, let alone change to another technique.

After all, if wiggling occurs, the phase can always be entered.

2. The same with the sounds. I had no great desire to amplify sounds or even listen in. Everything was done lackadaisically.

3. I should have started with deepening and not actions, as visual sensations were not vivid. 4. I should have employed techniques for maintaining. 5. You can’t look down for long without simultaneously using techniques for maintaining, yet I took in everything outside the window and in the sky. 6. I forgot about the plan of action. 7. I should have tried again to enter the phase.

Plan of action for next time:

1. Definitely deepen the phase as much as possible. 2. I should try to go through a wall. 3. Translocate to my Auntie in New York. 4. Translocate to the Statue of Liberty and examine her crown. 5. Try to conduct the experiment of putting my hand into my head.

Chapter 12 – Practitioners’ Experiences

THE SIGNIFICANCE

OF OTHER PEOPLE’S EXPERIENCES

The ability to analyze the experiences of others can be a great supplement to personal training. This allows a practitioner to review and think through situations that have not yet been personally encountered. The more a practitioner analyses the experiences of other practitioners, fewer mistakes will be made during individual practice.

Reading the experiences contained in this section will shed much light on proper phase practice. The actions that these practitioners took to achieve results will be subconsciously retained by the reader’s memory. Later, these actions may reproduce similar circumstances in the phase, affording valuable opportunities to respond using proper actions.

At the beginning stages of practice, many practitioners lack in real descriptions of phase experiences while technique-related knowledge abounds. Techniques can be conceptualized in many different ways, while descriptions of their application are much more demonstrative.

Thus, many practitioners have no idea about how genuine practice transpires.

The experiences described in this section are useful - even from a psychological point of view. Even if a person believes that the phase phenomenon exists, it may be construed as extremely difficult or personally impossible. After learning about other people’s experiences, a person will realize that these practitioners have been able to enter the phase without any complicated or incomprehensible techniques. The reader will understand that the key is to take right actions at the right moment, trying to master the phase with calmness and confidence.

While reviewing and analyzing other people’s experiences in this section, the reader should remember that these experiences are based on personal beliefs about the phenomenon, which is why occult terminology and notions may be encountered. However, such aspects of the descriptions are not important. Focus should be given to technique-related actions described in the accounts. The reader should also take into account that some nuances (like experiential realism) are not always clear in the text and that it is not always possible to determine why certain events occurred in the phase experiences described here.

All of the following descriptions belong to real people who either related the accounts orally, wrote them down during classes at the School of Out-of-Body Travel, submitted them via email, or posted them on the forum at www.obe4u.com. Though the total number of recorded, verifiable phase descriptions exceeds one thousand, only several cases that are illustrative and useful for developing analysis have been selected. Primarily, these are descriptions of the practitioners’ initial phase experiences, which are most relevant to new practitioners.

The large number of mistakes made by almost every practitioner, regardless of their level of experience, should not be taken too seriously while reading the comments. Actually, it is a rare occasion that the phase is experienced without any technique-related errors.

Everybody makes mistakes.

Experiments are listed in ascending order of quality and number of properly performed actions. Accounts have been published with the permission of the authors.

ANALYSIS OF SELECTED

PRACTITIONERS' EXPERIENCES

No. 1

Boris Pronyakin

Copywriter. Kiev, Ukraine

I woke up in the “correct” state. I immediately felt vibrations, and before I had time to time to think about anything, I was knocked out of my body by a strong kick. I started falling. I had no vision, the floor was gone. Like a nose-diving airplane, I was in a free-fall. I kept dropping faster and faster. I started to feel that I was losing control. The only thing I could do was increase the speed with which I fell, all of the ways that occurred to me to try maintain the phase that I attempted at that moment only lowered my degree of awareness. Touching did not do anything for me, as I was just an unembodied spirit in a complete vacuum. Vision was also missing. I started to panic due to the imminent foul. But the acceleration of the fall did not help either, and I was flying and waiting for the moment when I would be thrown out into the dream world. And I dropped like this until I fell asleep.

Questions:Did Boris describe a direct or indirect technique?

What could he have done if no spontaneous separation had occurred?

How could Boris have more correctly used deepening techniques?

Why wasn't Boris thrown into a phase episode? Why did he fall asleep?

Answers and Comments:An indirect technique was employed.

If spontaneous separation had not occurred, Boris could have tried to separate on his own. If an attempt to separate had failed, it would be necessary to implement indirect techniques by intensifying the vibrations, and then try once again to separate. In order to deepen and, meanwhile, reach a destination while falling, Boris should have applied translocation techniques and, upon reaching a location, continued to deepen by means of sensory amplification. For example, he could have applied the technique of translocation by teleportation with his eyes closed or simply tried to catch sight of his hands through the darkness, which also would have induced an exit.

Boris also did not pay any attention to the roar in his ears. It could have been used for the technique of listening in, which would have helped him to deepen and maintain. The lack of a set aim to land somewhere resulted in his endless fall, though it does not always happen this way. Boris fell asleep due to his passivity and also because he forgot that falling asleep was a possibility, though he did remember about the possibility of an inadvertent return to reality (a foul).