Contents Opening Statement Title Copyright Notice Our Biggest Frontiers Remain Unexplored Exploring Non-Physical Reality Where Did I Park the Car? A Total Rethink of the Afterlife Natural Gateways to the Afterlife Non-Physical Tourist Attractions Misconceptions about Life after Death Vistas of the Newly Dead Rescue Missions The Life of a Zombie Family Reunions The Living Art of Transformation My Father Reincarnated Unreal Reality and Real Illusions Using Meditation to Transcend Dimensions Rekindling a Missed Friendship Non-Physical Quest for Self-Healing Nature’s Justice Consequential Entanglement The ‘Paradise’ of a Suicide Bomber Playing Fields of the Afterlife Lower-Dimension Currency Bridging Dimensions Dying Observed from the Other Side of Death Healing and Learning Places Meeting an Artist Non-Physical City Life Everything We Imagine Is Pulled from an Existing Reality Mysteries of the Afterlife The Art of Manifestation Metamorphosis The Astonishing Power of Shape-Shifting Do We Live a Double Life? Creativity in Non-Physical Reality Fellow Travellers and the Art of Clairvoyance The Directors of Cartoon City Strange Non-Physical Phenomena Psychedelic Non-Physical Realities The Sales Assistant from Heaven Into the Pleasant Lands and Double Lives Non-Physical Job Application Building a Grand Design in Non-Physical Reality Non-Physical Property Developer The Squatters Creativity on the Hoof Alien Life Forms and Long-Lost Worlds An Advanced Alien Species The Forecourts of Heaven The Vistas of Heaven The Gates of Higher Consciousness Life Experienced as a Tapestry Homesick for a Lost Planet Thought Cities The Hall of Stillness The Topography of Heaven A World Unlike Anything Known to Man The Self-Organising Universe In the Beginning was the Sound Meditation OBEs Homecomings The Heart of Home The Silent Companion Samadhi – the Call to Unity Preparations for Life after Death Transformation The Power of Meditation The Power of Service Traveling the Vistas of Infinity Links The moment we leave our physical body behind our unconscious becomes our new external waking reality. VISTAS OFINFINITY HowtoEnjoy Life WhenYouAre Dead by Jurgen Ziewe Out-of-Bodyexplorations into non-local states of Consciousness andpost-life territories ISBN 978-1-326-38074-8 Published, August 2015 Copyright © 2015 by Jurgen Ziewe The right of Jurgen Ziewe to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Thecopyright act prohibits themakingof copies of this work or ofasubstantialpart of it.This includes makingcopies viaphotocopyingor similar process viaelectronicmeans. Edited by Ian Allen Our Biggest Frontiers Remain Unexplored By the time you have finished reading this introduction three thousand people will have died on our planet. By the end of the day their numbers could populate a small town if they were to gather in one place. The vast majority of these people will have no idea of what has happened to them and what is going to happen after their body has been recycled. Our ignorance about our future destiny when we die is problematic because it is the source of much fear, uncertainty and suffering. Simply subscribing to the belief of the atheist, which states that when the electricity powering our brains is switched off our Consciousness simply vanishes into nothingness, hardly makes us feel any better. And even if this were true then this would probably be the only occurrence of nothingness in the whole of nature. Whether we are theists or atheists, having our belief put into question will always antagonise the believer, but as long as we cling to our preconceived ideas without an iota of proof we are vulnerable to doubt. We will never know what will happen to us when we die unless we can see for ourselves. We are passengers riding on a train without having a clue where it is taking us. We rely on vague ideas and beliefs promoted by others rather than by taking our clues from Mother Nature, who offers us glimpses into our greater reality every night when we go to sleep. She has made provisions for us to learn and find out, if only we pushed the door left ajar for us a little further and walked through while remaining aware. Only fairly recently have the pioneers among the dreamers discovered that we can wake up in our dreams and then take the necessary steps to discover what kind of life lies beyond the limitations of our physical body. The few who dared to step through the door, after giving it a final push, have found the powerful consensus that we can lead a life independent of the physical body and, by implication, a life that continues after death. Not only that, many have returned knowing exactly what their future life will look like and have even contacted their dead relatives in the process of finding out. Modern scientists are now referring to this state as Non-Local Consciousness and are hesitantly venturing into territory formerly reserved exclusively for religions and mystics. Ironically, experiences of Non-Local Consciousness don’t discriminate between what people believe in, the atheist and the devout Catholic may find themselves walking side by side in non-physical locations until their beliefs tear them apart. The atheist may discover, provided he ventures far enough, that there is a root level to his Consciousness which may prove him right in his belief that there is indeed ‘Nothing’, and yet this Nothingness is nothing he could have ever imagined. The person believing in God may also find himself proven right, but the God he expected to find is beyond anything he could have imagined as well. The atheist and the theist are both simultaneously on the right and the wrong track, but to reach this point of realisation they will have to walk the long and winding road through the great unknown and their very own unconscious mind and render it conscious. I, personally, have spent many hundreds of hours in full waking awareness outside of my body on the flip-side of physical life and meticulously recorded what I found in my diaries over a period of more than forty years. These experiences, some lasting several hours, were the by-product of my regular deep meditation practice I have been conducting all my life between one and two hours every day on a regular basis. If I were to string all these hours together it would amount to spending over three years in an altered state of Consciousness. So what I have unearthed is not the result of any seance, imagination, wishful thinking, Ouija board or self-hypnosis. I was not channeling, nor was I dreaming or confabulating. It was the natural outcome when Consciousness is focused consistently and regularly over a long period on the very roots of its own genesis. What I discovered I experienced in full waking Consciousness, while during my physical waking hours I built a commercial career and held down a responsible and successful job, often while working sixty hours a week as a freelance commercial illustrator. Yet the more I discover the more I have to admit how little I actually know, because the moment I climb to the top of a hill I discover a whole new unexplored mountain range right in front of me. As insignificant as my research appeared, I conducted it authentically in an altered state while I was fully awake with my self-awareness intact, in a state of Consciousness which was often clearer, sharper and more enhanced than my normal waking awareness. I believe the main reason this process became possible in the first place was simply my refusal to accept that what entered my five senses was all there was to reality, which led me on a lifelong quest to find out who or what this Consciousness was that was conscious – the only way to do this was by looking at Consciousness itself via meditation. It is a tragedy that even intelligent people are addicted to their belief that what they see and feel with their five senses is all there is to see of the whole of reality, even though modern science reveals a completely new and different take on existence almost on a weekly basis. Having turned my attention in the opposite direction beyond the senses I have discovered that what we witness during our waking day is only a minuscule part of the whole of our reality, not even the tip of the iceberg. So here are my reports, down-to-earth, authentic, dispassionately recorded, subjective as well as objective, laid out in front of you from the viewpoint of an Out-of-Body travelling journalist and artist. I am reporting what I found as I peeked beyond appearances into the life that unfolds at the end of our journey. When I first set out on the journey over forty years ago, I never even knew Out-of-Body experiences existed. They were just a bonus of studying Consciousness from the inside; when I experienced my first OBE in the early 1970s it disassembled my perceived world of reality completely. I had no idea whether I had experienced a brain seizure, had plunged through a mysterious wormhole in space and time or whether I had lost my mind. Soon after the first strange anomalies happened, they began to happen more regularly and I started recording and experimenting with them. They had set in motion the most powerful shift in my perception of reality and the universe surrounding us and could not be ignored. But to qualify for an entry into my journal they had to adhere scrupulously to the following criteria: 1. I had to have full waking Consciousness while out of my body. 2. I had to be fully aware that my physical body was in another place. 3. I had to have full awareness of my waking life’s social identity. 4. I had to be fully aware that the experience was not even part of a lucid dream, let alone a dream. It was only under these conditions that my reports would qualify as a valid testimony for the existence of Non-Local Consciousness. Some of these experiences lasted several hours, far longer than the average near death experience. My longest experience, reported in my first book Multidimensional Man, lasted over six hours. It was so intense and so vivid that I feared I might have died and permanently moved into a non-physical reality. Several times during this lengthy excursion I returned to my body to check that it was still alive. When I finally returned to my body for good in the early hours of the morning I found to my dismay that large chunks of my memory of the event were missing, with only fragments retained and perhaps just one hour of the whole experience intact enough to be recorded. This made me rethink my strategies for recall. When our finer, non-physical energy body is reunited with the physical body a large part of the experience gets lost. This is why many people don’t remember their dreams. My first book of my adventures in non-physical realities was published in 2008. Since then I have adopted more stringent new recall techniques in order to overcome memory disruptions, using the following technique. Where I could, I would try to rerun the experience through my mind while still in OBE state. At times I would even report the experience to other non­physical characters to solidify it in my mind. On re-entry into the physical body I would lie completely still, not moving an inch, with my eyes still shut. In this position I would run through the whole experience again in my mind. If necessary I would do that again to make sure of any additional details that might have been overlooked. Upon finally moving and opening my eyes, I would grab my pad and pen, which were always close at hand and write the whole experience into my diary. I would then read through it again and pen down any fragments and key words that popped into my mind. I would close my eyes and recall any memory connected to them. I would then type my notes out. On occasion I would use deep meditation to go back into the experience for further recall. This way I was able to retrieve other relevant detail. This technique worked so well for me that even now I can clearly picture whole scenarios as if they were memories from a holiday vocation. Because these Out-of-Body states were experienced in full waking Consciousness, I no longer see a qualitative distinction between my experiences in physical waking reality and those in the non-physical one. I simply now view waking experience in the context of a unified greater reality where one feeds and informs the other, with one being just as relevant and as important as the other. These are the reports recorded since 2008 when my first book came out. As I am not fond of repeats you will find subjects in my first book not covered here at all, such as the Akashic Records, past-life experiences and a closer examination of non-physical manifestation phenomena. But in the spring of 2013 I had a powerful transformative experience while on a solitary meditation retreat in the Scottish mountains, which I chronicled in my book The Ten Minute Moment. This led to a complete change of perception in my day-to-day reality. It rooted my identification in a constant and unchanging experience of the present, the Now. All my old identifications with my social self were overruled by an awareness of a greater connected self, an awareness that every moment is new, without any repeats, that there can no longer be a distinction between an inside and an outside world. Personal identification had been upgraded to an identification with a permanent awareness of the present. The illusion that thoughts, with their concepts and abstractions, could form an accurate representation of reality inside my brain, which was largely dictated by past experience and projections of the future, were completely dismantled and no longer held any power over me. In its place came an acute ‘what is’ perception, with the decisions derived from it informing my action. I was overnight liberated from the former great deception; the implications on the quality of my life were enormous. In turn this also led to a deeper kind of meditation which allowed me, the moment I closed my eyes, to take residence in this type of present awareness. Rather than focusing attention on a point, which I regarded as separate, I intimately and naturally identified with the object of awareness. This was simply a stance I had brought over from my new daily and now constant mode of reality awareness. I no longer divided reality into an outside and inside world. I had assimilated that in Consciousness the distinction and separation was an illusion. Consequently it became much easier to live in this new kind of reality, because the control was all mine, even if physical forces appeared to have the upper hand. I had brought lucid awareness into my everyday life. As a consequence my meditation had changed too, as Consciousness no longer allowed for discrimination between myself and the object of meditation. I no longer followed a meditation technique. My meditation was simply being conscious. Wherever I am the point of awareness is what I am, an awareness of the here and now, which is constant, still and new every moment. Because of this the focus is on reality untarnished by beliefs and prejudgements. When I closed my eyes to meditate I now had become the point of focus, merged with the focus, whether it was focused on my breath, a space of light or simply a mantra, which could dispatch me into other levels of reality. This new type of shifting awareness away from a perceived ego or a conditioned self made it possible to enter and observe realities which were previously hard to access, and as a result I was able to go with more depth into those states of Consciousness I had in my previous book referred to as the ‘Super Dimensions’ (although this is not always as straightforward as it sounds because it requires the cooperation of a far greater and deeper aspect of our self). I will document how this greater reality aspect of ourselves determines everything we are and sets the course of our evolution as a human species. Another change that became apparent since my first book was that I viewed Out-of-Body Experiences differently. Instead of using them as a welcome opportunity to enhance my meditation, I allowed them to unfold and regarded them as a guided learning opportunity, set up for me by a higher awareness, in order to learn about aspects of Consciousness and non-physical reality which are relevant to and affect a large part of our population when we die. Rather than aiming to focus on the more pleasant pastures of higher dimensional realities, I was often ‘persuaded’ to scout the common territories and conditions presented to me that the majority of people will need to grapple with when leaving their physical reality behind at death. This allowed me to pay special attention to the psychological subconscious forces acting out in our post-life states, which traditionally have never been fully explored or understood. So far the only (often derided and ridiculed) sources of information about non-physical realities have been supplied by talented individuals known as mediums. This skill of hidden-reality viewing has often been exploited by charlatans claiming to have these abilities in order to make money and exploit weak-minded people. In reality the genuine skills are probably quite rare and have nothing to do with mentalism. Yet in one important aspect mediums are at a disadvantage to Out-of-Body observers. They rarely visit non-physical reality with all their inner senses employed simultaneously and therefore there are plenty of things which are highly relevant to us, but have rarely been reported by traditional medium communication. I am hoping these first-hand, full-sensory reports will lead to new insights and a deeper understanding of the nature of our greater reality and our afterlife. I will also take a new look at the much more sublime reality levels of Consciousness, which can only be reached once ego identification has been transcended and the person freely surrenders to a much higher aspect of Consciousness. These states have often been referred to as the Heaven States by the mystics or, in esoteric literature, the Mental and Causal States or Cosmic Consciousness. As mentioned, as an Out-of-Body experiencer, I very much consider myself to be an investigative reporter, researching the mysterious workings of our multidimensional realities. I am also an artist and I feel passionate about the visual presentation and beauty the visible and invisible worlds have to offer; where my words have failed, I have tried to sketch it in pictures, although these are a poor representation of the actual sceneries. It is not my objective to bring back proof of an afterlife, or to try to convince sceptics of facts that need to be experienced first-hand to be fully appreciated. This book is simply the testimony of an authentic personal fact-finding mission of reality, as well as paying homage to the incredible privilege we are given as human beings to enjoy it. In this process not only will I try to put across what makes up our possible afterlife, but also what underpins our waking life and our physical existence as well, and so makes sense of our world. Exploring Non-PhysicalReality If you want to find out about life after your death, pay attention to your dreams. 21 March 2010 Where DidIParkthe Car? The way the morning sunlight caught the sea of wet pebbles on the beach made it feel as if I was walking across a bed of diamonds. The foamy surf of the waves breaking gently on the shore was not like the white noise one normally associates with the ocean’s edge, but more like a multitude of musical notes strung together to form a harmonic symphony. Above all the light of the sun was pure gold, throwing its fine particles like a luminous net over the world and elevating everything touched by it into glorious splendour. I moved gently along the shoreline, careful not to be caught by the pearly foam bubbles which stroked the beach so gently that I instantly detected that nature this morning was made out of pure love. I felt light on my feet, which seemed to dance to the tunes of the multitudes of sounds rather than walk, dragging my heavy body along. The air was fresh and incredibly clear, rendering everything sharp, as if the world was enhanced by light passing through a pure giant crystal. In the past I had witnessed many sunrises, but nothing had ever compared to this. I was overawed by this unique spectacle of nature. It felt as if atoms which were concocting this world were swirling around me like fireflies, buzzing through my heart and out again, collecting my love and distributing it all over the world in gratitude for being a beneficiary of such a beautiful morning. I could not imagine ever having been witness to a scene of such serene and natural splendour. As I walked further along the beach, I began to question why I had not brought my camera, mournfully looking at the treasures which passed me by without being recorded; such a missed opportunity. Being enraptured by this splendid and continuous moment, where time had taken leave, I stopped and began to wonder how I’d got here. The trance of joy I felt on this glorious morning had momentarily erased my memory and I began to wonder where I had parked my car. It was fifteen miles from where I lived and the only way of getting here so early in the morning was by car. I looked up the embankment towards the coastal road of Brighton beach, but I remembered nothing. The houses lining the seafront were enhanced by the amber light of the sun, but I didn’t remember parking my car anywhere near them. Meanwhile the glorious morning sun had just begun trading in its gold for a more mellowed silver and yet I still had no recollection where I had parked my car. I went back in my mind to retrace my steps – but there was nothing to retrace. All I remembered was getting up for my morning meditation at about five o’clock. I was wide awake, so fresh, enjoying my focusing on pure being. There was no thought. Just an inkling that under the sea of awareness was an ocean of ecstasy ready to burst to the surface. I observed the calm waves of Being, knowing that I could choose to pin my attention on anything, like a hiker would pitch his tent in the wide-open frontiers. I chose it to be the sun, an inner sun, illuminating all space as far as the furthest planet of our solar system, shining its bright light and engulfing the Earth and then all space around me. I enjoyed its warming, invigorating light. Then I went into a deep trance and when I came round I was walking along Brighton beach, wide awake, but in amnesia. Here I was, in a clarity of waking Consciousness I had rarely experienced at any other time in my life. It was only then that I knew with a staggering certainty that I was out of my body. In full possession of a super-waking Consciousness, I had translocated fifteen miles from home, leaving my body resting in deep meditation, a shell without a soul, a mere coat left casually hanging in the wardrobe while I went out for a stroll. Yet despite my rational analysis, I still could not fully trust this overwhelming realisation in the face of this clear waking reality. To make sure, I lifted off the ground … and thankfully it happened, flawlessly, a mere one foot high at first, I hovered like a weightless ballet dancer, but that wasn’t convincing enough. What if it was a fluke, a misinterpretation of time, a mental misrepresentation of physical action? So I hovered higher, first two then three feet up, gliding effortlessly over the incoming waves, which were unaffected by my dance. When I jumped up and performed a somersault in slow motion I was finally convinced. I was out of my body and yet it felt so physical and real. I hovered up higher, one metre then two, then I floated gently along the beach for another ten, twenty metres. When I finally accepted the reality of my Out-of-Body state, it was too late to take the matter further. I was already back in my coat of flesh, sitting in my meditation chair as if nothing had happened. What makes Out-of-Body experiences so immensely powerful is the fact that wakeful awareness is no longer tied to the physical body, and with this awareness liberated and no longer burdened with the running of our heavy physical machinery it can be placed at any point in time and space, in the past or on a completely different dimensional level. We can live an alternative life with the same or an even greater level of awareness than our physical life has to offer. All the time we are still who we are, retaining our full sense of identity. There is no limit to what this ‘me’ can experience or the places it can visit without the attachment of a physical body. We enter a world of continuity where no ends are in sight, no limits in place and soon find that we can visit and speak to family members who have died before and there will not be a shadow of a doubt that we are speaking to the actual people we have loved and known, all the while knowing that our body is still in a place where we left it. Now untethered, we can choose where we want to be with our complete identity intact, in total sanity and in full waking Consciousness. Now, just let us sit back and consider the full scope and the implications this can have on the way we will live our lives and how we will regard our future with no death lurking ominously on the horizon. It is nothing less than a life without limitations. I will come straight to the point. This is not a book about delivering proof of whether it is at all possible for Consciousness to work independently from the body or whether there is life after death. I gave up on the concept of death many years ago and most who have had this kind of experience have done so too. Nor is this a book about teaching the art of achieving this state. Hundreds of books have already been written trying to convince the sceptics that life is a continuum and dozens more have been written teaching the arts of Out-of-Body travel and lucid dreaming. This book is simply a testimony of its reality, the incredible scope of it, and the poetry encountered while doing it. The Out-of-Body state in full waking Consciousness is undoubtedly the biggest miracle in human Consciousness we can ever experience, and every time I am blessed with this miracle my life is transformed anew. Every time, despite the fact that I have experienced it hundreds of times before, I feel the same thrill, the same awe. Only people who have never experienced this exalted state will argue that it is an illusion of the mind, a hallucination, a misdirection of brain activity, and thus they will be happy to close their minds to this greatest of all miracles. Without giving it another thought they will turn their attention to what they consider to be real, the world of hard facts, the hard pain and the outside world that enters our awareness through our five senses and has no link to us whatsoever. To them, the world surrounding us every day with our eyes wide open is seen as the only reality and everything else can only be a breakdown in coherent brain activity, a hallucination of a delusional mind, self-deception or the fantasy of overactive imagination where we would be advised to seek the help of a medical professional and request suitable prescription drugs. At best it is simply a dream we ought to shake off in the morning so we can carry on with our ‘real’ life, the only reality that counts. Hardly any of us will suspect that our accustomed way of seeing the world is simply a grand deception and that our dreams are actually glimpses through the cracks of our reality into a real and coexisting other world. A world more permanent and longer lasting, a reality which contains the superstructure of our lives and the building blocks for the whole physical universe. Not only that, this is the world where we can find the answers to all our questions and the explanation for why we are the way we are and behave the way we do and why we are here in the first place. Psychologists have recognised this a long time ago, but only a few have foreseen that we can visit the world not just in our minds and in our imagination but for real, and can confront our issues there face to face in an environment that is just as hard or as soft as the physical world we live in. We can even penetrate to the very genesis of our own creation and become one with the Consciousness which creates and embraces everything there is. Psychology has accepted that nearly every step we take in our waking life is guided by forces we are not even aware of and mostly have no control over. Every thought taking root in our minds is the result of complex programs, conditionings and systems, guided by hidden memories and unconscious drives. Almost daily we are steered by impulses, thoughts and feelings we have little control over, and we have no idea from where or how they originate. Our lives are driven by an engine we simply do not understand. We are looking for remedies for our confusions and pains by moving objects pointlessly around in our outside world. When in crisis, we frequently resort to prayers and blind faith in some mysterious deity or power in the hope that we may ultimately be spared our fate, our inevitable decay and our final disintegration. Most of us are travelling on a train without knowing its destination or when it will arrive. Everybody is fighting for the most comfortable seat and a place by the window so we can distract ourselves by watching the world go by. We keep the fear of the great unknown at arm’s length in some distant future by using drugs, fixations and entertainment and continuously trying to pretend that we are immortal and that death only happens to others or in some almost unreachable future. And while we idle away our time with distractions our train is closing in on its inevitable destination with every hour that passes. These reports can be seen as a city guide for our destiny recorded by a traveller who has already been there and returned to give testimony of the place we are heading towards. Many thousands of others have done so too, those who have left their body voluntarily or those who have escaped death by the skin of their teeth and returned to tell their tale. They are normal people, holding down responsible jobs. The only thing that makes them different is that they have peeped behind the curtain. The tales they bring back are as different as the people reporting them, and yet they share many common denominators. In this book I will testify to my own experience and point out some of the many features which we are likely to encounter when our train reaches the final station. Out-of-Body Experiences can happen spontaneously. When they happen on a regular basis it is attributable to a disposition or regular practice. In my case I attribute the lifelong practising of meditation to this effect, almost as if it ruptured the conditioned fixations of beliefs and identification and allowed my awareness to soar freely towards freedom. I have to stress that this is not about lucid dreaming, which professional psychologists now widely accept as real. Although lucid dreams were frequently used to induce an Out-of-Body experience by dismantling any subjective content arising from the subconscious personal field, I always endeavoured to make sure any dream narrative was dissolved and entry was found into a consensus non-physical reality which shared many characteristics of our physical world. ATotalRethinkof the Afterlife As time goes by and more explorers report their experiences we will no doubt find proof in consensus until we develop technologies which will allow us to make recordings in some form that cannot even be conceived of at this point. Considering that fifty years ago the mobile phone was also not even thought of, we are very much in pioneering territory. Until then personal experience and the independent testimony of the many will hopefully bolster the authenticity of this investigation until enough scientists are convinced and encouraged to direct research resources to penetrate into these uncharted dimensions with new technologies other than drugs. My testimonies will most certainly not match anybody else’s observation and yet people who have had similar experiences may well recognise the territories covered. Hopefully this will encourage other explorers to open their minds even further, dig deep and reach beyond their limitations. For most people who have never considered the fact that Consciousness can exist without the body it is hard to imagine what a life after death minus a physical body might look like. It would be natural to think in terms of ghost-like entities or vaporous mists with human faces perhaps floating around in a nebular environment. Until recently people have relied on old belief systems and their imagination to conceive a reality beyond the physical. They may have imagined ending up in some kind of Heaven endowed with wings or hell depending on whether they had conducted good or bad lives according to set moral standards. Mankind has relied on many sources to build up a picture of the afterlife. Almost all of those that rely on actual experience rather than belief or assumptions give only a partial image, but combining all the individual pieces and discovering their consensus we may build up a broad understanding of the afterlife territories and gradually arrive at some kind of consensus. The greatest problems arise when beliefs intrude or take ownership of an experience. Traditionally religion rather than science has claimed the authority of knowledge of what our future beyond the physical has in store, but all too often our religions have been misunderstood and misappropriated, uncompromisingly, for propaganda purposes to serve invested power structures and control its followers, often with horrendous consequences. Instead, a fresh approach and unconditioned look will reveal a grander universe following laws and processes that are an extended set of nature’s rules, expanding into an infinity which can no longer be captured by mathematical formulas – and yet I found at the root of creation lies a geometry of mathematical precision that determines the manifestation of all the realities I have visited. However, I have found one overriding law that can be laid down in one simple sentence: When the relay station and filter, which is our brain, stops functioning and the body is returned to its individual atoms, our conscious and subconscious mind become our new external reality. NaturalGateways tothe Afterlife Dreams are our natural gateway into the world that awaits us after death. The problem is that dreams are also the fantasies we invent, the story lines through which we narrate our unresolved conflicts and confront our hidden demons. Our dreams are largely our own inventions which quickly dissolve into puffs of smoke. We can safely say that most of our dreams are the processing engines of our unconscious – without this processing we would hardly be able to function – and yet they can be so much more. As soon as we become conscious in our dream, things take a dramatic turn. What had until then been a fantasy, a projection of our unconscious mind, suddenly becomes reality. We are awake in our dream and from that moment on we have the capacity to be fully in charge. We can, to a large extent, control our dream and can use the power of lucid dreaming to reap astonishing creative benefits. Despite all this we are still largely in a world of our own making, which can be as fantastic and imaginative as we wish to make it. In lucid dreams we enter a virtual world of such extravagant quality and power it is truly miraculous. However, this is not the world we visit when we die, although we will still be able to conjure up these fantasy worlds after we have died (and more easily at that), but it is still very much our own subjective world which cannot be shared by others. We can go a step further still. We can break and terminate the lucid dream itself without waking up in our bed, and instead enter into a non-physical reality that is similar to our waking world and yet is ruled by a set of completely new laws. This is the world of the Out-of-Body traveller, known since antiquity as the Astral World, the world we will inhabit when our physical stay on this planet comes to an end. This is an alternate universe, grander in scale than our physical one but also existing on a multitude of dimensional levels, which makes it by all accounts unlimited and infinite. And yet even this is only a scratch on the surface of yet other sets of realities which have no beginning and no end and are beyond the capacity of our imagination. These worlds too can be entered into once our mind meets a set of very specific conditions and we have overcome our acquired conditioning, fears and self-imposed limitations. They are the beginnings of a much greater journey into higher forms of awakening and vastly expanded states of Consciousness, which no longer fit into the parameters of our normal understanding and definition of conventional knowledge. When entering the Astral World we have already burst our bubble of limited understanding and accustomed knowledge, after which we will never see the world as we did before. When we break the confinements of this Astral World by shedding our limitations and the remaining personal identifications, we will wake up to a much more enhanced state of Consciousness and its corresponding environment. These are the dimensions often described as Heaven worlds. Nothing negative can exist here because the vibrational structures are too fine and too sublime. The matter of this world is extremely pliable, our Consciousness achieves a boost in clarity and sharpness which is unimaginable on the physical or Astral levels. Even this state pales into insignificance once we understand how to transcend this phase even further into new levels of super-awareness, transcending into cosmic Consciousness until we arrive at the shores of a world that is pure Singularity and totally beyond anything that can be described with words. The reports gathered here will give testimony of these worlds limited by the author’s rather modest exposure, and will most likely fail to do it justice. At our current stage of evolution we are still living in the dark ages and have barely risen out of a primordial slime of Consciousness. My modest testimony, I hope, will give an insight into what is possible to perceive and experience. I had already accepted, when entering these states, that I had only scratched the surface and that there are looming infinite other stages, evolving and manifesting, which will forever remain unexplored by human Consciousness. So let me begin at ground zero, the world where most of us will find our first foothold, the world entered frequently by taking the normal dream to lucid dream route into non-physical consensus waking reality. Let the following experience serve as one such typical example to introduce the spectrum of non-physical existence. 9 November 2008 Non-PhysicalTourist Attractions This was an extraordinary night. I woke up at about 3:15 am, having had vivid dreams of a strange place which felt very real. Somehow I was unable to escape my dream Consciousness while all the time thinking this was more than a dream. I decided to get up and meditate to clarify and crystallise my Consciousness with the intention of re-entering the same scene, but this time obtaining full waking awareness. After meditating for forty-five minutes I went back to bed with the firm resolve to enter the previous dream lucidly. Sure enough, I found myself where I had left off, but I still had dream Consciousness. I only became fully lucid when I realised that the building I found myself in had to be a ten-star hotel, judging by the sheer luxury and out of this world extravagance. The thought was so ludicrous that it instantly catapulted me into full waking Consciousness. For a moment I halted in mid-track to let the realisation fully sink in. As usual I fastened my attention on the ground to make sure any dream or fantasy narrative was dispelled. I also needed to deepen my waking awareness, which happens when focusing on minute detail. The last thing I wanted was to have my experience cut short or let myself drift back into a dream. I was keen to carry out a full-scale investigation of the workings of this non-physical reality. I wanted to know about the people, their social interactions, their psychology and states of mind. I was focused on bringing back as much clear and detailed information as possible. This was my firm resolve. After having obtained maximum waking awareness my mind was alert and clear. There was no trace of drowsiness or blurry vision, which can sometimes occur. I had super-crystal-clear vision and a mind so sharp and alert that I wondered why on earth I could not always be as perceptive. Thus fully established in this amazing new reality, the first thing I took in with considerable enjoyment was the fact that I was in a huge lobby of the most luxurious hotel I had ever seen or could ever imagine. The Burj Al Arab in Dubai is widely regarded as one of the world’s most extravagant hotels. Yet this was of a different class altogether. The lobby was a square of majestic marbled archways. The columns started off classic and simple at the base, but the actual column contained the most intricate carving imaginable. It reminded me of ancient Chinese ivory figurines where the artist has spent months carving just one object, but here every column was carved this way, right up to the ceiling, at least twenty feet high, and each column was unique. I could have easily spent all my time admiring the artistic perfection, the elaborate motifs. It was not just the intricacy of the craftsmanship; they were multi­layered. Underneath the lustrous layer of carving was yet another layer in gold, equally intricate, shining through the gaps and providing an extra level of depth and a glow that would be impossible to carve with conventional worldly tools. The design extended to the ceiling, where they turned into wonderful three-dimensional frescos of magnificent ancient outdoor scenes featuring fantastic celebrations of the many Heavens. It was the sole purpose of the lobby, I felt, to let the visitors know that they had arrived in Heaven. I have come across this level of craftsmanship before, which is only possible in a world powered by thought, nowhere else. Everything in this experience has to be seen against this background, because wherever I looked there was a level of sophistication and artistic accomplishment that would simply be unheard of on this physical Earth, where time and money are such precious commodities. Here craftsmanship means power of imagination, which can be drawn upon and accessed with much greater ease. Yet the most powerful impression was that I felt strangely at home here, despite the fact that everything I had encountered so far was like nothing I had ever known or seen before. It was simply an atmosphere of being home, but in a ‘strange’ world. This was of a different world, though closely connected to my inner sense of belonging, with an atmosphere which the physical world simply cannot provide. Everywhere I looked I enjoyed a pervading feeling of comfort and a security which made me feel safe and at ease. In addition a powerful sense of liberty to explore all I desired, without any feeling for unwanted consequences, was an ever-present potential. The immediate impression was that all the people were extravagantly stylishly dressed and, without exception, very attractive. Not only in the style of their outfits, but nobody here seemed to be challenged by physical shortcomings in looks, weight, age or impairment, which is inevitable to come across when walking through a town centre on Earth; they possessed an ageless beauty and even noticeably older-looking people with silver hair had smooth, unblemished skins. They were milling around in open bars, boutiques and luxurious malls attached to the hotel. It was curious to see that there were staff, who were only too pleased to make sure the visitors had an enjoyable time. I approached one of the waiters and asked him what was on the menu for dinner; he escorted me into a luxurious restaurant, but unlike its earthly counterpart, all the food was displayed on artistically laid-out counters of a diversity and abundance which challenged my comprehension: table upon table catering for every taste and offering a great diversity of exotic delicacies. I indicated that I didn’t want to eat at the moment, but it was nice to know what was available. The host smiled and I took my leave, exiting the hotel via the gold-veined marble second entrance, which led straight into an open park. On the steps I paused to take in the unexpected view into a tree-lined thoroughfare, paved in pure marble of a quality I would only expect to see in the most opulent earthly mansions. This was the central walkway, interrupted by fountains with sparkling waters and exotic birds bathing undisturbed and at ease. On either side luscious green lawns were dotted with oriental trees and ornamental flowerbeds in an almost random yet considered way to break the pattern. I could clearly see that the whole park was the centre spot of what can only be described as an ancient city. It soon became apparent that this was not a traditional metropolis, but a place purely catering for holidaymakers and people seeking enjoyment and entertainment. After enjoying the park and venturing into the streets thronged with crowds of people I was reminded of Venice in high season, where the roads were so crowded that it was hard to enjoy the character of the beautiful architecture. This was no different. I took a turn to the right to escape the crowd and walked alongside huge ancient buildings, marvels of architectural statements in traditional classic style, which no doubt would have been the envy of any ancient emperor. Here were fewer people and I soon covered a couple of miles until I came to yet another vast open parkland, which was abundant with artistically landscaped gardens. What I imagined to be flowers on closer inspection turned out to be artificially created art objects resembling flowers, made from varieties of crystal and precious metals in different colours. I couldn’t ignore a distinctly artificial human touch, which had little appeal to my artistic sensitivity but obviously attracted the attention of many of the visitors, who were invited to collect as many of these objects as they pleased as souvenirs. Somehow I found it hard to shake off the feeling that these objects looked rather mass produced. I would have preferred them to be natural flowers, but I supposed the creators of these parks were more concerned with promoting their own artistic taste and the reaction of the crowd seemed to prove their choice to be correct. Very soon I came to a large monument, entirely made of glass, and people were scaling it, fascinated by the beautiful effects of the refracting crystal glass and the intricate designs they would encounter on their way up to the top while being offered a panoramic view over the city and the surrounding land. I too climbed up this gigantic structure, talking to people I passed on the way up. One man pointed out to me that it was possible to simply break features off, such as attractive crystal clusters, and collect them as mementoes, because they simply grew back. Although fascinated by the phenomenon, I was more interested in reaching the top in order to find my bearings. Once there I looked out for the ten-star hotel I had arrived at, but was unable to spot it. There were just too many buildings. The monument I had climbed was easily the height of the Sears Tower in Chicago, though climbing was more like an effortless rising. When I looked down I spotted below a vast expanse of canvas squares that I had missed on my approach to this giant shard. Driven by curiosity, I decided to take a closer look and, taking off bird-like, I glided down for a soft landing on the canvases below. As I sailed closer I noticed that they were canopies perforated by wooden posts. I felt instinctively anxious not to be pierced by any of the posts or break through any of the marquees. However, anxiety was almost like the guiding force for my landing, and I crashed straight through the canvassed roof of a market stall, one among many hundreds. Upon landing I apologised to the stall owner, a women in her mid-thirties who only found my landing manoeuvre amusing. ‘Not to worry,’ she said, ‘no damage done.’ The market too was thronged with people and I immediately took a keen interest in the goods on offer. I asked the lady on whose roof I had landed where all these goods had come from as I marvelled at the astonishing diversity and craftsmanship of the objects on display. ‘There is an overabundance of artists in this world and there is plenty to choose from.’ Without my enquiring how she somehow knew that I was a visitor from a different dimension altogether, she smiled warmly at me. ‘People are only too eager to share their handiwork with other people and there is no better place than one of these touristy places. There are plenty of people here to collect these items for the mere pleasure of owning them.’ She pointed out beautifully crafted vases and ceramics as well as intricate toys. I asked her what would happen when she ‘sold out’. She laughed and told me that as soon as an object found a home, an identical copy could take its place, if she wanted it to, because she only had to contact the owner or simply reconnect to the matrix of the object to create another one. ‘What is your favourite object?’ I asked. To my surprise she handed me a skull. ‘Open it,’ she said. The skull was slightly flatter than a real skull on its side and when I touched it, it sprang open, to reveal the brain in the face of a clock. When I looked at it I found to my amazement that parts of the brain metamorphosed into cloud-like shapes resembling Rubenesque nudes; these became increasingly sensuous and attached themselves to the hands of the clock, which turned out to be male and female figurines, and within moments they engaged in sexual activities. The store owner laughed out loud when she saw the expression of surprise and alarm on my face. I asked what on Earth she liked about this object. She told me what attracted her most to collecting these rather strange objects was that they all captured the psychology of their creators and she found it fascinating what it revealed to her. She told me that Freud would have enjoyed the juxtaposition of death and sex. I smiled when I handed it back to her. I soon discovered the additional attraction of craft fairs like these was the added dimension of animating the pieces and giving them some kind of soul. Inspired by my reaction, she pointed out to me that the design motifs on some of her vases were not static like vases I was accustomed to on Earth, but were impregnated by the thought pattern of their creator to evolve as moving scenes. Being technologically aware as I am, I wondered how long it would take to apply a similar technology to objects on our physical Earth, using microprocessing display, film-coating the object and running an animated program across its surface. I thanked the woman and then left, turning my attention to the crowd milling through the stalls and bars on either side, many of whom carried interesting identical bags designed to collect their mementoes. I found it curious that the idea of mass tourism was still in evidence even here, a super-holiday resort not dissimilar to Venice or any of the other great tourist cities back on my own world, where people herded along the roads to consume all the attractions. My attention was increasingly attracted by roadside counters or makeshift ‘beds’ on which half-naked people rested like intoxicated binge-drinkers, most appearing to be asleep. I thought these would make interesting photographs. Some people had collapsed on top of one another, but looked strangely attractive in their naturally surrendered poses, which brought back images of nineteenth-century opium dens. I asked a woman whether she could tell me what had happened to all these people sprawled out along the road on these makeshift beds. She told me they were ‘drunks’, but not drunks in the sense that I knew them, being drunk from alcohol. These people had consumed some kind of drug, which put them into a different state of mind. She tried to explain it, but didn’t quite know how to. I tried to help out by suggesting that they might be dreaming. She told me, no, it was far more than that. They were experiencing beautiful fantasies but actively being involved and conscious in them. To access these ‘dreamlands’, as she called it, they had to leave their outer shells. I considered the possibility that they might be experiencing an equivalent of our lucid dreams and felt tempted to enquire where I could get hold of this drug and whether it would work on me as well, but then I decided the place I was in was exactly the kind of place I would have wanted to visit anyway. I then became aware that the lady was holding an object like a smartphone or camera and I asked her whether I could borrow it to take pictures. I instantly realised the absurdity of my request, as it would be impossible to bring these images back in any physical form, but at the same time I figured that by taking pictures I would increase my focus and concentration on the scene and then perhaps I would be able to recreate it when back in my everyday Consciousness, maybe even paint it using my digital software. Without hesitation she handed me her device, telling me that she didn’t quite know how to take pictures with it, because her boyfriend had given it to her. On closer inspection I saw that it was a complex and intricate toy, and its main function seemed to be that of a navigation device because when I looked at it I found a map of the city on display. As I focused on any particular part, the life image of that part of the city sprang up in full-colour animation, like you would see on Google Earth, but animated. I couldn’t immediately see any other functions. The girl shrugged her shoulder, then her boyfriend appeared on the scene and politely took the device out of my hands. He said that it simply does everything that you want it to do and, in a typical male technically superior way, added that he didn’t expect his girlfriend to understand it or make full use of it. There were lots of things I became curious about. What was this mysterious ‘drug’ which rendered the people unconscious? What was it about consuming foods when apparently ingestion seems to be a solely physical mechanism? Was it a form of energy they absorbed in the guise of food that set off a reaction with other energies? This question alone seemed to be of profound importance, highlighting the nature of the kind of world that by many is regarded simply as thought-generated without any material aspect. I began to ponder that there was more to the nature of non-physical reality than simply the manifestation of our own thoughts. This is certainly something that will require further research, as in the past I have noticed certain food consumption had a direct effect on how I felt and I could no longer be sure that this was simply a projection informing my experience. What was this tourist place anyway that was so popular? I could see the many attractions and I could see no reason why people on other dimensions should not crave the same distractions and entertainment they were seeking on Earth. One thing that struck me very powerfully, though, this was not just entertainment and attractions, it was ‘amusement on steroids’, all a little too over the top for my liking, but the people here seemed to be tuned in to a different speed and were higher-geared towards sensual consumption. Though I had arrived here for the first time, I couldn’t imagine spending more than a few hours (of our time) in this place, perhaps not even that, because of the sensory overload. Meanwhile I meandered through the many side streets and, without knowing how, I had magically arrived back at my starting point. On the way I had watched a compelling live history show, a very addictive performance by a group of actors and buskers you would never find on our streets without them commanding a hefty salary or fee and only in massive sold-out concerts. I noticed that the big park surrounding the hotel had undergone a transformation since my arrival. Some of the artificial crystal flowerbeds had been emptied and I watched a lady in her forties busying herself organising a new layout. What struck me about her was that she didn’t look as attractive as many of the other people I had come across. She looked rather drawn and weary, with shadows under her eyes, which surprised me. Interrupting her work I asked her, ‘How long do people normally stay in this place? A week?’ She obviously noticed where I had come from. She might have also noticed a slightly unintended cynicism in my voice and she smiled. ‘More like a day in your time – this is simply a world of distraction and entertainment. Some manage a bit longer, but they often return. That’s why everything is done to keep it updated and there is a colony of workers who enjoy doing just that.’ Apart from a few novel experiences I failed to see the attraction from my particular point of view and asked her how long she had been working here. She told me it had not been very long; from the feeling I received I converted her answer into the equivalent period of three months in Earth time. She told me she was here as a matter of education to learn how to be of service to other people. She said that compared to where she had come from this place was Heaven and a great opportunity, and that if I were to talk to ‘Kay over there’ I would understand what her work is all about. She pointed towards a waiter with a white jacket, standing at a low wall about ten metres away from us. The attention didn’t escape him and he grinned at us slightly sheepishly. He became uneasy as I went closer to talk to him; I had an instant and powerful insight. I could see through the veneer of his outer self with embarrassing clarity. I was shocked, and wondered if he was aware of it and minded. It was like looking into his hidden nature or the past history of his character, which unfolded with unobstructed clarity. Beyond his current face I could see an evil life with a picture-scroll of events unrolling in front of me as if taken directly from a horror movie. This made me instantly recoil. Kay looked at me shamefaced. He apologised and told me that normally people could not see into his past as I just had. He had learned an attitude that kept him on a positive keel. Then he proceeded to explain that before he came to this level, he was in a place that was the proverbial hell. He confessed that he had been an outright evil bastard when still alive. Back then he was only interested in looking after himself and his whole life was focused on exploiting other people and taking advantage of them in order to further his own agenda, even sacrificing friends and family in its pursuit. He thought nothing of causing great suffering and pain to anybody. Even murder meant nothing to him; causing pain in the process just came with the job. He said he was killed in a brawl and the next thing he knew he was in the company of people who were exclusively of the same ilk as he was, living in a dark, foul and despicable place. As he spoke I received the images. He scuttled through dark derelict places, dirty rags barely covering his diseased body. Open sewage was spilling through the streets and at every corner was someone picking a fight for scraps of food, which were mostly mouldy or rotting. There was continuous fighting and tormenting each other, often quarrelling over worthless rubbish, trying to get the better of each other, arguing, swearing and beating each other mercilessly, even severing heads and limbs, only to be restored back to normal and then carrying on as before. Their relationships were based on mistrust, resentment, hatred and anger. The worst thing was that they were addicted to their interaction with each other and spent most of their time in the pursuit of argument, putting each other down and trying to get the better of each other. There was no let-up and no escape. No matter how far Kay would run there was only more of the same. Sometimes he would walk for many miles, or run for what seemed to be days, but never reached the horizon, never escaped the gloom. As soon as he stopped and looked around he found he had only run a few hundred yards away from his clan. Again and again he grew tired of it and made efforts to break away from his compatriots, but there were always one or two who caught up with him and wouldn’t let him go or leave him alone. In despair, he rolled up in a heap and shielded himself off from the others, wishing for his torment to end. Finally a stranger turned up, looking quite distinct from the others, with quite a different demeanour. He spoke in a normal voice to him, not shouting, yelling, arguing or trying to get the better of him. He spoke to him in a calm voice and soon Kay started to pour his heart out to him. Then the stranger would leave him alone, mostly when he became angry. In time Kay felt more secure when he was near the stranger and the others would leave him alone. Eventually he asked him if there was any way he could take him away with him so he would be able to cut himself loose from his companions. The stranger told him that he could but there would be conditions. The conditions were that he should start thinking about his past life and the people he had wronged. Kay agreed, but almost instantly regretted it as images of his many victims began flooding him; before he knew it he was in greater agony than he had ever been before. He started cursing the stranger, telling him that he had tricked him, but the stranger simply let him understand that he was only experiencing what he had made others feel and that he had to confront his past deeds if he wanted to move on. When he had moments of rest the stranger would calmly talk to him again without any judgement and remind him of his promise that there was a way out of all this, but it was a very long road. Kay frequently became angry, resenting the fact that he had to suffer the consequences of his own past actions in such a powerful experiential way, and suspecting that it was a trick and that the stranger was no better than all the others here out to torture him. The stranger responded calmly and reassured him that he had his best interests at heart, but that the first thing he needed to do was to start learning to respect other people; and the best way to start was by showing respect to his benefactor, who was here to help him. Kay finally saw that he had few other options and agreed to give it a try. When the stranger started to coach him by giving him hope and showing him little glimpses of light, he calmed down more. Kay eventually started appreciating the stranger and began to refer to him as ‘The Worker’ because he worked so hard to get Kay to see his own shortcomings and tried so hard to get him on to the straight and narrow. The worker never tired in making Kay face the reality of what his life had been and what had to be done to get out of it. Frequently Kay was unable to deal with it any longer and told the worker to leave him and never come back, which he did, and then Kay was on his own again and the environment began to darken around him as before. Soon he was drifting back towards the old place. When he realised what was happening he called out again for the worker and begged for forgiveness. Every time they talked Kay noticed they had moved further away from his old haunts. They were on a road towards a shimmer of light at the horizon, a very faint strip as before dawn, long before the sun showed up, but light nevertheless, and a glimmer of hope. On the road they met other people and the worker showed him how to be kind and helpful. He told Kay that in order to get out of his old life and redeem himself he needed to learn how to be of service to other people without thinking of his own advantage. They went through poor dwelling places and dark towns and cities, but at least these were a little better than the place he had come from. Here he was shown how to care for others and appreciate the value of positive thoughts, which he learned by focusing on wilting plants and trees without leafs. He knew that when the flowers perked up and the dried trees sprouted green leaves that he had begun to learn new skills, and it started to light a single spark in his heart. Gradually his appearance improved and he was no longer dressed in old rags. Kay let me know that the road he had travelled had been very long and hard. Before his benefactor friend left him he told him that a long time ago he was not that much different to him, which gave Kay a lot of hope and strength, and now he was here in a very prosperous and beautiful place, but all the joys to be had here meant not as much as serving the interests and joys of other people. ‘The only thing that makes me happy is looking after their needs and not expecting anything in return, and truly give them something.’ He said he had now learned that giving from the heart was so much more rewarding than receiving a few worthless objects. ‘I give these people the best food and the best wine and I like nothing more than feeling the flame in my chest grow slowly and steadily with every day. I never knew that people showing appreciation could mean so much. ‘One day, when I am fully recovered from my madness, I will go back to my dark haunts to meet my old comrades I fought with, and they won’t recognise me. I will then try to pay the worker back by doing to them what he did to me.’ Then he looked me in the eye and said, ‘As you have just seen when you looked at me, I am still a devil and something in me needs to go back to the place I have come from and confront it. There is plenty more I have to do to become a normal human being.’ I was stunned by the revelation and this guy’s honesty, but I was more surprised by the realisation that the hundreds of people acting as servants were here as part of a gigantic project to serve other people and, in so doing, help themselves. I wondered for a moment whether the whole project was solely created as a rehabilitation city in order to give joy and pleasures to others and learn these most valuable of human skills, to give with an open heart. With this thought I knew I had to terminate my excursion and take notes. So much had happened. I sat down on my own and recalled every moment from when I arrived to where I was sitting now, and when I had come to the end I went through it one more time. Then I returned to my body, lay still with my eyes closed and ran through it all once more. Then I got to my notepad and wrote everything down. There were a number of things I had brought back from this experience. The first and most noticeable fact was that I had acquired new skills (I have confirmed this since with other Out-of-Body experiencers). In my OBE state I was fully clairvoyant. Just by looking at Kay I could instantly see his whole past history. As he spoke to me I picked up the whole narrative of his story in one big chunk, while perceiving every detail as clearly as if I was there. This was a new level of OBE I had not observed before. I would use this skill later to interview people during OBEs and found that I could quickly and radically obtain information by synching into their minds and connecting to their recollection as they were, picking up their experiences as if they were my own, but with a level of great detachment. My frequent transcendencies beyond personal identification during my daily meditation meant that I could enter even very low and bleak states and environments without being affected by their negativity in the least. This ability became more pronounced and stronger with each OBE. With enhanced perception I was able to venture into even the most gruesome and sinister levels without a scratch or the slightest hint of psychological damage or depression. Misconceptions about Life afterDeath Afterlife states are as numerous as human beings, and as complex. The most important things we will have to reassess, and most probably shake off, is a widely held belief that our afterlife will magically change everything and reset all our parameters. Individual reports by near-death-experiencers and channelling mediums are very specific and will almost certainly never apply to ourselves. Some of the medium reports I found were very confirmative to what I have experienced. There is still the rather romantic view that with the end of our life our suffering will come to an end and we will live in eternal peace. RIP is a fallacy which has been implanted in us from early childhood, mainly as a result of ignorance and our inability to look beyond the great curtain. When people proclaim at funeral services, ‘Well, at least now he/she is at peace’, mostly this is not the case unless the deceased was already at peace at the time of death. What in fact happens is that nothing changes and at the same time everything changes … in some ways. My perception when visiting ‘tourist city’ was that I was indeed on a level in which most decent people would probably find themselves when they had finished on Earth and had dealt with all their various personal issues. Though this is not a given. Again and again I was directed into regions to take note of all the things that many will need to face before they are in a position to relish the beautiful land and its people. I found that with the majority of people who are mostly driven by powerful needs for self-gratification and subjected to strong drives over which they have little control, their first encounter with the afterlife reality is anything but the proverbial Summer-Land. The most sobering realisation was that the many people who have no concept of life after death and have never spent a single thought about any possibility of survival will be faced with the curious fact that nothing seems to have changed at all from the worldly place they lived in before, except that everything they experience now is tinged by their state of mind. The biggest challenge for these people is to accept that they are no longer alive in the physical reality. For them this is not obvious at all. For example, if they lived in London they will still live in London, but if their state of mind was negative, London will be like a city at dusk, a dark November day perhaps; it might rain with an overcast sky and they might feel the cold. The houses may look rather more neglected, there could be litter in the streets and other people moping around threateningly on street corners. They may find it confusing that the streets have changed, as will have many of the buildings, but this fact is soon accepted. After all, they are awake and alive and they are not dreaming, are they? Not so negatively inclined people are likely to see London more in the way they used to. They would catch the bus, try to get to work, buy their sandwich at the sandwich bar, go to the pub and mix with others. Many people will simply accept the changed conditions, very much in the way we accept our strange dream reality when we are asleep. This could be due to the fact that we no longer have a physical brain, which is programmed to make sense, consider logic and continuity in order to safeguard our physical survival. If this requirement has been removed, Consciousness may no longer feel the need to run these monitoring programs and will more readily accept incongruence, breaks in continuity and other essential physical survival mechanics and acts, in the same way we act and observe during our dream state, where illogical and outright surreal occurrences are readily accepted. I’ve found people paying much less attention to anomalies; even quite strange phenomena are readily accepted and mostly taken for granted, just as they would be in a dream. I’ve been surprised how quickly people accommodate new conditions and don’t pay much attention to what happened before when alive. For example, people on occasion still use money and don’t consider it odd when they suddenly find themselves having coffee without even paying attention where it had come from. We have to consider how much of the time we run on autopilot without a shred of awareness of the tasks we are engaged in. Mostly we are just as absent-minded and are hardly ever aware of sequences of routine events. We are mostly preoccupied with other thoughts, and in the afterlife state this unawareness simply continues. Because they think they are alive and awake they have no reason to contemplate the logic of their actions and simply take reality as it is. They go to a café and expect to be waited on, which inevitably happens. I was astonished how powerfully their expectation and minds generated artificial entities and objects out of thin air. When our expectations are not met it is usually because of a lack of creative energy, which could be due to conflict or negative feelings that are rationalised or glossed over. Naturally, not everything goes to plan or pans out the way we would like, as expectation is dependent on personal power and the level of positive energy. This can be frustrating but it is also the driving force behind the need to address any issues. If their personal power is weak, as it is eaten up by the multitude of self-centred issues and fixations, people may sit around in a café without being served, waiting in vain for their coffee, becoming frustrated at the lack of attention; or if they manage to materialise their order the coffee may be cold or taste flat. Everything happening is in accordance with the energy that is allowed to flow through awareness. On the whole there are few giveaway signs that they are no longer alive in a physical world. If told so, they may be adamant in their denial by pointing out that everything around them is as real as it could be and they are fully awake and aware and that there is no way that they could be dead because the evidence shows otherwise. Here is a recent example: 29 November 2014 Vistas of the NewlyDead Interestingly, last night I met the husband of my wife’s friend; he had died just a few weeks ago. He had been a totally physically focused person in life and when I saw him he looked incredibly unwell, despite him having passed over a few weeks earlier. I didn’t quite know what to say because I could instantly see that he was in denial of his death. So I simply said, ‘How are you, B? I hear you had a bit of a rough ride lately.’ He confirmed this as we shook hands. His face was bloated and the skin had purple patches. He said something like, ‘Well, I am surviving.’ And then he changed the subject, talking about cars. I thought how right he was, saying that without realising. I knew then that the idea of being dead had not occurred to him and he was also still feeling sickly and it showed. The fact that he was showing an interest in cars could have been a sign that he was getting better, I thought, but I had no idea which direction to carry our conversation and I returned to my body. As far as I can see, this lack of general awareness is responsible for a massive boost in population on the lower non-physical dimensions, which are closest to our physical plane, since the world population has rocketed. If people were more aware this would not be the case and they would quickly move on towards more agreeable pastures. Every time I visit I am aware of it, although there are variations in different locations. I felt every time I was drawn into these dimensions I was forced to take note of this fact, which reflect the state of our current human Consciousness; overcrowding on the lower dimensional levels is representative of our general spiritual state of awareness. The following accounts will give different views of these near-Earth scenarios. The near-Earth dimensions are the levels the majority of people are likely to find themselves in when they die. There will be changes, alterations, differences, but as mentioned these differences will soon be taken for granted and accepted as the real status quo. Everything that is here in the physical world will be very much in place over there as we were used to. There is a higher dimensional copy of everything, sustained by the living as well as the dead. No dead person will think much of it or waste any time thinking about it. Reality is. We will find buses, taxis and cinemas, cafés, bars and strip clubs. We will find shops and people will pay with money without blinking an eye and receive goods in return, or we may not think of money at all and nobody will be the wiser or take offence, and if the issue rises to a point of awareness it is quickly dealt with by magically pulling the necessary change from your magical purse, which was already lingering in the database matrix ready to be materialised by an act of intent or expectation. We will get used to holding a cup of tea in our hands just as a result of our intent and give it just as little thought as we did when we had to put the kettle on, although we may still put the kettle on, put the tea bag into our cup, pour the water on and let it brew. We do what we are used to and what we liked and were expected to do, and we are likely to follow the same habits and routines. The physics of this dimensional world work in conjunction with our energy, our habits and our expectation. In my last book I explored the idea that everything that exists or has existed, is thought of or has been thought of, is stored as data in the universal Consciousness, which traditionally has been referred to as the Akashic Records. Connecting to this area within Consciousness we can access all information. I also promoted the idea that manifestation on the Astral and higher levels could be achieved by calling up information from this universal databank, without us having to create every detail for ourselves. It seems to be the clarity of the energy channel that makes this manifestation possible. This is the way I explained spontaneous manifestations where every detail is in place. For example, if I manifested a car, when opening the bonnet I would find every engine part in place as well, which may only manifest at the moment I open the bonnet and ‘expect’ the engine to be there. As we will see later, things work out differently when deliberate thought intervenes and messes up the natural flow of this universal database system. On these Earth-like levels we walk, we don’t suddenly fly just because we are dead, so we walk when we are dead. We talk instead of communicating telepathically. We eat and drink and go to bed simply because we always have done so. Some may find they can do away with sleep and will do so, some will not. Some give up eating because they feel no hunger and accept that they can function perfectly without food and they will accept it in the same way as we accept sleeping less here or eating different foods, because the experienced reality is more powerful than our memory and new conditions are quickly integrated without much consideration. A great number of people, who have given no thought to the idea of life after death, will quickly take their new circumstances completely for granted in the same way as they have taken their physical life for granted, and will consider their past life more like a dream they have woken up from. Their accustomed lack of awareness will do little to question their new status quo. The best way to understand this is to reflect on our own dreams. Most people who are unaware during their dream when dreaming about meeting their dead relatives will consider this to be quite natural, and it will never occur to them that they shouldn’t meet them because they are dead. Even if very strange things happen in our dreams, such as driving a car with two wheels, in our dream we will think nothing of it. If we meet a dog with two heads, we might be surprised, but we will take it in our stride. We are very accepting and very lenient when it comes to our dream content, without having our suspicion aroused in the slightest. This is what happens to most normal people who have been living their lives unaware and in a dream. They will be just as accepting in their new reality, not being suspicious at all when things present themselves as they do. We are likely to accept after-death reality with its strangeness with the same gullibility as we accepted our dream reality when we were dreaming. It is only the more spiritually aware who will be cognisant of the changes and the altered conditions of the new reality. They are more aware of the flow of continuity. If they led a life of mindfulness on Earth they are likely to pass over the low-level states and smoothly transition into the pleasant lands where their external reality reflects their inner tranquillity. For those unaware, education, adjustments and learning will gradually help them to make the best use of their afterlife and over time they will get the hang of it and accept that external environments are in harmony with their psychological condition. Quite frequently, a deceased friend or relative who has gone before is likely to try to put new arrivals gently in the picture, but this is not always the case and not always easy either. But it is the people who realise that they have made a transition from one level of reality to the next who will benefit the most from the changes and move furthest along the elevator to fulfilment and the potential benefits of the non-physical state. Before this happens most people will be confronted with a new powerful aspect of their non­physical reality, which they may not have been prepared for. This is the fact that with the removal of our physical brain, everything we regarded as our unconscious will be laid out before us like an open book and everything will be as hard and as real as the road we walk on now. This is the key and most important difference between our physical life and our new non-physical reality. What we always regarded as our unconscious is now appearing before us as solid reality as hard as our physical world has been. We cannot run away from it or hide it. It will be right in front of us the moment our attention is attracted to it. It will become part of our furniture, literally, our living companion. It will be with us every step of the way and only a thought away. Many people who have been living a life of bad habits and poor psychological hygiene will now see it manifested and reflected around them. Habits will act like a magnet, pulling them into specific environments or attracting equally minded people to them who are of similar inclination. That also applies to situations. If they have been argumentative they will continue to be and find readily available partners. If they were loving and demonstrative in their affection they too will find others of similar kind attracted to them. In time, being so intensely confronted with their personal qualities or dysfunction, people will learn to deal with these, resolve their issues, overcome their attachments, free themselves of their unhelpful habits, change their mindsets, acquire discipline and learn all the positive things necessary to raise them out of their limitations. Some will gradually understand the new conditions and turn them to their advantage, but many a narcissist, who has lived a self-centred life, perhaps at the expense of others, may find themselves trapped in a loop they may find hard to get out of. A state of mind no longer takes place inside your head, but becomes manifested environment and inescapable outside reality. To give an example: During one OBE I found a woman locked in a white concrete cell without doors or windows. When I talked to her she was lamenting the fact that she had been trapped and there was simply no way she could get out of her prison. I pointed out to her that if I had found a way in she surely could find her way out. I then started talking to her and found that she had placed herself into a framework of such limitations that she could not see a way out of it. Most was based on beliefs she was unprepared to give up. I told her she should start by letting go of her beliefs and consider other options and, if she did, she could walk out of her cell with the same ease as I had walked in. In another slightly more extreme example, I came across a man who was gradually being eaten up by a whole colony of white maggots. I immediately saw that he was suffering from extreme resentment and self-hatred, which was literally eating him up. When the maggots of his resentment had completed their work he was restored once more and soon they began to consume him again. I have witnessed scenarios that could serve as powerful inspiration for devoted writers of the horror genre, but here it was reality that would only change via an inner workout. Rescue Missions For most decent people, it is almost inevitable and perhaps instinctive to want to help when finding fellow humans in distress. This applies to our life on Earth as it does obviously in the lower dimensional afterlife levels as well. In the afterlife state we find more readily people of similar mindsets clustered together, their shortcomings and problems reflected in an equally bleak environment. Here on Earth these challenges are not as obviously visible. Visiting whole territories and dimensions marked out by mindsets expressed in rather depressing environments makes for very graphic documentation of how a state of Consciousness can mark out a large section of our species, something not readily found on our physical Earth. Obviously there are even larger territories and dimensions where humankind enjoys the opposite, leading very pleasurable and fulfilling afterlives; these too are reflected in equally luscious and uplifting land and cityscapes, as we have already seen. Finding myself so regularly on the lower dimensional levels at times made me question my own state of spiritual and moral integrity. Was I really that psychologically challenged that I felt attracted to these rather dire states and environments? If so, I would have to face up to this. Though this didn’t sit with the fact that I spent an equal amount of time on much higher levels, even dimensions which can only be described as pure Heaven states or sublime paradise, and on occasion even beyond these. This and the fact that I never ever felt emotional distress other than compassion told me that there would have to be other reasons for my being here. One that sprang to mind was simply the fact that the near-Earth dimension was closely tied around and interconnected with the physical Earth, so it would only be natural to be caught in it, like a fly in the spider’s web, during an Out-of-Body experience. The other explanation which I found far more appealing was the suspicion that a higher aspect of my awareness was pulling the strings and sending me there for educational reasons, to gather information or simply to help some poor souls in distress. These higher guiding forces frequently employed representatives who would appear on the scene, sometimes in disguise, at other times openly or invisibly or simply acting through me as an instinct. The needs of some inhabitants are sometimes so obvious that they are impossible to ignore. I also felt persuaded that these are states of our human condition which are important to acknowledge and for me to report what kind of reality we are likely to be faced with when we neglect our more sublime inner nature. The furthest thing from my mind though is the idea of pushing a morality agenda like some religious missionary. I am simply reporting observed facts to allow others to draw a picture and their own conclusions. My overwhelming impression is that, given the state of society we live in, most people alive today will simply slip after their death into one of these close-Earth proximities because their minds and souls have not progressed beyond furnishing their immediate needs and looking after purely selfish interests. This unfortunately seems to be the predominant state we live in. Not surprisingly, this is also where most urgent work will need to be done by those who feel a call to help. I am hoping that my reporting will gradually spread into the wider awareness, assisted perhaps by many more non-physical journalists like myself. I feel down-to-earth factual reporting is the key, in the same way that we respond to reports of catastrophes and humanitarian emergencies in order to raise awareness and mobilise aid. To effect positive developments and enhance awareness in our universal Consciousness it is counterproductive to push morality or the propaganda of religion. Our current afterlife condition is as much a catastrophe and humanitarian emergency as any on the physical level and is crying out for change in the same way as many of our social and spiritual problems here on the physical level are crying out for enhanced awareness. Just as our mental health will need to be addressed in order to heal society’s ills, I am finding that our mental disease-ridden human conditions, which we carry over into the afterlife, need to be dealt with in much the same way as our physical ones. The two cannot be separated from us living here. Because Consciousness is continuous, a change in awareness here will affect conditions over there and vice versa. However, when confronted with actual misery it is impossible to turn a blind eye. 5 April 2009 The Life of a Zombie I got up at 5:30 am to meditate. My wife Julia had already occupied our small meditation room so I took a small easy chair next to my bed. All night I tried to work out in my dream how to present my knowledge of the other dimension in such a way that it would be acceptable to even the most hardened sceptics. Although my dreams seemed to yield some plausible solution, now fully awake, they appeared to me to be outright absurd. So much for using dreams to promote practical solutions. For ten more minutes I tried to close the whole subject I had spent most of my night contemplating and then decided to let my thoughts go and gradually sink into deep meditation. At one stage hypnagogic images started to emerge and I pondered the idea of following these to gain entry into the next dimension by watching the emergence of a scene in my mind and then entering it lucidly. Instead I dozed off. In my dream I was in a dark scene and it rained heavily. The whole main road I was walking on was under four inches of water. My feet were wet as I trudged towards the town centre. About two hundred feet in front of me I saw a hill of water. The sight was so absurd that I instantly realised that I was dreaming. At that moment the rain stopped and the water disappeared. With the dream narrative disintegrating I acquired full waking Consciousness. I focused on my right hand until I saw every pore of my skin very clearly. I challenged myself to see how far I could resolve the detail of my skin and I was amused to find that by doing so I played an active part in the creation of my hand, which solidified via billions of dancing light particles and atoms. However, as I looked up I found that although the rain and the water had stopped, the surroundings I found myself in were distinctly dark and unpleasant. Some shadowy characters were moping around, seemingly oblivious of my presence. I thought it was imperative to move away from this dark, sinister place and try to make it into a higher dimension, a place filled with light and beauty. As usual to do so I chanted the OM mantra and was instantly swept off my feet and pulled into the sky towards a golden crack appearing within the clouds. At the same time a shaft of light poured towards me, accompanied by the sweetest sounds imaginable. As I moved towards the opening my enthusiasm began to wane. Inexplicably I felt the urge to return towards the dark region I had just risen from. I was annoyed. Instead of scaling the lofty heights by following the sweet sound current into a higher dimension, I was compelled to submit to an irresistible urge and follow the very opposite direction, down. I had no choice in the matter at all. I was drawn by a deep instinct towards the group of shadowy characters I had seen and avoided before. I was already somewhat familiar with this strange urge that compelled me into the nether regions. Behind it I always sensed a presence of benevolence, a kind of deep inner knowing that I had to do what had to be done and go where I was sent. As I drew closer the appearance of those people reminded me of zombies from a horror movie, except they were not aggressive or threatening, they just looked hideous and rather depressed. They were more preoccupied with themselves than paying me any attention. I could not detect a single iota of positivity radiating from them. Their sight made me feel rather sorry for them and instinctively I picked out one character among them who was covered in horrid green scabs with skeletal features showing through the hideous surface of the diseased skin. Part of the flesh around the mouth was eaten away, revealing the craggy ruins of the teeth. Despite the hideous disfigurement I could identify the character as female. She had no hair, instead her emaciated skull was covered in crusty, diseased scabs. The recognition that she was female had nothing to do with outer appearance and for a moment I wondered how I arrived at this information. All I could feel was great sorrow and pity for her as she turned away from me when I approached, trying to conceal her shame, panic and anguish. Nevertheless I approached her with resolve. ‘Do you know where you are?’ I asked her. She flashed her attention towards me, fearful and nervous. Somehow the compassion I felt for this sad creature allowed me a quick glimpse into her soul. ‘I seem to be stuck in a horrible nightmare and I don’t know how to wake up,’ she said. Just by looking at her I could read her like an open book. I immediately knew that she was a prostitute and had died from a heroin overdose. Her life had been wretched and miserable and only the drugs she was addicted to had offered her a very fragile and temporary relief. She had fallen victim to a crime syndicate, was offered easy drugs for a return of the profit she derived from prostitution. She had tried to escape, but resorted to robbery and theft to feed her habit. Over time all positive impulse had disappeared from her life as her existence descended into a living nightmare. ‘I am sorry to say, but you have died,’ I said straight out, almost surprising myself by my directness; but there was no other way of approaching the subject. She looked at me in horror. I touched her shoulder as I tried to ease the blow. She pulled away and tried to hide her face from me in her hands. She was indeed a hideous monster for which it was hard to muster any sympathy, being so closely confronted by her disfigurement and the qualities which had materialised. The diseased scab in her face, parts cracked open to reveal the bare and brittle bone of her skull. There was no life force at all that would at least lend her a tinge of humanity, a fleck of natural skin. What I could see of her external appearance was made from anger, pain, frustration, hatred for the people who had exploited her and from deep anguish, resentment and depression. Any hint of positive life force had been stripped away, leaving a sad demonic creature as a remnant. Never before in all my life, neither in these dimensions nor on Earth, had I had such a close encounter with human depravity, and yet all I could feel was a deep sorrow and compassion for such a lost life. Knowing that she was aware of how she must have come across and her state of mind, I put my arms around her and pulled her closer. She immediately broke down into heavy sobs and her whole body began to shake. I rocked her gently from side to side and then suggested we should take a little walk, away from her group, and I would explain to her what had happened to her. Still cradling her in my arm, we walked slowly towards the town centre, which was dimly lit. But even such a dim light appeared to be like a beacon of hope as we walked towards it. ‘You have died of a heroin overdose,’ I told her, ‘but you don’t have to worry any more. Your life is about to change.’ I told her that she was lucky that I had spotted her. Others might spend considerably longer in that state of mind and that dark place. ‘The way you look and feel is a result of the unfortunate life you have led and the poor choices you have made.’ I let her know that this was a new beginning for her now. For a start she didn’t have to worry about the wretched company she had kept, the criminal who beat and exploited her and the loveless service she had offered to her clients. I did my best to comfort her when she broke down in tears again and started sobbing so violently that her whole body started convulsing. She slowly calmed down and began to tell me that her life had not always been that bad and she regretted the life she had led and the things she had done to other people. While she cried in my arms the compassion I felt released a deep-felt stream of love coming from my chest and I could see for the first time the hideous scabs from her face and body slowly disintegrating and dissolving and revealing the first semblance of a human being underneath it. Her tears seemed to wash away the dirt and the sickness that had covered her until now. Meanwhile we had reached the town and the streets were lit much more brightly as we arrived. It was as if a rising sun had cast its first beams of light into the world and had begun to banish the demons of the night. We stopped in front of a shop, which displayed a large mirror. I asked her to look into the mirror. To her astonishment she discovered the human face of an attractive woman, though still lined; her smile was open and genuine. Her skin colour was the normal rosy complexion of the average human being. Her joy was infectious. She squeezed my arm and I pulled her closer to me. I suggested we should talk a little more to discuss how she could make the most of her new life and suggested we should sit down on a bench. By now it was daylight and we were looking at a park with a green lawn and trees and people wandering about just like in any park on Earth. I was sadly aware that these were not the bright pastures of paradise, but on the whole a comparatively drab-looking park with big patches of dead grass. Nevertheless, in comparison to the place we had come from this was some kind of oasis. I knew it would take a lot longer to adjust and I told her that it was imperative for her to pay attention only to the positive feelings and not indulge in resentment or anger; whenever she felt something like that towards her earthly tormentors, she should practise the art of forgiveness and seek out more positive thoughts. ‘A bright future now lies before you, but it is up to you to make good choices with your thoughts and where you place your attention,’ I said. She nodded and smiled at me, stroking me gently and affectionately with gratitude. Suddenly my attention was diverted towards a woolly dryness in my mouth and I pulled out some floury-tasting tissue paper that inexplicably seemed to have lodged there. But it did not stop the unpleasant feeling. A chap sitting on a bench next to us laughed uproariously as I tried in vain to remove more and more sticky tissue from my mouth. In the end I opened my physical eyes. My nose was blocked, and breathing through my open mouth had dried out my throat and caused the unpleasant sensation. I took a sip of water and then tried to connect again to the scene, but it was too late. I could not return. There was plenty to learn from this short episode. For a start, the old belief that there are seven levels on the Astral plane needs to be instantly deposited into the bin of misinformation. Wherever it originated from, experience of actual Astral reality tells a different story. I found there are infinite layers, which cannot be separated into stacked layers for the convenience of traditional understanding. The layers are in fact no layers at all, but subtle shifts into states which are neither arranged vertically nor laterally or in any three-dimensional way. We are drawing an environment towards us or draw into it and the process can be gradual and quite unnoticeable. At any stage we may meet other people who happen to be there and we may lose them the moment we are drawn into more refined or gross states. I found this principle holding true throughout Consciousness. The other lesson to be learned is that salvation from a state of Consciousness can be almost instant or happen over long stretches of a particular experience, or appear as never-ending or infinite. I assume that some church mystics might have honed in on these extended stays in a negative mindset and referred to them as eternal hell. On closer inspection these are just illusions and states of mind. FamilyReunions My mother had died in 1997 after a stroke. In my previous book I described that she had suffered from depression, which she had taken over to the next level after her death, where she had cut herself off in a kind of mental cocoon. I described how I was unable to reach her during my Out-of-Body journeys and it was her own mother who had been by her side. Then finally, on 7 January 2005 I met up with her after she had recuperated and had blossomed into her new self, a young and beautiful woman in her mid-thirties, just the way I remembered her when I was a child. These are the graphic and true testimonies of the certain fact that we will never be separated from the people we are closely connected with during life on Earth. I want to state this with the utmost sincerity so that anybody suffering grief and bereavement will know with certainty that your separation is only a temporary one. I can give you my word on this and would like to back it up in documentary form here. As will become clear via the following reports, our friends and family learn and develop, lead independent lives and form new relationships, as well as refreshing and maintaining old ones. My mother has been the person I have had most regular contact with, but all the relatives I had bonded with on Earth, such as my wife’s family, I have met again, and even during brief encounters I gained deep insights into their afterlives. My mother was the closest person to me who had died and I met her from time to time, sometimes briefly, but other times we talked at length and these reports give a better insight into how life on the non­physical reality levels unfolds. 23 November 2008 The LivingArt of Transformation I had three lucid events before waking in the early hours at 4:00 am. In order to wake myself up fully so I would not fall asleep during meditation I went into my studio to check on the rendering progress of a commercial job I had executed overnight. After about twenty minutes I felt awake enough to retreat into the meditation room. Meditation was lucid, but I soon became aware of images emerging and there was a real danger that they would pull me into a dream. I made an effort to stay awake, but the images kept reasserting themselves. I was tempted to enter them to see if I could retain awareness by crossing over into the dream state fully conscious. Unfortunately I simply nodded off. There was no hope on Earth that I could maintain awareness and because it was so early I thought it would be wisest to go back to bed to catch up on a proper night’s sleep. No sooner did I fall asleep when I became involved in some extremely surreal and vivid dreams. I woke myself up and, lying on my back, I decided the next time I fell asleep I would become lucid and establish myself on the next dimension with full awareness. I would then use this to meditate in the OBE state. Sure enough, I was asleep again dreaming about trying to find my way out of a warren of prison-like corridors and rooms. When I found a half-open window I decided to escape, but then my intent kicked in and I realised that I was in a dream. I immediately established full waking awareness by focusing on the wall in front of me until I could see every particle of the rough stone emerging into crystal-clear perception. To my surprise the new environment was not much less surreal, in fact it was so weird that I wondered what kind of madman’s world I might have entered, when I observed strange fantasy creatures walking around inside the long corridor of a modern building. I kept focusing to see if I could actually increase lucidity and thereby disperse the surreal events around me. I couldn’t, I was as clear as I could be, and finally identified the space I was in as the interior of an art gallery, simply by the atmosphere at first. The work on the walls of course reinforced my feeling, and then the visitors. And that was exactly what it was. I was immersed in the live performance of an art show where the performers and artists had creatively transformed themselves into unusual shapes, creatures and fantasy animals. Being an artist, this concept instantly cast a spell on me and I was delighted that the people here made such creative use of their transformative abilities. On our Earth all we can call on for transformation are elaborate costume and make-up, but these were shapes and costumes no human being would ever be able to fit into. Even the receptionist was a strange fantasy cockerel, but compared to what might be achievable on Earth this was in a category of its own, a true metamorphosis from man into creature, into shapes, into living light displays even where form morphed on a continuous basis in astonishing manifestations. I was spellbound by what was possible. This was a show so literally out of this world that had I not been fully awake I would have simply discarded it as some kind of surreal dream, a kind of dream quite typical for deep REM sleep early in the morning. But here I was, exited, in full waking Consciousness. Talking to other visitors, it was confirmed that this was indeed a show put on for the pleasure and entertainment of the local populace. Apart from the great pleasure this demonstration provided, it was made crystal-clear to me how tentative our human appearance is and how it is mostly habituation that makes us look the way we do. In non-physical reality appearance can be altered by intent and the power of imagination. When I came out of the building I strolled straight into a grandiose, square park of a capacious city. Right in front of me I was faced with a large ornamental pond, beautifully laid out in coloured mosaic with people swimming in it and others lazing around on its banks. Beyond the pond was a large park with a number of city blocks and formidable buildings encircling it in the distance in a somewhat picturesque fashion. Despite its extent it still had the cosy small-town atmosphere of the Cornish seaside town of St Ives in England, but here the similarity stopped. This place was very, very busy and there was no lack of distraction or entertainment. So much so, that I felt overwhelmed and thought what a pleasantly boring place our physical world was by comparison. I did not even begin to focus on any of the distractions on offer for fear of being overwhelmed by them and ending up losing my awareness and control over my increasing adventure. My keen eye for art and design allowed me to focus on individual features of this extraordinary city. For example, the exterior of the buildings were simply giant three-dimensional canvasses for incredible expressions in how well even very intricate detail could be used on a large scale. Needless to say, stairs, lifts or escalators were no longer a feature and where they still existed they were little more than ornamental. Despite that, people didn’t simply fly around as one might imagine, even though in these realities it was a distinct option. I did, however, take advantage of this novel way of moving as I drifted along whole streets, enjoying the buildings close up and in detail. The atmosphere and feeling this generated deep inside me was quite a new and profound observation. After a while I remembered that this was a great opportunity to say hello to my mother, who I had last paid a visit to nearly four years ago. With this thought I called out for her with great warmth and affection and very soon I was greeted by two very young and attractive women in their mid-twenties. The only way I recognised my mother was by her aura and the feeling of her. Nothing of her outer appearance was anything that resembled the woman who had reared me and who I had known all my life. It was as if she had undergone a total make-over, including cosmetic surgery, and redesigned every single detail of her appearance. I was struggling to find any characteristic at all which reminded me of her externally. This didn’t stop her laughing, taking me into her arms, giving me a tight hug and a kiss on my cheek. ‘Doesn’t he look beautiful?’ she said to the woman with darkish brown hair and a rather more solemn look standing next to her. To my absolute amazement I realised that it was her older sister, my Aunt Trudi. I was flabbergasted. Here in front of me were two women I had known all my life, who had then grown old, wrinkled and worn down by the trials of life, one dying at seventy-five from a stroke, the other in her eighties from bowel cancer. And here in front of me were two vivacious girls, young, modern and full of the spirits of youth. In the peak of her life my mother had always been full of vitality, reminding me a little of my younger daughter. I had never known my mother was capable of such permutation, mainly because of all the hardships my parents had experienced when I was a child. Only on a few occasions had I witnessed her in vivacious mode when my parents had friends around for a party and my father would play his guitar and friends would join in singing and drinking. When I got out of bed, sleepy-eyed, trying to find out what the noise was, I found a bunch of merry young people intoxicated by liquor and song. And this is how she was now. After our cheerful hello I addressed my aunt to find out how she was. I also wanted to know if my mother knew where our father was and she said: ‘We are not together much at the moment. He has moved on and he now spends a lot of his time almost secluded, producing paintings.’ I looked at the turmoil in this world and I could well understand that one could quickly tire of such distraction. My father had been dead for over fifty years now, my mother for only just over ten. I could understand that she was keen to catch up and compensate the best she could for a life full of hardship by reliving a youth which had been taken away from her by World War Two. My attention was then drawn again to my aunt, who as far as I knew had never been a fashion model, and now I was simply stunned by her young and modern appearance, in a fabulous – even hip – outfit. I knew my mother was the driving force of their companionship, my aunt tagging along, eager to find out what surprises my mother would come up with. I remembered that it was my mother who, with our old sewing machine, was very good at making our own clothing when we were children. So the designs were obviously hers and I grinned from ear to ear seeing my dear aunt like this. My mother caught me and burst out laughing. ‘You are not laughing at me, I hope,’ my aunt responded. Both of them were radiant with life and joy. It is no surprise that they had changed so much. From childhood to old age we all change and morph continuously. Some people even undergo extensive surgery and make-overs during their lifetime. It would almost be unnatural to expect people to keep their looks when they have at their disposal such magical powers for transformation, employing no more than the intent of thought and imagination. Unfortunately our meeting was cut short when I was distracted by a feeling of having chewing gum stuck to the roof of my mouth, which I tried to prise away while talking to my mother. In the end I woke up with a dry mouth, caused by having slept breathing through my mouth with my nose blocked. I took a few sips of water, then, lying on my back, ran through the experience in an attempt to remember as much as I could. I knew that if I didn’t move I was likely to return to a lucid dream. Before I did so, I decided on a task list to investigate the world in a bit more detail rather than allowing myself to be dragged along by a course of events I had little control over. Unfortunately my return did not materialise. Less than a year later I met my mother again. Since I had moved to England in the 1970s a year was about the average timespan when I met up with my family in Germany. So one could say, death hasn’t changed the regular visits. The one thing I had tried on many occasions unsuccessfully to do was contact my father, who I had lost as a nine-year-old child. I finally succeeded, but not in the way I had expected at all. 10 May 2009 MyFatherReincarnated I went into my meditation room at 4:30 am, having been awake for about ten to fifteen minutes. The night before I had studied material on deliberate Out-of-Body projection and was tempted to give it a try. For twenty minutes I followed the procedure laid out in an OBE induction video, but quickly became bored with the technique. Entering my customary deep meditation after this was a welcome relief and, almost instantly, I soared into a sublime state of Consciousness which gave me great clarity and a deep inner peace. This instantly confirmed to me the superiority of meditation over Out-of-Body techniques. Nevertheless, over the years I had accumulated an impressive record of Out-of-Body travels into parallel worlds and there is no denying the fascination the techniques hold for the explorer. I still had not dealt with the fact that I had never managed to contact my father, who had died over fifty years ago. My meditation lasted ninety minutes and at the end I made a strong impression on my inner mind that I would attain lucidity when falling asleep and try to find the whereabouts of my father. Almost as soon as I fell asleep I became aware that I was dreaming and simultaneously I realised that there was no dream content but simply an awareness of some other non-physical reality. I was standing in my studio looking out of the window, but instead of seeing the back of our garden, I was looking out over a large piece of wasteland. In order to get out I tried to pop through the closed window as I had done many times before, only this time the glass pane was like thick bendy industrial Perspex, perhaps two or three millimetres thick. It bulged out with my pressure, but it took determination to pop it and in the end only the intention to be outside managed to break it. Outside I was aware that this was a very low-dimensional counterpart of the physical Earth. The light was a murky dusk and as I bent down towards ground level to study it more closely in order to attain full waking Consciousness, I was surprised yet again by the amount of random detail. As well as grass, some of which was dried out, I saw tiny pebbles and stones lying on cracked hardened ground. There was some litter as well, splinters of wood, parched pieces of crumpled-up paper and sawdust and traces of industrial waste. I looked up and around to identify the location, considering it to be physical, because of the incredible random physical appearance, but the fact that I sensed the locality of my home convinced me that I would have to be on the next non-physical dimension. Having focused on the detail of the ground so intensely, my Consciousness had emerged into a state of complete wakefulness and astonishing clarity. Soon I became aware of human activity and as I looked up I saw houses, and people walking along the road on the outskirts of a town. The fact that the people could see me and looked at me, although slightly curiously, convinced me that I was in non-physical reality and, judging by the appearance of the inhabitants, I was on a lower dimensional counterpart close to Earth. A dead giveaway of this is people looking just normal, like everyday people in our physical world, which means the higher state of mind has not been realised that would render people more attractive. I decided to pay attention and investigate so I could compile a detailed report of what life was like on such low dimensions. I started by asking a couple of young men coming towards me, one of them with tattoos on both arms, whether they were aware that they were dead. They looked at me as if I was slightly mad. ‘Of course,’ was the answer, ‘if you want to call this dead?’ I apologised and asked them whether they would object if I asked them a few questions regarding their lives over here. They did not seem to be too keen, if not unfriendly, and suggested that perhaps I should go to the pub down the road, have a drink and chat to some of the other locals; with that they proceeded on their way. At the end of the road was a pub. It wasn’t run-down as such, but it was not the kind of premises that would have attracted my patronage on the physical dimension. It was simply in keeping with the general bleakness of the environment. There was litter in the street and the sky was covered with thick dark clouds. It even started to drizzle, which added an element of coldness and discomfort to the atmosphere. Most of the people I passed looked somewhat gloomy. I was acutely aware that the clouds were simply a manifestation of the negative atmosphere of the place, as was the cold drizzle of rain as well as the litter. All of this I attributed to negative thought-junk that was flying around. I also sensed that some of the negativity emanated from the physical world and I felt sorry for the people here having to put up with the negativity originating from a dimension inhabited by people who hadn’t a clue how their thoughts and feelings determined the atmosphere of a world they didn’t even know existed. We truly are citizens of multiple worlds, I thought. Everything we do, think or feel is reverberating through multiple dimensional levels and there is little we can do about it. The universe is far more complex than we can ever imagine. Following my thoughts like this, I began to wonder whether the slight resentment I encountered was because I was identified as a visitor from the physical world and as such at least partly blamed for contributing to the atmosphere. Having walked in thought all the way over to the pub, I entered without drawing too much attention. Music was playing in the background and a couple sat at the bar drinking. A scantily dressed woman in her thirties with red hair and covered in freckles came towards me. She was average-looking, slightly full around her waist, not entirely unattractive. She exposed her breasts and asked me whether I wanted some fun. I was shocked by her blatant approach as she took my hand and guided it towards her breasts. I was too taken aback to react, but felt ill at ease. Not wanting to offend her, I gave her a gentle hug and kissed her on her forehead. I apologised and told her that my time was very limited and I had originally intended to find my father. She seemed to understand and told me that if I wanted to make love to her I knew where I could find her. Something about her evoked my compassion. I sensed a person who desired genuine love without being quite clear about how to give it. This feeling ignited empathy and then love and I sent a powerful wave of affection towards her. This had an instant and rejuvenating effect on her. It brought a generous smile to her face, which made her look quite lovely. I was almost shocked how radically a genuine feeling of love can manifest an effect. I left the pub and ventured into the road. I couldn’t imagine that after so many decades my father would linger in a dull, lowly place like this. When my father was alive he was very popular and had many friends. He would sing, play the guitar and entertain people. I never ever experienced him scolding me. He had always been thoughtful, engaging in play and discussion rather than punishment. On the rare occasions when discipline was required he would withdraw privileges, such as not having my allocation of cake on Sunday or having to take an early night, but I never remembered him uttering a word in anger. Outside in the open, I made an effort to raise my vibration in order to prime myself to see my dad, imagining him to be on a much higher dimension from where I was at present. I chanted my familiar mantra, which had the effect that I was lifted up into the air, but I soon slammed into a ceiling, which appeared to be impenetrable. Frustrated, but not deterred, I decided instead to focus all my energy on my father and put my trust in the universal laws of attraction to guide me to him. Instead of being picked up and rising towards Heaven, a powerful current grabbed me and pushed me ground-wards into the earth. Despite this, the experience was not unpleasant and I allowed myself to be swept away, trusting that the outcome would be a positive one. Soon enough I found myself in the courtyard of a farm with whitewashed walls and a barn to my right. I knew beyond any doubt that this place was on our physical Earth in a distant part of Russia. How, I did not know, but I felt a distinct certainty of the rough locality, which was in the eastern part of Russia. The people living on the farm did not seem to be wealthy by any means, but they managed to survive and prosper. In the yard where I came to rest were two little boys who seemed to be brothers, one about nine or ten years old and the other a little younger. Physically they didn’t seem to notice me, but ‘Astrally’ one of them did. With the same powerful knowing, I recognised the older one as my father! The boy stopped what he was doing, looked in my direction and without opening his mouth he asked, ‘Jurgen?’ With this powerful thought of his recognition, I accepted that my father was reincarnated as a child in Russia. When I asked him who his younger brother was, I learned that it was his ‘father’ and his mother was the same mother who died when he was a child. My father had lost his parents when he was just two years old and he grew up in an orphanage. He was now reincarnated to experience what he never had, a family and what it was like to grow up within and be part of a family, with both of his beloved parents being with him now. I considered the mechanics in place when my mother had told me only a few weeks ago that she’d had contact with my father, telling me that he was on a higher dimensional level and the last time she met him he was ‘painting’. I now could see after my father still recognising me as ‘Jurgen’ that on the subconscious or higher Consciousness level this information is not lost, and that we can still interact with the higher dimensional bodies of a person when we are dead and our loved one has made it back to the physical world. This information led me to conclude that on higher Consciousness levels we have mature non-physical bodies, which carry all the information from our past lives. No matter what happens Consciousness is a continuum and separation an illusion of our three-dimensional thinking. This was a moving experience and not at all how I imagined I would meet my father. I now knew that when I died I would be able to be with my father on any of the dimensional levels I focused on and would see and communicate with him in the ‘flesh’ of that dimension. This realisation brought into focus a much larger aspect of reality and its inner workings. After this I became aware of my body, but decided to lie still and run through the events so I could write them down later. I then decided to return, as I still had a strong sense of presence in the other reality. I also wanted to return to the place to complete my notes. Sure enough, with just a slight effort of intent, I found myself back in the identical place in the village pub. The lady who had offered herself to me before was there too, and smiled at me when she saw me. This time, though, she was a little bit more reserved and introduced me to her family, who had joined her: her mother and her sister. I opened the door and asked them to come outside as I was curious to find out more how the inhabitants of this rather low-grade copy of the physical world operated. I asked how they lived, whether they used some form of money or currency to buy or sell things. The man told me that there was a kind of trading and explained it to me, but he began to confuse me and I wondered whether he was poking fun at me. I asked them why I did not see anybody flying in this world and I demonstrated by taking to the air and attempting to circle around the group, but noticed what a struggle it was and that it needed all my concentration to stay airborne. ‘Why fly when we’ve got legs?’ came the answer. ‘It’s too much of an effort. It will take me at least two weeks to become any good at it,’ the man said. I realised that, on this dimension at least, flying, although possible, was an unnatural pastime. ‘We do have cars,’ he said, and pointed to a slightly retro-looking open-top sports cabriolet which went past us, a two-seater with two round headlights. I wanted to know whether it had occurred to them to move up in the world and pointed out that there were more pleasant regions they could inhabit. To my surprise none of them accepted this as a reality, in very much the same way as some people wouldn’t believe in life after death. The man told me that this was reality here and that it was best to keep one’s feet on the ground. I couldn’t argue with this as I looked around, seeing how real and solid this world must seem to them. I couldn’t resist showing them some conjuring tricks, by projecting a powerful feeling towards the dark grey curtain of clouds, which tore them open and a shaft of golden light was cast down onto the ground. At the same time I projected other feelings into the air, conjuring up some luminous shapes which played over our heads and danced around until they disintegrated. Some smiled like they would at a fireworks display, but no more. I was left rather drained after my efforts. The lady I had met earlier asked me whether I would like to have a meal with them; we could talk at our leisure and they would explain everything I wanted to know. They were all very aware that I was an ‘earthling’ and that I was having an Out-of-Body experience. I agreed to their suggestion. We walked past large fields, some with trees, some were growing curious-looking plants which looked artificial, like trees growing grass, which reminded me of a bio-experiment that had gone wrong. ‘I noticed you don’t grow any vegetables or other produce,’ I said. ‘That’s because we don’t have much demand for food,’ the woman’s sister said. I felt a bit silly with the suggestion as I knew only too well that food is not an essential commodity in this dimension. ‘There is no beef either,’ she continued, ‘but we had a couple of men opening a slaughterhouse not so long ago.’ Her statement surprised and shocked me as I imagined herds of cattle being killed and processed in a big abattoir. She told me that the men coming over here from Earth had had a business like that on Earth and thought it was quite natural to continue their profession over here. They rounded up all the cattle that had found its way into this region after dying and started a meat-processing plant. The other inhabitants thought that the cows had suffered enough and soon put a stop to it. The man who was walking next to me grinned broadly as if it was a fine joke. We soon arrived at a house, three stories high. The inside was quite tastefully decorated and made a pleasant contrast to the rather drab surroundings we had just passed through. As we walked up the stairs I made another valiant effort to fly up rather than walk, but found it extremely difficult and laborious. I had adapted to the general atmosphere and now understood why nobody was flying. When we arrived in the room upstairs the table was already laid with food. I was touched by the hospitality and expressed my thanks by sending a warm feeling of love to my hosts. I held my hands over the woman’s head and to my surprise, and everyone’s amusement, her hair sprouted into a new elaborate style with flowers interwoven with the strands of her hair. This was the last thing I remembered. 22 August 2009 UnrealRealityandRealIllusions I had been thinking about an article a friend of mine had sent me about hypnogogic images and before I went to sleep I contemplated her text. Focusing on the images that pop up on the screen of my mind before entering sleep with curiosity and interest can result in a wake-induced lucid dream, though nothing happened when I tried and I simply dropped off to sleep. When I woke up at four in the morning, I decided to meditate. Then after about an hour I went back to sleep with the intent of inducing a lucid dream using her technique. Again I simply dropped off to sleep. Curiously enough, in my dream I was thinking that I had to go back to my meditation room in order to practise the technique my friend had given me so that I could enter non-physical reality by conjuring up hypnagogic scenes. But without realising that I was actually dreaming this, I then got involved in another dream scene in which I had been talking at length to a former work colleague of mine, suggesting to him that he could become lucid in a dream following the technique I was about to show him. This finally did the trick and I became fully lucid. I then noticed the strange surroundings I was in. This instantly presented me with full waking awareness. As usual I immediately focused on the floor in front of me, which was strewn with leaves on a sandy ground, until I could distinguish every detail with incredible clarity. I keep bein she still needed to explore and that she could still go out to explore the greater wonders of her world. Realising by her interested facial expression that I knew more than she did, despite the fact that she was a permanent resident in this world, I proceeded to tell her what she could expect when she progressed from here. I told her that the most important aspect that would open the way for everyone was to develop an attitude of unconditional love. My mother looked at me with such love and sweetness when I said this to her that I burst out laughing, wondering who this jumped-up twit was lecturing this woman about unconditional love. I asked her whether she missed my father and she looked momentarily sad. ‘Do you know what happened to him?’ I asked. She told me she had a vague idea and understanding. I then told her that he had reincarnated in Russia, but that on a much higher level she would still be able to contact him in the way she remembered him, despite the fact that a part of him had sought further experience on the physical level. With that she seemed reassured. I marvelled at the thought of the vastness of possibilities in these worlds beyond the physical dimension and also at the intuitive knowledge I was drawing from as I explained everything to her. We proceeded to talk at length about a great number of issues she was presented with in this world. Even in real life my mother and I had never discussed the issues of which she had g amazed by the super-fine detail and questioned the belief some people maintain that what we see in the Out-of-Body state are simply our thoughts and our own fantasy projections. Studying such astonishing minutiae, obviously I cannot subscribe to this belief at all and can only assume that people who explain Out-of-Body experiences as fantasies have never actually had the experience or taken the trouble to look at our non­physical reality close up. Who or what makes all this? A world as real in every detail as our physical reality, and yet not physical at all, or if so it is a physicality subject to laws we don’t yet understand or a parallel dimensional reality we normally have no access to? None of our sciences have paid any attention to this phenomenon so far and it is still seen by many as delusional. It’s safe to say that with regard to understanding our own Consciousness and its complex working environments we haven’t yet risen out of the Dark Ages. Not surprisingly, as it is only since 1879 that we invented psychology. For the moment Consciousness is boldly dismissed as a result of neurone activity within our brains which vanishes when the brain dies. The consideration that we might be occupying multiple dimensions and could possibly access these via shifts in Consciousness seems way out of reach for serious consideration. Though the ways some scientists attempt to put it into a pathological box strikes me as negligent. All this aside, looking at the sand I had picked up from the ground I began to wonder how far I could go to resolve all the detail. The richness and complexity I discerned was staggering, seeing swirling particles of matter. This is how deeply our minds can view without the use of an electro-scanning microscope. How rewarding, how easy, how satisfying this was. The only thing that was more staggering was the exhilaration that my waking awareness had reached a new peak level. It had arrived at a super-level of clarity, something never to be found in physical wakefulness. The physical world, I pondered, is a clear second when it comes to an experience of clarity and reality awareness. When I looked up, letting the sand I had picked up for my study run back to the ground through my fingers, I saw a group of children playing. I asked them whether they knew that they could fly, as this was what many would consider to be a ‘dream’ and that they should try it. With that I lifted off the ground myself and took to the air, and soon found myself soaring into the sky. Then, to my astonishment and seemingly contradicting my earlier discovery, I noticed that the scene surrounding me had an element of artificiality to it, like the backdrop of a gigantic film set which could be likened to the Jim Carrey film The Truman Show. Immediately I started questioning my previous discovery that this world was as solid as our physical Earth. I began to speculate whether this might be attributed to the last remnants of a dream overlay that I had conjured up from a deep inner level of memory perhaps, and with that I floated towards the horizon, which was nothing more than a large painting projected onto a gigantic canvas. Without a second thought I was tearing it apart like a massive gossamer curtain. Beyond that I found myself dismantling an equally artificial scene while marvelling at the mind’s ability to throw such a curtain of deception over my world. To my great relief I finally found that the layers of illusions were gone and I was in a vast open landscape, real-looking, which felt reassuringly solid again. There are layers to reality, some of which are projections. There is plenty of room to explore how Consciousness conjures up different veneers of manifestation. It will take research, plenty of it, discrimination and serious study to find all the answers. I think it is this complexity of reality which makes it so hard to put it under a scientific microscope, but hopefully we can make a start by recording and trying to understand what is taking place. Illusions and projections show up in all kinds of manner. At that moment it felt as if I had pierced the illusionary element of the lucid dream and made the transition to the new dimension of reality proper. For a few moments I pondered what to do next and thought it would perhaps be a good idea to contact my mother again and catch up with her latest news. I called her and she appeared almost instantly in the distance; we floated towards each other. Somehow she looked sad and it was only when I hugged her that she cheered up. Her face instantly received a fresh youthfulness. ‘Why did you look so sad when I first saw you?’ I wanted to know. She told me that life there too has its challenges and that feelings and emotions play a large part in the life over there, much more so than when back on Earth. I asked her whether she still had contact with Auntie Trudi, which she confirmed. Yes,’ she said, ‘and with Oma (her mother) as well.’ With that she flashed an image of Oma to me and I was astounded that she was a young, good-looking woman, who I would never have recognised except by her distinct charisma, which belonged uniquely to her. Looking at my mother I then realised how fluidly appearances changed in this dimension. My mother looked different from the photos I had of her when she was a young woman and different from the last time we met, which was ten months ago. She looked much more attractive, but the feeling of love and affection was the same. She then told me that there was still struggle in this world and there were plenty of issues that needed to be addressed for people to progress. She listened with interest when I told her of the higher levels of Consciousnessnow become aware. Now we were having a deep philosophical conversation. At one stage I asked her whether she was watching us on Earth. She told me she was not directly, as this would be an invasion of our privacy. She was aware of certain things and she could tune into what was going on, but she said she respected me far too much to get involved in my life in any way. Did she know where we lived? She told me she did, not the physical place as such, but she knew where she could find us on her dimension if she wanted to. With that we travelled to a sunny spot, a villa on a beautiful hilltop surrounded by a large garden and rockery. A sloping path from the villa led to a beautiful ornate swimming pool, nothing at all like the semi­detached suburban house we occupied in the south of England. Curiously enough, I recognised it as the house of my wife and I was astonished that in real life I had no knowledge of it. My mother laughed. ‘It looks as if I know your house better than you do.’ I proceeded to investigate and indeed every feature I looked at was incredibly familiar to me, and I wondered how many hours Julia and I may have spent here together when our bodies were in deep sleep, then waking up in the morning having no recollection of it. As we walked along the path with its low whitewashed walls and ornamental rosebeds she confessed that in the early days of our being together she was not at all sure whether we were suited for each other, as she noticed the great cultural and temperamental gap between us. She confessed she had been concerned that it would all end up in tears one day, but the fact that we were still together, even on this side, occupying a house together, had proved her wrong. I then asked her what had happened to all her friends and I conjured up the parties of my parents I remembered from when I was a small boy. Her face lit up. ‘They are wonderful people. Yes, we are still together, would you like to meet them?’ I agreed. Within moments I found myself in a large park-like garden with a marquee containing an excellent spread of the finest cold buffet. I was greeted by one of her friends, who even as a young child I had always recognised as being extremely beautiful and attractive. She loved children and whenever she saw me she crouched down before me (with a cigarette in one hand) and with the brightest and warmest smile one can imagine she held my hand and stroked my hair. ‘Oh, he is such a sweetie,’ she would say. She took my hand and gave me a warm, affectionate hug. ‘He is still a sweetie,’ she exclaimed, which made me burst out laughing along with everyone else at the party. I was overwhelmed by the intimate friendliness and the strong bond among this group of friends and how much they appeared to be enjoying themselves. ‘You must try our food.’ One of my mother’s friends offered me a plate onto which she loaded some food I was unable to identify; the aroma was invigorating. She then sprinkled bits on top of it and invited me to try it. This was something I had not expected. For a moment I wondered how it was possible to experience something so new and unusual, while at the same time wondering how certain psychologists on Earth would explain such a phenomena. Some insist that what we dream about can only ever be what we experience in waking life, which we then re-edit and dress up in our dreams. I had long proved for myself that their assumption was totally wrong and this was just a welcome reminder that there is another dimension awaiting us which offers varieties of experiences simply unknown to us here, allowing for creativity and original invention that by far surpasses anything we can conjure up on this worldly Earth. Then one guest invited me to try something traditional, Bavarian wheat beer, which is still my favourite. ‘Once you’ve taken a sip of this,’ he said, ‘you will turn into a Bavarian.’ I took a sip and, smiling to myself, I slapped my thigh for a joke. ‘You are right,’ I exclaimed, ‘this is good stuff.’ Everybody fell about laughing after I had emptied a whole bottle and then started performing a fully fledged Bavarian Schuhplattler, an old-fashioned folk dance often attracting a hilarious response. As I had experienced many times before, people on this level know how to enjoy themselves. My experience ended abruptly when I heard Julia bringing me a cup of tea. 2 November 2009 UsingMeditationto TranscendDimensions One thing I have become acutely aware of is the fact that our mindset determines our environment setting when we die. Unlike physical life, our surroundings will be furnished with the content of our subconscious. In physical life some people living in abject poverty may take great delight and joy in a bunch of picked flowers from a field and placed in a rusty tin can, while other people living in luxury may be utterly corrupt, unhappy and oblivious to the apparent beauty of their acquired wealth if their state of mind is focused on the negative. In the afterlife things are quite simple; what is in the inside is reflected in our environment. So the poor person’s rusty tin can may turn into a Ming vase and the corrupt rich man may find himself squatting in a dark hovel surrounded by junk. One could define the afterlife in one sentence: The place you will live in after you die is a manifestation of your inner life. The following experience illustrates the futility of trying to help people out of their environmental conditions if their state of mind is not ready, despite all one’s good intentions. This applies here to our physical reality as well, of course, but is much more in evidence and more graphic in our non-physical states. There are many compassionate helpers who are unable to help if the person needing it is not ready. I had got up at about 3:30 am, having had a restless night, half-expecting to have a lucid dream and wanting to revisit John, my brother-in-law, who had died three years before and whom I had met only the previous week while out of the body. In this event he had been distressed and hard to communicate with. I concluded that he was dealing with some unresolved issues in order for him to clear the way for progress. However, his distress was also disturbing. I reported this to Julia, his sister, and I regretted it, having upset her by doing so. This time I wanted to revisit him and see if I could help in some way. This had kept me half-awake all night. Finally I got up and began to meditate. I focused on the Being state, a state of awareness where attention is focused simply on the present, but my attention wandered, preoccupied with thoughts about what I should do when out of the body. Should I contact John, or should I perhaps call on a guide I had met in a previous experience and ask him how to make the best use of the experience. I then thought contacting John should have to be the priority to make sure he was OK, if only to report back to Julia in order to alleviate any concerns. After about forty-five minutes I went back to bed with the intent of having an OBE. It wasn’t long after falling asleep that I became lucid. I didn’t have to do anything in order to establish full wakefulness. To make sure I had absolute clarity I focused on my hands until I could see every detail. I was right, there was no lucid dream narrative. I was in OBE and clearly in consensus environment, but it wasn’t what I had expected or had wished for. I was obviously on one of the lowest dimensional subdivisions. The atmosphere was dark, murky even, just like before nightfall, except that the air appeared to be polluted, with a tangible fog around me that felt like cobweb. This was not a place where I wanted to remain. In order to escape without having to return to my physical body I started chanting the OM mantra. This only had the effect that it lifted me off the ground, but somehow I couldn’t summon the energy to lift me into a higher state. No matter how intensely I focused on the mantra I seemed to be stuck in this plane. Finally I accepted the inevitable, trusting that if the mantra didn’t lift me, Consciousness was having deeper reasons for keeping me here. I slowly descended to the ground, taking up the challenge. I felt serenity and stillness inside, despite the shady place, but I was not alone. The place was populated with shadowy people, hiding in dim corners. The atmosphere was distinctly bland, if not unpleasant. Through the dark gooey mist I saw the outlines of city buildings, huge windowless industrial blocks. The streets were dirty and ramps led up to some elevated pavements. A dead, leafless tree emphasised the desolation. Fortunately where I was the area was more illuminated, perhaps for about ten feet, and then it fell off into darkness. Although my state of mind provided a safe detachment from this world, I had second thoughts. No reason emerged for me for being here and I reconsidered, calling on a previous guide who had helped me out when I got ‘stuck’. I called out, but there was no response. Instead a man appeared, covered in layers of rags, the top one an old army parka underneath a dirty blanket falling down halfway to cover a pair of old, worn-out jeans. He stopped and addressed me. ‘Can I help?’ For a moment I thought it was my guide and momentarily a weight was lifted from me, but it couldn’t have been, he was too poor-looking and too badly dressed. The man laughed at my confusion. ‘You look lost,’ he said. ‘Ideally I would like to get out of this place, but I seem to have got stuck, for some reason which isn’t quite clear to me. I can’t figure it out. Something seems to be holding me here.’ He told me that not every part in this region was as gloomy as this and it depended on the people to make the best of it. He told me that not far from here there was a small community of people and I should try to get in contact with them. Maybe they could help me or I could help them. ‘Come with me,’ he said, and I followed him as we set off through the dark, dense smog, shadowy entities scuttling past us. Throughout this time I couldn’t see his face, which was buried under a large hood with shawls wrapped around his neck, preventing any remnant of the puny light illuminating his face. Finally, in the distance, I saw a glimmer of light, which at first I mistook for a fire incident. The light came from a piece of wasteland between half-derelict blocks of houses. It seemed to be illuminated by a small group of people who were tending a bonfire. As we got closer, I could make out three women and two men, who were laughing and indulging in banter. Immediately I saw that it was this event that had raised the level of the atmosphere around them and added to the light, and indeed kept their bonfire alive. It was only then that I noticed part of the light that illuminated my immediate surroundings was actually cast by me, as if I was some oversized glow­worm. Immediately I drew all the attention and was greeted with interest and smiles. I told them that I was a temporary visitor, but was keen to reach some higher level. Unfortunately I seemed to have lost the knack of overcoming the heavy atmosphere here. I wondered whether they knew of a way out of this world. A woman covered in a discoloured rag, which at one stage might have been a summer dress, laughed at me unabashed. ‘Do you honestly believe we would still be in this godforsaken place if we knew of a way out of here? Look around you. Do you think this is a place anybody in their right mind would choose to live in? Anyway, why are you asking us? We should be asking you.’ I wondered what she had seen in me I couldn’t see myself. I felt I had no power. The best I could do, I felt, was to terminate my experience by returning to physical Consciousness. This environment was bleak to the point of being hostile. Wherever my eyes glanced I saw a derelict cityscape. Not all of it was in ruins, though. The bits that weren’t towered as oppressive, dark and windowless monuments into the night, massive brick buildings, with no other purpose than to intimidate the inhabitants and make them aware of their powerlessness and their smallness. This was a dark city, like some monstrous aberration out of a horror movie. ‘Why are you even here?’ the other woman wanted to know. ‘Maybe it is you who has come to guide us out of this place. We have been here for ages, not leaving a stone unturned to find an escape, but you are carrying a light which none of us possess and it may help us escape.’ I told them the only way I knew was to lighten the emotion by focusing on an inner serenity that could lift them up. Momentarily I focused on my heart, which instantly brightened the whole area and gently lifted me off the ground, then stationed me two to three metres in midair. At once three of the people grabbed my legs and tried to hitch a lift. I struggled to rise into the air, but the burden became too great. I rose to about ten metres, but then felt the energy drain from me as the three heavy bodies pulled me back down to the ground. I told them they had to let go or summon a more positive attitude, that I didn’t have the strength to carry them on my own. Two of them released me, but the woman with dark stringy hair clung on to me for dear life. I shouted to her to focus on her heart to become lighter, but she just stared at me despairingly, obviously not even grasping my meaning. Knowing that without her inner connection to the light she would only be a burden to herself and me, I suggested she should let go. To make my way out I wanted to shake her loose, but I knew that wasn’t possible. She clung to me tightly as I clearly signalled my intent to escape. Almost instantly I felt pangs of regret and compassion, and instead of disentangling myself I sank with her back to Earth. At ground level I apologised to the group and said I was very sorry that I didn’t have enough power to take them with me. I squatted down, joining the group. Everyone was resigned and quiet. All I felt was great pity for the people stranded here. I considered giving a lecture that they needed to start focusing their attention on their hearts in order to leave this region but I knew this would fall on deaf ears. Being thus immersed in their gloom, I could think of no other way than to enter meditation. I cannot say what effect this may have had on the group, but the immediate area around me began to brighten before I even closed my eyes. There was simply nothing else for me to do here. In the end I concluded that all circumstances are projections and appearances, and I left it at that without any further thought. With my eyes closed I went into deep meditation there and then. Within moments I saw patterns emerging and I knew I had transcended the place, disappearing from their midst. I was now in a room, which was bright and cheerful. The walls were covered in a rich art-deco pattern and I noticed people passing through the room, their dresses made out of the same pattern; when I looked at their faces, they too were covered in pattern. This made no sense to me. My impression was that the pattern I had observed when entering meditation had become a projected overlay to my outside scenery. I noticed that everything was tinged by my thoughts and visions of the pattern. I knew that pattern frequently appears at certain stages in meditation and I reasoned that what was taking place was that I had simply entered an external manifestation of my inner state. With curiosity I noticed that the patterned people were passing through a door into an outside world. I got up and followed. At once I found myself within a new environment, a new world, much brighter and more elevated then the one I had left. It was daytime. In front of me was a tree with rich green leaves, the type of green one would find in late spring when nature is at its most vigorous. Beyond I saw the scene opening into a large square surrounded by houses of a big city. It became quickly apparent that I was by no means on a very elevated level, though it was far better than the one I had just left. The atmosphere was still of a lower dimensional quality, more Earth-like, but at least it was daytime and the people here were acceptably dressed and more human, average to attractive-looking. I briefly considered returning to meditation in order to elevate to much higher states, but to my surprise I was greeted by a young vivacious woman with brown hair curling down to her shoulders. She invited me to come with her, using persuasive talk of a nice restaurant where they served interesting Japanese food. ‘I think you will enjoy it and I can see you could do with a bit of enjoyment.’ I immediately took the cue and saw it as a significant marker to return to investigative mode. I also figured that the remnants of the previous burden of the people and their condition I had just left behind must have still been showing on my face to evoke pity in the woman. She just laughed and took my hand, then pulled me along through crowded streets. Suddenly something stopped me abruptly in my tracks. Letting go of her hand, I signalled to the girl to go ahead by herself, but after a hundred metres she stopped, waving at me to follow her. Instead my attention was drawn to another young woman in a green dress, standing not far away at a street corner. Her head was lowered and she didn’t look at me, but I clearly felt her thoughts with a familiar intensity. She was just standing there, waiting. With a startle and a jolt in my heart, I recognised her. It was my mother. I rushed towards her and we hugged. I then took her in my arms. She looked into my eyes and smiled. ‘How long have you been here?’ I wanted to know. ‘Why didn’t you call out to me at once?’ ‘I didn’t want to interfere in what you were doing, as you seemed to have company,’ my mother said. I told her that this was nonsense, that seeing her was the most important thing to happen to me in a long time and that I was glad to see her. I was holding both her hands and looked at her with amazement. She was half a head smaller than me and, as before, she still looked very young and pretty, barely like the photographs I knew of her as a young woman. How she had changed yet again since the last time I saw her. She wore a light-green summer dress, which ever so slightly exposed the light skin at the top of her youthful breasts. It was very strange seeing the person I had always categorised into an older generation and a parental authority as a young girl who could easily be half my age. Yet the quite unmistakable aura and charisma of my mother was clearly still there. I felt an incredible warmth towards her and unspoken love radiated back from her. I told her how she looked different every time I met her and, if I didn’t know that it was her, from her looks alone I wouldn’t have recognised her. I had met my mother not all that long ago and had grown accustomed to the fact that it was only too easy to change your looks in these post-Earth life dimensions and how difficult it must be to maintain the same appearance in a world which was so much determined by the thoughts and the feelings of the people who lived there. I spent a while talking to her and when asking about the family I received a wealth of images as she spoke. I became aware that life in these regions still carried on and was not without events. Quite the opposite. She told me a lot of things had happened in her life here since she had died twelve years ago, that this life was not without its own challenges and that I shouldn’t think for a moment that once we are dead the afterlife would settle into a nondescript experience of peace, placidness and eternal rest. The mental images and visual scenarios she pumped out as we spoke could not have been more graphic and I gained a deep and thorough understanding that life and events still happen, relationships unfold and situations still develop long after we have died. She flashed a scene over to me of a man who had cheated her out of money when they were both alive and who now kept begging her for forgiveness. Her dislike for this man was intense and she just wanted to be left alone, but there were some other events. Life here in general progresses in new ways which could never develop in the same way on the physical planet. I began to understand by what she was telling me how important it was for many people to die in order to further their developmental progress. This was a powerful bit of information, as we on this side often see death as the end of everything. My mother made it clear to me that death is simply an extended form of gathering valuable information and experience, and should never be seen as an end. There are new kinds of intensities in the afterlife which are largely absent on Earth, with greater diversifications of emotions. Of course, theoretically, I had always known this, but the way she communicated this with all the attached and graphic images she projected to me as she spoke made it almost my own experience. She told me new challenges opened up here which we could never have dreamed of in our Earth bodies, both good and not so good. I had a clear and comprehensive insight and understanding of what she was talking about. Instantly I related this to my brother-in-law, whom I had only just met a week earlier. Three years after his death, he was still coming to terms with certain deep-rooted issues, which he had never addressed or even been aware of while he was still alive. ‘Shouldn’t you go?’ my mother asked, pointing in the direction of the girl in the distance, who was still waiting and just waving at me as I looked in her direction. Before saying goodbye to my mother I told her how great it was that I could still meet her after all these years and even connect with her on a level we had never been able to do while she was still alive. ‘I am never that far away,’ she told me as we parted. Rejoining the girl with the dark curls she led me straight to an open courtyard with tables and chairs. The tables were tastefully laid out, with luminous paper lanterns on each. The yard was enclosed by whitewashed walls finished off with an elaborate oriental wrought-iron balustrade on top. Around the perimeter was a buffet and kitchen staff serving food to the guests. There was a festive atmosphere. ‘What do you fancy,’ she asked. ‘I don’t know, what do you recommend?’ ‘I am having fish fingers.’ I was astonished that among this rich spread of delicacies she had picked such ordinary food. But when she led me to the table and picked up her fish fingers, I noticed that these were the most astonishing and unexpected variety of fish fingers I had ever come across. Sadly, this is where my excursion abruptly ended as I was woken into physical Consciousness by an urgent need to visit the bathroom. An unglamorous end to what had promised to be an interesting time on the Astral plane. Prolonged OBEs are highly productive in terms of harvesting information. For a start, Consciousness has time to settle into its full awareness state, thereby picking up plenty of background information in the process so that each time deeper insights into our afterlife reality are the result. The disguised stranger who led me to the group was obviously a guide who preferred not to be actively involved in my experience. It was vital for me to learn that using intent while residing and operating from within a dark, low-level environment, which overshadowed my inner power, was a futile exercise. Meditation and connecting to the inner core is the only way. People wanting to be helpers need to be aware of this. It applies to all states of life, whether dead or alive. If I want to help a fellow soul I need to be sure to reside in a higher state of Consciousness in order to help. On the same level I simply waste everyone’s time. I also have to be aware that the person I am trying to help is ready to make changes within themselves. I had failed miserably in helping those five people. I didn’t even notice whether the light my meditation so obviously generated had a positive or destructive effect. I could have explored this energy more, instead I simply and carelessly took my leave without investigating the deeper aspects of their predicament or exploring other methods of helping. A truly missed opportunity, but I took comfort in the fact that I was here to learn. Perception of pattern clearly indicated that my meditation had connected me almost instantly to higher Consciousness, but as soon as I broke it I was stuck in an in-between state on a mediocre Astral level without having transcended the ego boundaries. This was disappointing, but also important, as I caught up with my mother and learned new things about her and the afterlife state in general. It was frustrating having the experience cut short because I was sure the young girl I met was a guide, there to show me new aspects of non-physical reality. Rescue missions don’t have to end up in failure like this one, as we have seen before. Then I had used completely different routes which were more in line with that of a counsellor. 28 March 2010 Rekindling aMissedFriendship My wife’s mother had died on Friday the previous week. She had suffered a chest infection and was kept in her bed for two days running. Although Julia saw her twice on the day she died, she was distraught that she had missed the signals and hadn’t stayed until the end. She simply thought all her mother needed was rest and she would feel better the next day. So she left early. We were called by the care home at about 8:15 pm, being informed that her mother had died at about 7:45. Instantly we went to see her. Her eyes were closed, her mouth open. She was lying on her back. A carer had placed a flower on her chest. Somehow she looked serene, almost beautiful, despite the wear and tear of her ninety years. When my wife kissed her on her forehead, she was still warm, but it was obvious that her body was an empty shell, like a discarded coat. I have seen a few vacated bodies and every time it was proof to me that the person who had occupied it could not have simply vanished and disappeared. Such concentrated and powerful individual energy just does not vanish, there is too much of it for it to simply dissolve into nothing. Julia and I thought the same thing. There was no sadness, no sense of loss, because we both felt there was nothing that could get lost. The ninety-year-old body was empty but her mother was still alive, gathering a new mantle of energy in another location. The only thing which saddened Julia was that she wasn’t there at the end. Her mother had stopped talking days before and when she tried to communicate for the last time, Julia mistook her hand movement as signalling that she simply wanted a drink of water. She made me promise her that the next time I was out of my body I would seek out her mother to make sure she was all right. A week had passed. I had got into the habit of placing the intent for Out-of-Body excursions at the weekend so I wouldn’t be interrupted by business and phone calls. Saturday would have been a good time, but I had a busy day ahead of me as I accepted a job late Friday to be completed over the weekend. Sunday was the best choice. I got out of bed about five-thirty in the morning. Julia reminded me sleepily that the clocks were going forward and that we ought to get up earlier. I told her that I would try to see if her mum was OK. I went into my meditation room and started focusing awareness on being. My mind was like a placid lake. No thoughts there to disturb my peace. The only thoughts I allowed in were concerning Julia’s mother. I thought what it would be like to conjure up a bunch of flowers while in the next dimension and then hand it to her as a beautiful bouquet. In my mind I assembled a colourful assortment and wrapped it up in stylish gift paper. Then I turned to the sutras for deep meditation. After about an hour I noticed that I had dropped off to sleep, and decided to go to bed with a strong resolve to wake up in the next dimension to visit Julia’s mother. No more than ten, fifteen minutes after dropping off to sleep, I woke up in midair, realising that I had left my body and was drifting higher and higher through the ceiling into a bright morning sky. Instead of cloud I rose through welcoming coloured mists. This told me that I was utilising a much finer energy body. My first thought was to call for Julia’s mother, but another more urgent thought occurred to me. I had to meet Julia’s brother first. He had died more than three years ago of lung cancer and the last time I saw him Out-of-Body he was in great mental distress. I could hardly make out what he was talking about and when I had to leave him I had the impression that he was embarking on a giant task to sort out a number of personal issues. Meeting him would serve two purposes. Firstly, I wanted to know how he was, and secondly it would be great to have his company while visiting his mother. By now the coloured mists had cleared and I found myself drifting through another world of drawings, littered with cartoon figures, like giant murals, all around me. I had entered some giant thought form inadvertently. ‘Not again,’ I thought. ‘What is this nonsense?’ Instead of ridding myself of the thought forms I called John’s name. As soon as I called, the cartoon drawing melted away and instead I saw John walking towards me through a stone-lined corridor. He looked serious, with pasty-coloured skin, just the way I remembered him from when he was still alive. He smiled when we shook hands and I felt a wave of affection towards him, which immediately brought colour back to his face. ‘Where are we?’ I wanted to know. ‘We are actually in Dorchester,’ he told me in a matter-of-fact way. ‘Not the physical Dorchester, of course. Let me show you around.’ We came out of the walled tunnel and entered a wide, open square. I saw the cathedral, also a big open market square, but nothing that looked in any way familiar as I had never actually been to Dorchester. There were people around, but it was not at all crowded. ‘Why Dorchester?’ I asked. ‘I like the town,’ John answered. ‘I like the history of this place and it has a rather unique and pleasant atmosphere which suits my mood. Of course, as you can see, this is on a much higher level.’ I was aware of a pleasant light and atmosphere in the place, and I took it as a clue to deepen my sense of wakefulness. With that I felt a new sense of wholeness or perhaps security, which was difficult to define but so typical of some of the higher domains of non-physical reality. ‘You realise, of course,’ I said to my brother-in-law, ‘that I am not dreaming, that I am fully awake and out of my body, talking to you here in full possession of all my faculties.’ I somehow wanted him to be impressed, because when he was still alive he never took much notice of my Out-of-Body adventures.’ ‘I know,’ he said, ‘I wish I had paid more attention.’ ‘Did you expect your afterlife to be like this?’ I wanted to know. ‘Not at all, I imagined it to be like Father Christmas bestowing all his presents on the children who had behaved well. What I found was not at all what I expected. For a start, I didn’t imagine that it could be so brutally real. By that, I mean that all the fairy tales and the airy-fairy descriptions we read so much about have little to do with reality. Reality was what struck me most. There is no pretending here. The most painful learning experience for me was that what I pretended to be was not really who I am.’ I was struck by John’s honesty. We had never talked like this all the time I had known him. He had always kept up the appearance of an enigma and guarded his private self, buying into the persona of a wise man who knew all the secrets of life, but just would not let on to anyone what they were or the true depth of his pretended wisdom and knowledge, which mostly came from reading. He was also a Cambridge graduate and a teacher. His fondness for Oscar Wilde also bled into his demeanour with a certain sense of humour, and as a result he was more respected by the people he knew, but not many were allowed through the veneer of his persona into his heart. I only ever saw him vulnerable once, when his short marriage disintegrated, but even in the last week before he died in our house, surrounded by his closest family, he managed to maintain his strong enigmatic persona. And on his death bed he looked stoic, like an Indian chief about to enter the eternal hunting grounds, not a flicker of weakness. I could not help but admire his attitude. His face looked noble, heroic, he would not allow the ravages of his illness or the severe pain tear down his mask. The only sign that he was suffering was that he would reach for the morphine bottle; with an air of distinction he would unscrew the lid and take a couple of gulps as if he was sampling a new variety of exotic liquor. Then he would close his eyes and, with his chin up, wait for the effect of the morphine to kick in. I had never met anybody in my life who had fought so valiantly and bravely against his impending death. When I asked him once whether he was all right, when he was bending over in pain without so much as a facial expression, pretending he was just relieving an annoying muscle strain, the simple answer I received was: ‘It could be worse.’ Now here we were, both together. His face had mellowed. There was warmth and compassion in his eyes. ‘You know, John,’ I said as I looked into his eyes, ‘all my life I wanted to be your friend, but you never let me. I feel very sorry that we missed out on a good and meaningful friendship.’ Then John did something that I would never have expected. He took my hand and pressed it affectionately. ‘I am very sorry, Jurgen,’ he said. ‘I didn’t even know myself. I was so full of ideas of what life should be like that I didn’t develop the ability to learn to enjoy life as I should have.’ We sat down together on the pavement. John was still uncharacteristically holding my hand and I reciprocated to let him understand from my heart that I felt a strong affection and friendship for him and that it had only been suspended. For the first time I felt its full force and saw in his eyes that he felt sorry and that he really felt a deep appreciation and very brotherly love for me. I noticed a bit further to my right a woman dressed in white who had been eavesdropping on our conversation. She immediately apologised and confessed that she could not help but be part of this conversation, and said how it had moved her. Rarely had she been so deeply touched by a scene of true friendship like this. With that she walked over to her partner, who stood a little further away, also dressed in a white suit, and they both strolled off. It was then that Julia turned up. She was uncharacteristically dressed in a bright blue dress and looked young and vivacious. She started chatting to her brother as if they had never been far apart. I watched the two conversing and wondered what had happened. Julia too, as his own sister, had never been allowed into his private world. But here they were, chatting like old siblings. A moment later she had disappeared. John noticed my astonishment. ‘I am never far away from my dear sister Julia. I have learned a lot since I have arrived over here. It was absolutely necessary for me to die, because I had to die in more ways than one. Death is not some sort of punishment, but a great learning opportunity. When your life won’t allow you to expand your wisdom then death very often offers new opportunities and may be the only way.’ During our conversation, John and I decided to carry on with our casual stroll around town. We kept talking intensively and philosophically until I noticed we had begun circling the same block for the second time. He was telling me about his experiences since he had died, how confused he was at first and how little he valued the people now who he had looked up to when still alive and how those people were not as worthy as he had hoped. He also told me that he had taken an interest in classic Greek theatre. ‘Have you been to higher levels?’ I wanted to know. ‘Yes I have, some much higher than this. I see this as my halfway home. It’s pleasant. I quite like it. The higher levels I have only visited, I can’t see them as my home yet.’ I asked him whether he had seen his father, who had died about ten years ago. He told me that his father had gone on a solitary quest into some totally unfamiliar regions for him. He was on some kind of a quest and that he had embarked on a journey that was of great importance to him for his personal development. I wondered what happened to his father’s relationship with his wife, who had just died, and why he was away. He told me that even such long relationships as his parents was no guarantee that they belonged together when coming over here, and that relationships were more based on the intensity of inner bonds. I then remembered the whole reason why I had come over here in the first place, to look in on Julia’s mother. I asked John whether he could help me find her. To my great surprise, John was rolling a cigarette and then lit it with his old army lighter. He took a deep puff and blew the smoke into the air with a satisfaction I could feel myself just by looking at him. I laughed out loud. ‘So you are still smoking, then?’ I found this very amusing. Smoking had always been a powerful component in John’s life. He had built a whole ritual around his smoking, keeping his roll-up tobacco in a tin with a Buddha picture of mine, which I had given him for his birthday. He would take out a tray, place his brown liquorice cigarette papers, tobacco, filters and lighter onto the tray and then start rolling at great leisure his little joints, which he would line up neatly. After he had rolled his daily supply he would transfer it into a silver nineteenth-century cigarette case, which he then put into his pocket. Then he would go outside, smoke and cough. It was the cigarettes, of course, which killed him and here he was indulging in his old pastime. ‘They won’t kill me now,’ he said with a broad grin. ‘That’s the beauty of life here, you can still enjoy your sins.’ I had started on my second task that I had set myself during meditation, namely to conjure up a bunch of flowers to give to Julia’s mother, but I was distracted by John’s smoking habit and his rolling of cigarettes. When I looked at my hands where I expected the flowers to materialise, I found to my utter astonishment a bunch of flowers made out of cigarette papers. John laughed out loud and told me that I couldn’t focus on two things at the same time. By this time I thought the flower trick was too attention-consuming and abandoned it. Instead I asked John whether it was possible to see his mother. We could try, he told me. I thought it would be a good idea to try the same method as I’d employed before when I called John. I turned around and shouted very loudly into the market square: ‘Mum!’ But Mum didn’t materialise. Instead I noticed heads turning and people trying to find out what my call was all about. I felt embarrassed having drawn this unwanted attention. I decided the next call should be done on a more mental level. This time I received a clear image in my mind of ‘Mum’, with a much younger appearance and light-brown hair. I instinctively knew that she wouldn’t be able to join us. John told me that she was still in an adjustment phase and that it would be some time before she could manage to appear on this level, which was not what she could accomplish at this stage. I took comfort in the fact that I had at least glimpsed an impression of her and that I could tell Julia on my return that she was OK. My second thought was that I could use my Out-of-Body state to visit her or do some other investigation on my check list. But I thought I needed to return while this event was still fresh in my mind, in order to record it accurately. 1 August 2012 Non-PhysicalQuest forSelf-Healing It has long been argued and proven that healing can be found using lucid dreams or Out-of-Body experiences. When we moved house a few years ago I pulled a muscle in my groin lifting furniture. I was in a lot of pain and found it difficult to move without the pain taking my breath away. On the third day, in the early hours of the morning during meditation I was able to leave my body and found myself seeing it from the outside, sitting there in my meditation chair, with my head tilted slightly forward, seemingly asleep. On the left side of my groin I saw a six-inch black hole with dark particles gyrating randomly and chaotically around inside it. I immediately identified it as the trouble spot that had given me so much pain. Not being able to think of anything better to do, I used my Out-of-Body hands and gently pulled the hole shut, while at the same time sending positive energy into it. Gradually the hole closed and the dark energy dissipated, and soon the dark spot had disappeared completely. I decided to return to my body in order to check whether this was just a hallucination or whether I had actually closed the ‘hole’ and by doing so eradicated the problem. When I opened my physical eyes the pain had completely gone. I got up, moved around, twisted my body, there was not a trace of any pain. Not long ago I had been suffering from chronic rhinitis for over six months, which ruined my sleep at night. I only managed to sleep for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time and was then woken by my dried-out mouth, as my nose was completely blocked. This had also prevented me from having Out-of-Body experiences (except for one). The last few days it had become almost intolerable. I kept sneezing and coughing until I ached and was exhausted. At about three o’clock the following morning I finally decided to try meditation, intending to focus solely on the inner lining of my nose. This was an absolute first, as I had never ever meditated on the mucous membrane before. My usual practice was to focus on awareness. I focused on the inside of my nose without fail for an hour and a half. I also made the firm resolve that should I fall asleep or induce an OBE I would use this to restore my physical health as I had done in the past when I strained my muscle. Sure enough, after about a couple of hours I fell asleep, then woke up suddenly. Noticing that I could see my meditation room through closed eyelids, I decided to use the ‘hover test’ to establish whether I was already detached from my body. It worked. I hovered two feet above ground level in my meditation room. Something was strange though. The walls were all yellow instead of magnolia. I turned around to face my physical body in order to attempt the healing. To my astonishment and disappointment, my body wasn’t there. This told me I had left the physical plane and was operating on the next dimensional level. Disappointed at not being able to heal my body directly, I made a half-hearted attempt to send some healing energy towards it, not even knowing where it was. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, I decided to call upon my mother, who I hadn’t seen for over a year. I called her a couple of times and she soon appeared. I did not recognise her at all. I had become used to the fact that she had a habit of changing her appearance, but this time she had short, light-brown hair, wore an elegant, red woollen dress and was aged about twenty. I was impressed by how contemporary she looked and when she gave me a hug I soon realised that there was no mistake, it was my mother. I asked her about her total make-over to which she replied that I should begin to get over the fact that she was my mother, that there was more to our relationship than mother and son and that in the past and in the future she was and would be many other things to me, such as a sister, a wife, a close friend or even a husband. She laughed out loud at her last comment and I enjoyed seeing her so cheerful, relaxed and open-minded. Our short conversation told me that she must have been taking lessons in the laws of Consciousness and I was duly impressed. I had never been able to discuss any of these subjects with my mother when she was still alive. We then proceeded with a very deep conversation. She told me that she had been aware of my activities since we last met and had been observing how it had positively affected me and my environment so that she had taken an interest in her own spiritual development. This she clearly demonstrated by her comment that earthly ties are relative and limited, and that relationships are truly multidimensional and can happen in almost infinite configurations. However, I was still rather fond of seeing this woman as my mother, because of the powerful memories that went right back into my early childhood. I remembered the poverty and hardships my family endured as refugees after the war. We had very little food and my brother and I suffered from malnutrition. One picture came back clear in my mind of my mother whisking a raw egg and mixing it with a spoon of sugar. My brother was sitting on one knee and I was on the other, and she would feed us alternately a teaspoon of egg each. While she was doing it she would sing to us in the sweetest voice and rock us gently. I don’t remember feeling the hunger, but only her deep love, the happiness and security. This was still the same deeply loving woman in a radiant youthful disguise that displayed her inner love and beauty. She proceeded to discuss family relationships, the fact that she was very fond of my wife Julia and that my father was reincarnated in eastern Russia. She also told me that relationships develop, even difficult and complicated ones. Finally we said our goodbyes. It was a very deeply rewarding reunion with my mother and if there is one thing to be said for Out-of-Body experiences it is the fact that it bridges the abyss death leaves between loved ones. Death is the great deception and blemish of our lives and we would be well-served seeing it for what it is, a temporary parting of ways that can be overcome by nurturing our dreams and turning them lucid. After my mother had left, I turned my attention towards locating my physical body for healing purposes. I tried to figure out a way of returning without waking up physically. While meandering around, I was then sidetracked by a party taking place in a large hotel or office-type building. I recognised the Astral counterpart of the physical location, which told me that I wasn’t far from home and I was going to approach my body via the non-physical dimension until I was back in my meditation room again. But the party was very distracting and I decided to join it. It was a fairly big event with about fifty to a hundred people and a huge buffet with the most delicious foods. To my utter delight I realised that I could smell again (I had lost my sense of smell and taste as a result of the rhinitis for over three months now). I was thrilled that I had my sense of smell back and could appreciate food again. The food was good and I soon found myself chatting to other guests. As is my habit during OBEs, I am keen to interview people to learn more about their afterlife experience, their world and condition in order to strengthen my research. Eventually I decided to return to my body with the intention of remaining detached and perhaps practising healing. Instead I woke up, finding myself slumped over in my chair. Despite my failure of healing while out of the body, I noticed a significant improvement. Though unfortunately it was not permanent. Nature’s Justice ConsequentialEntanglement Science teaches us that every action has an effect. Life teaches us that our actions have consequences, although we may not notice it straight away or even not at all. The reason we have crime is because criminals believe they can get away with it and the outcome will be favourable to them and unfavourable to their victims and that there is no further variable to this equation. Nature works quite differently and on closer inspection throws up variables that present all actions in a completely different light. Put simply, hardly anybody is aware of the complex entanglements our actions create, not just on the physical but on multidimensional levels as well. Even inconspicuous actions can create a fallout which can reverberate throughout history. A word spoken unthinkingly can affect the whole life of a person and I know for sure of one person whose life was steered into a different direction by a simple observation made by another person. Everything we do and say becomes part of a complex web of entanglements we are linked to in a positive as well as in a negative way. From a higher Consciousness viewpoint these systems can look like the neurone system of a brain where messages dart across a network of pathways and centres, triggering new impulses that dart off in different directions. Then they are stored and released again when certain conditions are met until the original system of impulse reaches a state of equilibrium again. Every action, reaction and outcome is recorded on the greater Consciousness system like an input sequence on the hard drive of a computer. The cosmic hard drive, though, is infinite and never runs out of space. Every action that has not resulted in equilibrium will forever vibrate and be active until all entangled aspects have been harmonised and laid down as an experience by the greater Consciousness system, where they can be called up at any time. To better understand this process is to visualise our physical life like a cylinder with a valve that lets out our action. Once outside the actions cause an effect and a reaction and run their course of entangled effects. Inside the cylinder we are shielded from the effect via its thick walls and completely unaware of the effects caused by our action. We simply carry on pumping out our action as if nothing has happened, ignoring or oblivious of the effect. Let’s see what happens when the thick cylinder with its impregnable walls is removed, in other words, when our physical life comes to an end. Suddenly all our actions, the effects and reactions are all around us. We no longer have the protective wall to shield us from the effects. Not only will we revisit our action, but we will also feel and experience the full impact they have caused on others, and not only that, but we experience them exactly as the person who was recipient of our action. They could be either a victim or beneficiary. We have to look at these principles not in terms of punishment or reward, but simply as a law of physics or even quantum physics if you like. We can see there is no judging angel, no devil or vindictive or rewarding celestial entity involved. It’s just nature and the way Consciousness functions on its own sets of laws. As our understanding of the finer physics advances we may even be able to apply this knowledge and implement it in our education and thereby design completely new types of penal systems, which would be based on counselling, education and coaching, perhaps with some interactive learning tools of virtual reality and so forth, rather than prisons and punishment. Attached to this would also be rehabilitation processes, which would enable the person to enrich society rather than be a drain on resources. How we can address and balance out our own negative output will be considered at the end of this book. It’s only when our actions are aligned, harmonised and synchronised with the natural flow of the greater Consciousness that we are no longer entangled with specific actions. In esoteric teachings this action, which does not create any new Karma, is action aligned to cosmic intent, guided by the wisdom of the heart. Although this action also creates an effect, it is in harmony with the natural flow of the universal Consciousness, and often has a far wider-reaching and more potent effect. Actions initiated via the ego or built on an idea, assumption or belief, inevitably lead to entanglement with incalculable and unforeseeable consequences. The following experience is a clear and very graphic demonstration of this process in action and shows how our misconception of reality, our ideals and distorted beliefs, don’t safeguard us from the consequences nature applies to our action once the solid shield of our ‘cylinder’, our physical body, has been removed. Reality is always more powerful than any belief, no matter how highly we place it on the holiest of pedestals of our belief system. A whole culture feeding on misdirected religious ideology is sealing the fate of many of their often hapless followers. Their colossal errors of judgement with their estrangement from reality can have dramatic consequences. The tragedy is that even innocent people falling victim to erroneous thinking are not spared the consequences. When we consider how cruel nature can be, causing death and destruction via natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis, we are forced to accept that innocence does not shield us from the consequences of the laws of nature. When confronted with the outcome of such an action I was shocked to the core and I only wished I had the power to call out to these poor unaware souls, who had fallen victim to the propaganda of their leaders, to consider the tenets of love which surely must be at the heart of every religion. 16 May 2009 The ‘Paradise’of aSuicide Bomber Ever since the 9/11 atrocities of the World Trade Center bombing I have been wondering what sort of afterlife the perpetrators of such monstrous crimes would earn for themselves. It is obvious to anyone other than the most extreme fanatics that the sufferings endured by the victims, and their loved ones who are left behind, will cause deep, perhaps lifelong, trauma. It is inconceivable to imagine that some deity representing compassion, love and truth could possibly endorse such barbarity. Nature only works because it is rooted in reality, in universal laws that only work because they are finely tuned and balanced. Nature does not act in accordance to a fantasy, however strongly we wish the fantasy to be real. Before I had the following experience I already suspected that the feelings unleashed by the hapless victims of mass murder and those of their relatives and friends, as well as the indignation of others, would be inevitably focused on the perpetrators in some form or other, but I was not prepared for what I found. Before this I had a number of Out-of-Body experiences, though none of what I experienced was worth reporting. When I woke up early in the morning, I knew if I kept my position without moving or opening my eyes, and waited for the familiar sounds in my head, I would be able to return to the OBE state and could perhaps, with new intent, make some worthwhile observations. I wasn’t wrong, but what was to come rated as one of the most horrifying events I have ever witnessed during my long history of Out-of-Body travels and the whole of my life; a nightmare without parallel. The concept of belief, suicide, murder and reward had been lingering as an unresolved topic for a very long time in the back of my mind. What happens to those who blow themselves up and in the process murder and mutilate scores of other innocent men, women and children, while at the same time believing with passion and conviction that they would be rewarded by God for their ill-conceived ‘self­sacrifice’. I wanted to know the afterlife fate of suicide bombers. This is not how it started off. When I was back in my OBE state my first intention was to transfer into a spiritual region, but then the old unanswered question came back into my mind This thought transported me almost instantly to the edge of a region that looked like a dark, nineteenth-century industrial park with bleak buildings covering a vast area and large smoke stacks. But this is not what it really was. I saw dark, billowing smoke rising from the ground into a black, menacing sky. As far as my eyes could see I was faced with a place of menacing desolation. The ground was almost pitch-black with cracks appearing everywhere and porous rough rock strewn over the wide area as if spewed out by a volcano and then cooled down into black ice. The sky was covered by billowing clouds formed by the smoke rising from the earth, occasionally lit up by sharp angry flashes of lightning releasing ear-shattering thunder, which made the ground tremble. If I had been asked by a film producer to create a scene to depict the end of the world, I would have come here for inspiration. This was an epic Hollywood version of Dante’s Inferno. With the next powerful thunderbolt I began to regret my decision of having come here, but curiosity made me urge myself further into the region until I finally discovered that the evil billowing smoke came from piles of slowly burning human bodies who were wriggling in agony. In the very first pile I encountered, these twisting, charred and convulsing bodies were stretching their hands and clamouring towards a person who was trapped right in the centre of the pile, who himself reached towards the bleak sky, desperately praying for help. The person was surrounded by the very real thought forms of his victims and the representation of their pain. However hard he pleaded, his voice never reached past the heavy curtain of smoke that shielded and surrounded him like an impregnable bastion. I quickly noticed that this impenetrable layer was made of regret and the realisation that the fate of his victims and their suffering could never ever be reversed or erased. It was a wall of absolute impossibility built from his victims’ pain and unbearable suffering and the overbearing realisation that this was a deed that could never be undone. That was not the only unpleasant thing that wafted towards me, there was also a smell which became stronger and more repugnant as I entered this graveyard of human misery. All this seemed to stretch for miles and I was astonished by the vast number of human debris occupying this field. Occasionally I saw dark, sinister figures darting across, who were not part of these piles, trying in vain to pull their lamenting comrades from the heaps of smouldering body parts. They were as dark as their surroundings they came from, their faces covered. Some were brandishing guns and when they saw me they glared angrily in my direction. Some yelled and took potshots at me, but their bullets fell limply to the ground after travelling only a couple of feet. Despite the horror surrounding me I was rooted in a placid stillness, knowing that no harm could come to me. Then I reached an area where I heard calls to prayer, but it was carried by a sad and lamenting note, unrecognisably distorted. I then noticed it came from people who had lost their faith, some cursing their god for not keeping his part of the bargain. Others defiantly and unrepentantly proclaimed their fanatical belief by yelling it at an unseen enemy who was barring their way into paradise. Above all a black impenetrable sky responded with red flashes of lightning and roaring thunder. Then out of the gloom I saw a man approaching me. He did not look out of place in the sinister region. He wore what had once been a white gown but was now dirtied by the ashes. I could see in his face that he was a kind man and devoted to his faith. As he approached me his hands reached out. He told me how glad he was that somebody else had finally come to help in answer to his prayer and he praised God for showing such mercy. He explained to me that he was a helper and faced the awesome task to sort out this mess and rescue some of these poor misguided young people. He lamented that there were very few people brave enough to enter here and assist him in his insurmountable task. He directed my attention towards another pile of human remains. I could see severed arms and legs, heads with their jaws missing and blood and burned cadavers everywhere. The acrid stench of burned human flesh was everywhere. Right in the middle of the pile was a man wriggling, trying to free himself from the mess, but however hard he tried he sank back into the pile without the possibility of escape. Every so often he would sound out calling for his God and pleading for mercy, but his prayer had no power. Instead, every time he uttered the name of his Lord he was confronted with the truth of his deed and how it was in opposition to what his religion had decreed. And now as soon as his prayer left his lips it was reeled back in almost instantly by the agony of his suffering victims which screamed back at him, and every time it did so he felt their pain and the consequences of his act. The image of a mother holding her mutilated child rising out of the pile and then sinking back again, a child clinging on to the dead body of its parents, the horror that consumed their whole being, a horse lying dying in the street, a young man staring in disbelief at his mangled body. All this played back in a feedback loop from which there was no apparent escape. It was an unending replay, made worse by the realisation there was nothing on Earth or under Heaven that could make this heinous crime undone. Nothing is stronger than reality. My solemn friend in his tarnished robes began to see that it was beyond my powers to save these poor victims of their own action. ‘But at least you must return and warn and report about this misery you have seen here in order to save people from their folly. Every person in the world must know that God is mercy and love and nothing must be stronger than Love. Unless people know the truth then many more will have his fate and many more will suffer and add to the numbers of the condemned in this region. It will get bigger and bigger.’ I told him that I was probably the most unlikely person to convince the brothers and sisters of his faith and that he should try to find and convince somebody of his own faith to assist him. I told him that whatever I reported would only be seen as propaganda of the enemy and would have little effect in changing any behaviour. The man cast his head down and looked at the helpless pile of wriggling flesh. I felt sorry for this man and wished with all my heart that he could find extra help. I looked at the miserable soul who was trapped in the pile of wriggling and smouldering limbs and felt a wave of sorrow and sincere compassion and then directed my love towards him. I was surprised by the light emanating from my hand and lighting the region. In the light I could see faces emerging from many more piles such as this. Lost anguished souls turning towards me with their hands outstretched, reaching for the light. That was all I could do, but I hoped with all my heart that in some way it would break the horrific loop and free these people, who in the end were victims themselves. I walked through the vast killing field of misery, sending waves of light and hoping that through some mysterious way they would do some good and relieve some of this monstrous misery. While I was doing so I was praying inside my heart that people would learn and understand the key tenet of their religions, which was love and not hate. After death we no longer have the filters of our physical brains. Consciousness becomes like an open book. The moment we recall any of our entangled actions it triggers a deluge of information that will flood our conscious awareness and create our world. We are inevitably exposed to the complete network of entanglement we have created. It is very hard to escape this loop until our Consciousness transcends to a much higher level. In most cases this is only possible if we are able to deal with our identification effectively and successfully. Of course, if our action created victims who suffered, we will have to find a way to obtain our victim’s forgiveness. If the victims themselves are in a lower dimensional state of Consciousness brought about by our action this is inevitably hard to obtain. We may plead and beg and try all kinds of things to make amends, but until our victims release us we will be bound by our action. This can go on for a very long time indeed. The more suffering we create, the greater the numbers of our victims, the harder we have to work to shake off the consequential entanglement with our deeds. Of course, we have to bear in mind that each one of us may have been guilty of a crime or misdemeanour at one stage in our career of becoming evolved individuals. In my previous book, I described how I had become a member of a gang of revolutionaries in the Middle Ages who made it their moral quest to ransack rich estates and kill the land-owners in order to liberate the repressed peasants. I then mentioned how one land-owner had turned up in my present life and destroyed my career. My Out-of-Body experience had traced the route of entanglement, which stretched over hundreds of years. So what can we do to disentangle ourselves from our ill-conceived actions? The answer for this lies in our service and our heartfelt blessing. Our quiet service to others, putting them first without claiming credit, is an effective way. We perform our service quietly, because we don’t want to compromise the service by being perceived as irritating do-gooders and in the end being told to mind our own business. We can provide service in the most innocuous kind of ways. Once, as a young man hitchhiking through England, I caught a bus on the Isle of Wight. At the end of the bus ride the driver, seeing me carrying my backpack, stopped me and started chatting. He then handed me a small glass tube containing dozens of layers of fine sands in various colours. He told me that these were all the different layers of sand that could be found if I went down to the beach. I was moved by his thoughtfulness and kindness and thanked him. When I came down to the beach I was overcome with awe at the grand spectacle of the oversized and grandiose work of art nature had presented me with. I felt an incredible thrill and in my heart I showed my sincere gratitude to the driver and still to this day feel a kind of cheery fondness for him when I think of it. Another time I received a call by a scammer who tried to persuade me to hand over the login details to my computer so he could ‘help me’ to clean up viruses. He claimed that a routine scan showed that my computer was infected and that they could fix it. I instantly saw his true intent and started listening to his patter. As he explained some technical detail I received the image of him sitting in a dark and windowless dungeon, the walls made out of resentment, anger and hatred, and being animated by his many victims’ ill-feelings towards him in the form of sinister gargoyles and nagging monsters rising from the stone, shouting and swearing abuse at him. He was unable to escape from his prison. After he had finished his sales pitch I gently put it to him whether he had ever considered how his victims would feel when they discovered the damage caused by his crime. When he didn’t reply, I sensed an element of surprise, and I suggested he could start making amends by helping other people who were in real need and putting the money he had defrauded to good use. After a few seconds the line went quiet and I wondered whether this little service of mine would be bearing fruits. Of course, the opposite is true as well. If we create positive and beneficial outcomes for the people we entangle with, we will equally benefit from their joys, liberation, health and enrichment we have created. This is inevitably played out on a much higher dimensional level. Helping others, sending out love and kindness, is a powerful way to make sure we experience all the positive feedback that results from this. It is not as clear-cut as it sounds, though. Action demands wisdom. Let’s say we feel in a generous mood and give someone money and they in turn use it to buy a gun, which they use to kill somebody. Will we be indelibly linked to their crime? The answer is, I don’t know. That’s why I think there are no rules that can be laid down in stone, passed as a law to guide our action. Reality is an incredibly fine and complex mechanism and the safest way is to rely on inner wisdom sent from the heart to guide our discriminate action. Religions have always endeavoured to lay down laws and a code of morality, but the universal laws cannot be defined in human language. They are multidimensional and reach way beyond our level of understanding. What I am delivering is just a broad outline, which in eastern philosophy has been referred to as the law of karma, and in science is known as the law of cause and effect. It is only when we reach the higher realm beyond duality that we transcend these laws and our understanding becomes clear, because then all our action will be guided, unselfishly, from a spontaneous wisdom level and in tune with the natural flow of the greater Consciousness, which requires no deliberation of what is good or bad. It simply acts in terms of what is required and in harmony with the dynamic processes of reality. All our actions then are free and even if somebody died as a result of our actions, perhaps in an accident, if these actions were in tune with the greater workings of reality we will never be affected by any resulting entanglement. One thing we have to remember when contemplating the consequences of psychological and spiritual entanglement is that at the root of everything lies a universal force that can only be described as infinite grace, in the face of which even the most gruesome occurrences on Earth, in the universe and other levels of non­physical reality are little more than a projection of drama, an illusion, a movie played out against the multidimensional screen of Consciousness; they are part of a much greater play which we can only see from the higher viewpoints Playing Fields of the Afterlife Using the lucid dream state and OBEs for meditation provides the most powerful platform to launch awareness into the most sublime spiritual regions imaginable, for the simple reason that there are no longer any ties to the physical body. It is like launching a rocket from space, where it no longer has to overcome the gravity of Earth. These may be the greatest benefits of Out-of-Body states, which are often overlooked. Using the OBE state for meditation is the most effective way to spiritualise your Consciousness and enter the highest states of your inner being. Out-of-Body travels provide the most compelling, authentic and immersive preview of our afterlife states. Because all our usual, often vastly enhanced, sense perceptions are applied we are able to memorise and record the reality as if it were happening here on Earth, provided of course we apply the necessary recall practice. What makes gathering data of our non-physical realities such a challenge are the infinite varieties of perspectives, the frequent quite surreal phenomena encountered and the often unusual sense perception sometimes filtered through completely new types of feelings and emotions. All this combined can make such reporting come across as fantastical and unreal but, as with science, it is essential to keep an open mind and not simply dismiss such reporting as hallucination and fantasy until it is absolutely proven to be such. Considering what it may have sounded like when the first explorers returned home from faraway continents, when describing horses with extremely long necks, cats the size of donkeys or ‘chickens’ the size of horses. We can easily imagine the disbelief of our ancestors, before giraffes, lions and ostriches became widely known and accepted. In addition to this, whatever we see and encounter in our non-physical realities is often observed while being modified by our state of mind and emotions, as well as in an expanded state of Consciousness. On the other hand, we should avoid building new belief systems around such reporting and establishing new dogma. Until a consensus base is established, all such reporting should simply be treated as data. My own data gathering reveals to me that our afterlife is much vaster in terms of experiential possibilities and potentials for exploration than our physical world, and is truly infinite. The few stories I have brought back are poor examples of what can be experienced once we free ourselves from our self-imposed limitations, which really means nothing is impossible and any fantasy can be experienced and realised as actual reality. After death, once liberated from our confined ego-focused awareness, we will enter a limited only by our willingness to explore and the power of our imagination. On higher dimensional levels our imagination becomes a powerful engine, shaping our environments, which are just as ‘hard’ and ‘real’ as anything our physical reality can offer. When combined with the cooperative imagination of others we will come across vast consensus environments, which will put anything created on Earth into the shade. That is not just restricted to art, architecture and the cities, but many other things for which there is no equivalent on this planet Earth. For many of the environments I have visited, I could only really give testimony of them by reproducing them as images. In our verbal descriptions we quickly run out of words and adjectives, such as beautiful, awe-inspiring, magnificent etc. Here language, even in the hands of a poet, will never be able to paint the subtle hues and atmospheres, the way the grass yields underfoot, the way colours percolate into different shapes to form new structures, the way new emotions are brought into awareness by the sight of strange landscapes or mind-bending features never seen before. We will encounter new feelings we never even knew we were capable of, as things experienced in non-physical realities have no precedence whatsoever and, as a result, defy conventional description. The old adage that it has to be seen and experienced to be believed holds absolutely true when visiting areas of some of these vast and strange lands. We find lands shaped out of emotions, sad lands and happy lands and many emotions in between. We will only become aware of such feeling when we visit the territories that evoke them. The closest equivalent we will find here is when encountering avant-garde art or new, never-before-seen works of revolutionary architecture, perhaps space phenomena revealed by the latest, most powerful telescopes or sea creatures from an ocean depth never reached previously. We are only just beginning to enter the new frontiers of Consciousness, where we have to accommodate completely alien states of awareness, where one mode of perception can actually shape the appearance of objects, where thought can alter reality and enquiry can lead to instant results. Where when we are sad, we may find ourselves resting under a ‘sad’ tree and when we rejoice, we may be showered with blossoms of a 'happy' tree. Our new frontiers are so complex and bewildering that our task ahead will be the biggest challenge of the whole history in our civilisation. It would be challenging enough if we were only dealing with one new dimension. Instead, when uncoupling ourselves from our physical body, we are confronted with multidimensional realities with new sets of laws and vastly diverse sets of presentations. We will learn that we are able to energise ourselves with the essence from a higher dimension, which will make us radiate like a sun on a lower dimension (reported on later). Mercifully, nature has put in place a system that only enables us to move as far as our inner constitution will allow. Otherwise, we may fare like Icarus of Greek mythology. With the right preparation we may reach the glorious heights of the mystics or, at least, encounter realms where human minds have burst all limitations and brought to bear their most fantastical imaginations, made real and manifest. I have wandered through cities where an unearthly light was simply part of their character and atmosphere, where elaborate architecture and structures with haunting elaborations have been engraved into my memory forever. I have been enlisted in games and participated in public displays that were curiously in synch with who I am, and I have been introduced to people who had known me long before I was even born. When we shed our bodies and escape from the narrow views of our preconceptions, we will find wonders beyond comprehension. It often feels that the treasures and objects of art and architecture that we find on Earth are simply no more than faint sketches of what is possible compared to what can be witnessed ‘over there’. For a start, in the non-physical we don’t have to contend with the limitations of physical laws or financial and economic restraints, lack of resources and time. We can come across the most elaborate constructions with breathtaking detail, built from precious materials which simply don’t exist in our world. As a practising artist, I am addicted to watching the latest Hollywood fantasy movies to see what my colleagues have come up with and what they might be up to next. It is safe to say that everything we see in the latest science fiction and fantasy films can and may already be a reality on the non-physical levels we can visit and walk through. My own visual work, involving virtual reality, is to make the images I have brought back from my journeys become three-dimensional reality for people to explore and enjoy, but clearly they too will only be a faint glimmer of the actual thing. No doubt as more of us explore our ‘last frontiers’ and as these become a new field in our scientific interest, research will powerfully affect and inevitably transform our culture, society and politics. By the time our technology has evolved enough to enter virtual realities without a facial mask or glasses, we will have tapped into areas of our brains to open the portals to non-physical realities, where we may travel to and fro at will and communicate with our dead relatives. When this happens, everything we know now will have changed. I often imagine the benefits these unearthed treasures can bring to our civilisation, our evolution and our culture in general. I fantasise of being able to source a wealth of information not accessible to us as yet, just by being able to look into our past history and the evolution of our planet, to solve insolvable problems by being able to shift our focus into unknown levels, to explore space without employing cumbersome and costly space technology. I imagine how it will impact on our Consciousness and awareness when we realise there is no death and that we are all part of the same energy operating in individual configurations. So let us explore a bit further into the mysteries of our non-physical realities. Presently we are a primitive species, trapped in prejudices and strange belief systems, dominated by unconscious forces, guided blindly by energies we do not understand and have no control over; but we can start from humble beginnings to take charge over our destinies. 21 December 2008 Lower-DimensionCurrency I found it hard to go to sleep. My mind had been milling over the suffering caused by negative beliefs triggered by a TV documentary the previous evening. When I next looked at my watch it was 3:00 am. I decided to go into my meditation room to meditate. I tuned into a bright light right in the centre of my head and allowed my focus to rest there without forcing my attention. After about forty-five minutes I went back to bed. I had vivid, restless dreams and finally got up at about 5:30 am to meditate again. After about one hour I thought it would be prudent to catch some more sleep so I wouldn’t be too tired the next day. When OBEs become part of who you are and an integral part of your life then, in my case at least, your inner code of conduct is just as relevant on the non-physical level as it is on the physical. Almost as soon as I fell asleep, I was semi-lucid and aware of a number of women trying to seduce me! I was slightly overwhelmed by two very attractive ladies who tried to involve me in their sexual fantasies. They were young and vivacious. In my non-physical condition I too seemed to be young and in the prime of my youth, but I was also keenly aware of my marriage vows to my wife of thirty-four years. I used all my effort to gain full lucidity, but the women’s combined efforts of seduction made me hover at the edge of losing awareness again until I finally forced myself to focus on my hands to gain full waking Consciousness. Not surprisingly, my attention on becoming aware disrupted the game with the two women. I apologised to them and said I needed to attend to family matters and sent a clear picture over to them that I was married. The two women laughed and decided to play along without me. I was aware that these women were no lucid dream characters, but as real as I was. Being a faithful husband I felt it prudent to leave them to their own vices. I emerged into an open square. Judging by the surroundings, I was on a lower dimensional counterpart of our physical world, but I did not recognise the town, only that everything was exactly as one would expect in any city in England. There was a group of young men in their late twenties or early thirties who I decided to interview before moving on. I still had many questions regarding the level that was so close to our Earth and what made it different. I asked a young man with dark hair and everyday street clothing whether he knew that he was dead, which he confirmed. ‘What make this world different from Earth?’ I wanted to know. ‘Nothing really,’ came the answer, ‘except all the usual benefits of not having to work or worry about your health, money or career.’ He then showed me a medium-sized boat with a wooden hull he had just purchased, which was moored to a small landing bridge. I was surprised by the term he used: ‘purchase’. ‘Do you have money here, then?’ Kind of,’ he said. He told me there is some form of currency, which he couldn’t explain and sounded different from the kind of currency we are used to on our physical world. Things still have to be made here, and it requires effort, focus and concentration, like my boat here. I didn’t make it.’ I became aware that on this dimension everything was still very much more physical than one would expect from a ‘non-physical’ level and, instead of manifesting simply by thought, as on the higher dimensions, there still seemed to be an element of effort involved. As my interview continued, I saw a group of interested bystanders forming around us. They seemed to be aware that I was not from their reality system and still in possession of a physical body. I noticed very few people around here took advantage of the art of flying and gave a quick demonstration by taking to the air and circling over their heads before landing on the ground. ‘Too much effort,’ one person said after I rejoined their group. ‘Can’t see any reason at all why we suddenly should behave like birds.’ He had a valid point and I realised the very basic dimension I was in, one where physical laws, habits and behaviours were still very much in evidence and the people living here were quite content continuing to live the lives they had been used to. One man in a blazer asked me whether I would be interested in taking a ride on his boat. He promised that this place here was just as good as my Earth. He invited me on board his motor boat, which had two levels and plenty of seats to accommodate all his friends. We embarked on the short journey down a wide and open river until it branched off and we came to a halt underneath a large open bridge crossing the water. Everybody looked at a small group of people standing on the bridge. I became aware of a strange mixture of sadness and decorum. I asked a fellow passenger what this was all about. He told me that the people on the bridge were crossing over, going to another level, and some of them were friends of theirs. I was touched by the farewell and thought to myself that physical death is not the only time people depart from one another, but at least here they knew that departure was only a temporary affair and that they could still contact each other if they wanted to. Seeing the people crossing a bridge in order to get to a higher level, I remembered my past experiences that by employing the symbolic way of climbing, such as to the top level of a large building, one could find a way to the next level above. Rather than using meditation, I wanted to test this theory and climbed up the stairs to the upper deck of the boat, hoping that with the right attitude, it would trigger in my mind the idea of rising, but obviously intent and hope are two different things and my experiment had little effect. Instead I thanked the captain for the invitation to travel with him but told him that my time was limited and I had to leave. I took to the air and returned to the square. In order to transcend this level I decided to use the OM chant. The moment I uttered the word, the ground began to shake and the whole square was lit up. I was surprised by the powerful effect my chant had on the whole area and I saw on the astonished faces of the people gathered here that they had probably never witnessed an effect like this before. Regardless, from deep within I conjured up the holy mantra again and the air vibrated and the whole surrounding was cast into a brilliant light. Some people turned away or shielded their eyes. Then the scene faded and instead I was surrounded by tapestries of millions of changing images and pattern, blazing with glorious lights in vivid colours. When with the next chant I willed my spiritual eyes open to discern my new environment, I discovered, to my regret, that I had opened my physical eyes. No date entered BridgingDimensions Meditation 4:30 am, for one hour. I felt tired so decided to return to bed. To capitalise on my meditation, I made a firm affirmation that after falling asleep I would achieve lucidity in my dream. It took about half an hour to fall asleep, keeping my intent. A short time later, I woke up again almost instantly. I felt frustrated that I couldn’t sleep as I had felt during meditation that lucidity could be achieved easily. As I was now fully awake, I decided to return to my meditation room, but things were not as I expected. There was a slight change to my room. The colour of the walls looked different. I also felt slightly drowsy and then I realised I had experienced a false awakening. I closed my eyes expecting to find a dream again, which worked. I became aware again in a very strange lucid dream scene. To break the lucid dream and enter into full OBE, I focused on the ground right in front of me to achieve clear waking Consciousness. From the ground I looked at my hands and then to the ground again. I became irritated by the fact that I couldn’t shake off the drowsy feeling and that I still had not the clarity I normally get by going through this ritual. Finally everything became pin sharp. I could see every single grain of sand in front of me with absolute clarity. I was fully awake in what I instantly identified as a lower dimensional counterpart of Earth. Before me was a square covered in grass in the middle of a strange town I did not recognise as a counterpart of any town I knew. What I was sure about was this was not a very elevated place. This became clear when I looked at the people who looked ordinary, exactly as you would find people in any town on Earth. Apart from the rather drab atmosphere this is a giveaway as on the higher dimension people generally look more attractive. I watched a group of men and women crowding around a man in a captain’s uniform who was trying to capture their attention in order to entice them on a sightseeing tour on his forty-foot cruiser, which was moored to a jetty just behind him. I approached and mixed with the group. Trying clumsily to strike up a conversation with a couple next to me, by asking them whether they knew that they were dead, they looked at me as if I was some kind of a simpleton, so I simply took that as a ‘yes’ and moved on. The guy with the captain’s hat was busy flaunting his boat trips, trying to persuade the crowd to join him for a pleasure trip. Most boarded his boat over a little landing bridge. The atmosphere was not very bright, but dusky without any sunlight, and the water was quite dark, with the waves gently reflecting back the twilight. The river cruiser had an open deck on top of a closed one. The open one had filled up first. It was covered in a gaudy pattern, well finished, but a little bit twee for my taste. The bridge too was open. I guessed the captain could talk to his passengers simply by turning around. After everybody had boarded, I addressed the captain and asked him why he was doing this and he told me that most of the people taking the trip were new arrivals in ‘the land of the dead’, he said with a slightly sarcastic grin. He told me he made it his job to welcome people. ‘Most don’t have a clue what is going on and some may even think they are dreaming. This gives them some time to relax and of course there is music.’ It was only now that I heard a tune, which seemed to be coming from a radio. It gives me an opportunity to talk to them and let them know what is happening here, like an introduction tour.’ He grinned and for a moment I considered him to be like a modern version of the ferryman of death taking the passengers across the River Styx, but for that he just looked too casual and jovial. He also told me that sometimes he has musicians on board and catering and there was a real party atmosphere, but it very much depended on his passengers. In any case, he was determined to show people a good time and lift their spirits. Looking at his boat I noticed there was another man talking to the new arrivals and shaking hands. He wore a white skipper’s hat and smiled a lot. The captain explained that he had staff to answer questions and help with the drinks. There is of course a pay-off for me and my crew for providing this service,’ he said. ‘After every trip the cruiser gets bigger and better. When I started I had little more than a rowing boat, carrying four people maximum. I get a lot of pleasure out of this.’ I wished the captain all my best, left the boat and wandered over to another group of people. I was keen to interview someone who had been a resident here for some time. A man in his thirties with a blue shirt and a white tie was an obvious target. ‘Have you been here long?’ I asked him. ‘Long enough,’ he replied. I enquired whether he would agree to my asking a few questions, which he did. I was curious about whether there was some kind of equivalent to Earth’s economy here, a question which keeps popping up whenever I see signs of commercial activity. ‘Do you use money?’ ‘I have never come across this,’ he laughed, ‘this is a place where you can happily live and survive without any money, I am glad to say.’ I clearly remembered when in a bar on a previous OBE occasion when trying to find people to interview, I had ordered a drink and, as if by magic, pulled some strange coins out of my pocket and handed these to the bartender, who took it without questioning. I now wondered whether he did that so as not to embarrass me. I walked down the road with two-storey buildings and shops on either side. Then I entered one with the door open, the inside completely open plan, with furniture on display but not very densely packed. On one side, partitioned off from the rest of the showroom, I spotted a large bed covered with blue sheets and a young woman sitting on it, looking slightly lost. ‘How long have you been here?’ I wanted to know. ‘Not very long,’ she answered. ‘I made a friend and we made this bed our kind of refuge where we sat and talked, but she has left and I don’t know where she went.’ She looked a bit sad. I felt like comforting her and started by saying that, like everything I guess, it will take a bit of time to get used to things and that her friend was probably just finding things out for herself. We then chatted a bit more but I suddenly felt aware that I was idling away time and that I could make better use of my Out-of-Body experience. Remembering that I was actually meant to be sitting in my chair meditating, I was not doing anything like meditation, but was wasting time wandering around rather aimlessly in a fairly low-level environment. With that I left the shop and as soon as I was out in the open and by myself I chanted the OM mantra. Instantly I was airborne and the environment around me began to fade. The pleasure of being pulled skywards and drifting through bands of beautiful colours is difficult to describe. Nevertheless, I was aware that this was not a spiritual state as such, more like a soft wave of joyful emotion. This made me clearly aware that I was still on an Astral level. As I focused on my surroundings I realised that I hadn’t transcended very far at all, perhaps just above the state I had just come from. The environment was much brighter though. I was suspended in midair as I drifted over houses and rooftops. Here, at least, there was sunlight, the colours were more vibrant and the season more summery than before, but as soon as I began acclimatising I was pulled down to earth as if by a magnet. After a gentle landing, I noticed just how earthly this level of reality was. I could have easily been in any normal waking world and if somebody had said so I wouldn’t have found it hard to believe. Instead I refocused my attention on the mantra again. This time a large wave of energy grabbed me and flung me over a massive abyss, filled as far as my eyes could see with geometric pattern and structures. I paused in the air to take in the sight. This was truly breathtaking and instead of continuing with my meditation I stopped and drank in the sight. As an artist this was impossible to ignore. Now I knew for sure that I had cleared the great divide of the Astral level and was in a world of thoughts and form. I cleared a massive structure of an intense purple colour in multiple nuances like an enormous gothic arch that dwarfed everything around it. I found a familiar landscape which I recognised only as familiar because it gave me a feeling of being at home. My surroundings, however, were like nothing I had ever seen before. The intricacies of the textures, the evolving shapes around me, which painted and sculpted the scenery as I went along, were of such incredible richness and complexity that it would be impossible to reproduce it any form, in any media known to man. This was simply too overwhelmingly rich and too rapidly changing for any artist to be able to capture. I drifted through incredible thoroughfares of shapes, with multi-layered iridescent pattern, perfectly designed, often too awesome to study and comprehend their origin or nature of their existence, because the moment I tried, their shapes started to shift, change and permute into new patterns. Everything at its root level was made of light. The most astonishing thing of all was that this world interacted with me. With every breath I took and every thought or feeling I released it responded by adjusting the subtle curves and colours, and moved obediently into new configurations. This all had a joyful effect, but I cannot call it joy in a known or traditional sense, because joys known previously had limits, were exhaustible; here they were not, because they fanned out into new refinements of joys just like the landscape evolved in front of my eyes. This ecstasy filled me with light and being as I realised that I had become one with joy and I lit up, nurtured by what my spiritual eyes were drinking in. It became dark, but only relatively so because I was drifting like a great eagle over an earthly landscape with great mountains in the distance and city lights. I was aware that this was not an earthly country, but another great non-physical reality created by disembodied men and women. Gently I descended to the ground, onto a vast mushroom-shaped hill with a gentle dome and overhanging sides, covered in velvety soft green grass, untouched, swaying gently in some heavenly breath. Dotted all over this were clusters of trees and lights. I landed next to a great ancient oak tree of indefinable age, but its mighty branches bent skilfully and artistically into various directions and shapes as if following the forces of a different kind to those our earthly nature could muster. Judging by the light it felt like a beautiful summer evening, catching the golden rays of a setting sun and painting the world in a soft colour with ambient shadows in purple hues, so subtle they were barely discernible. As I rose again I began to notice how huge this earthy mushroom island actually was, and that I was not the only occupier. Among the many trees there were benches and people wandering around and leisurely sitting down and enjoying their summer’s wealth; some were playing instruments and some were dancing. As I ascended further into the air, so I could appreciate the scenery better, I saw a restaurant emerge further away surrounded by tables and benches; people having their meals were drinking and chatting cheerfully and laughing. I began to notice that the trees I had passed were caught in the light of an invisible torch I seemed to be carrying and everywhere I went the surroundings seemed to be lit up. Soon I caught the attention of a few passers-by, who looked at me with amazement, pointing at me, their faces lighting up. I tried to encourage them to follow my lead and rise into the air to enjoy the weightlessness, but instead they were running alongside me, cheering and skipping like little children chasing a balloon. All this attention seemed to have an invigorating effect and I felt a strong burst of energy, which I released back on the spectators. As I drifted further people got up from their benches and one by one they followed my lead, rising into the air wherever I passed, shouting and laughing as if I was some kind of fairground attraction that needed to be tested. As I drifted past the restaurant nearly everyone was airborne by then. People were holding hands and forming squadrons, singing as they did so. Their combined joy had a powerful illuminating effect, lighting up the whole land and its atmosphere for miles around. I took leave when I became aware of my physical body: my chin was resting on my chest and I had slumped forward from an upright meditation position. For a few minutes I remained in this position, frozen and still, knowing that if I moved, even breathed, I would lose the link to my journey. So I remained and revisited the whole event twice over. Then I got up and entered it in my diary. 12 July 2009 DyingObservedfromthe OtherSide of Death I woke up at 4:45 am and, being unable to go back to sleep, I decided to go to my meditation room and use the stillness of the early morning to meditate. Meditation went easily into a deep calm. After about half an hour I felt a yearning to enter the higher state of Consciousness, utilising the Out-of-Body state, because this is the highway into that experience. Unfortunately my deliberate intent had the opposite effect and simply blocked me from achieving this. Instead I decided to go back to sleep and set my intent on gaining lucid awareness during my dream, which I aimed to convert into an OBE. It took a while, but after some surreal dream scenes involving skeletons coming alive and acquiring human form I thought this was too unreal and instantly became aware that I was in a dream. As soon as I achieved full waking Consciousness the whole dream environment disintegrated and, to my utter astonishment, I was in a vast, empty space filled only with drifting bands of colours. There was literally nothing to focus on other than what I could conjure up in my imagination, which would then appear before me. The first thing that my mind materialised before me was a clipboard. With a smile I recognised the symbolism of this image, telling me that I should use this state of mind to complete certain tasks I had set myself to investigate during my waking hours, such as exploring the power of healing. My wife had been suffering from a prolonged chest complaint. The last time I attempted to try this out I was unable to find her and then was distracted by a number of other events. I started by sending some healing, but instead I opened a vortex into a completely different direction. What was still fresh in my mind from my meditation was to gain entry into the higher states of Consciousness. I also figured that healing could be more effective from there too. This urge suddenly became overwhelming and I allowed myself to be swept away by the intensity of it. I simply surrendered to the current, expecting it to take me into new unknown heights. But it didn’t quite turn out this way. Instead of rising into a sublime state of Consciousness I was torn into different directions as if some outside natural currents were competing against each other to pull me into their own unique domains. One moment I rose on a stream of exhilaration Heavenwards, the next moment I plunged down to the centre of an unknown world with the breakneck speed of a roller-coaster ride. I soon grew tired of these random ups and downs and decided to take charge. I focused my attention on a small spot of white light high up among the bands of colours in the otherwise featureless sky. Soon the spot grew into a brilliant star and then into a bright white sun, which pulled me towards it. But, just when I felt convinced that I would enter the gateway to some celestial dimension, the sun faded and I was plunged down into a labyrinth of chambers. Instantly my curiosity took hold and hijacked my original intent. I remembered the clipboard and that I was here to scout afterlife conditions. I was faced with gangways of intricate and luminous patterns, branching off into different directions, each one a different design, colour, pattern and sensation. It was the strange atmospheres most of all that compelled me to take note, because there was nothing I could compare them with. Each chamber or hallway I walked through was a very distinctive environment differing totally from the next one. I soon discovered that I had entered a series of fantastic dream worlds, manifested emotional feelings with their own unique textures and designs, clearly communicating what these feelings were made of, though none of which were of my own creation. With great curiosity I wondered whether it was possible to enter the dream environments of other sleeping people. The surreal quality of the environments being littered with the most fantastical creations made me consider the fact that I might have accidentally entered some kind of dream sphere, which had granted me access to the innermost Consciousness of other people who were blissfully asleep and completely unaware of my intrusion. My rational thinking was heading towards the idea that this time of morning was probably for many the most active phase of dreaming, entering the REM phase of dream activity. I might have simply fallen into some kind of dream sphere surrounding our globe, which might form a dimension in its own right. I was fascinated by this prospect and eager to investigate. Unfortunately the surreal reality of these chambers soon became like the labyrinth of a gigantic sponge. No sooner had I left one dream chamber, when I got trapped in another one. I soon decided it was time to move out of this maze, but I couldn’t see any way out other than terminating the experience by returning to physical awareness. I considered this option to be a reckless waste of opportunity and decided to call for an assistant instead. Immediately I shouted out: ‘I need a guide to get me out of here and help me enter the higher dimensions.’ No sooner had this request left me when a tall slim man in his forties with slightly curly and dark blond hair – clearly European of my own culture – appeared right before me, bearing a broad grin on his face. ‘You called,’ he said, with a tinge of sarcasm, as if he had been a waiting genie answering to his master. This sent a smile to my face. There was something about him I felt I could trust completely. His whole demeanour was very friendly and he radiated empathy and humour. Without further ado, almost naturally regarding him as my magic servant whom I had summoned from my lamp and whose sole purpose was to pander to my requests, I asked him that he should kindly take me out of this place and escort me into a higher, more spiritual, dimension. At this he burst out laughing, which was so infectious that I too started to laugh at the frivolity of my request. ‘I will help you,’ he said, ‘but not yet. There is a reason why you are here and I want to show you a few things first.’ I asked who he was and he simply replied that his name was Philip, but that I could just call him Phil if I liked. I had rather expected him to reveal to me that he was my spiritual guide, here to assist me to reach the higher states of Consciousness. He accepted nothing of this as he clearly read my thoughts and smirked mischievously. ‘I can see what you are after but this is not how things work. I want to show you something else first,’ he responded to my thoughts. With that he ushered me through a number of chambers, very much of the kind I had hoped to escape from. He told me that some of the people who arrive here had actually died during their sleep or during a long illness. ‘I want you to watch this.’ I saw a man arriving in strange surroundings with organic protrusions coming from the walls like unformed hands. He was escorted by weird creatures, neither human nor animal, who tore at him recklessly and others who pulled on his limbs and finally dispatched him into an elaborate and colourful casket. He was then delivered into another room. This other room was an organic cave or the inside of a gigantic alien creature, the walls in rhythmic motion, like they were swallowing a prey, while the colours on the cave walls shifted and blended into different hues in some feverish display. I looked at my guide brimful of questions. ‘This person has just died as a result of his illness, but he doesn’t know it yet. He thinks he is dreaming. What you and I have just done is enter his death environment, or his death dream if you wish.’ ‘What is a death dream?’ I wanted to know. ‘This is a release of pent-up energies, of fears and anxieties,’ and he pointed out some fantastic and grotesque entities which seemed to take pleasure at tormenting their new prey. ‘For some new arrivals this is a bit of a nightmare, especially if they have fought hard to stay alive, mainly because they had a lot of unresolved issues from their life and were desperate to sort them out and finding it hard to let go. What you are witnessing is their inability to let go and you are seeing it from the other side of their struggle.’ Phil looked at me with a kind of misplaced and triumphant satisfaction, barely hiding a smirk from his face. I was slightly alarmed how this must have felt from the victim’s point of view and started considering the prospect of such a reception at the end of my own life. Philip noticed my concern and reassured me that this is not the rule and not as bad as it looks. ‘You could say that this is no more than a nightmare from which the person will wake, but instead of waking in his physical bed he is most likely to wake in a different bed, possibly surrounded by caring staff, but on a different dimension.’ With that another broad grin settled on his face as if congratulating nature on the magnificence of its practical joke. ‘I’ll leave you to it to study the different types of arrivals here and the kind of energies people bring with them when they depart from their world. Being an artist, you may find something of curiosity value here and perhaps even paint a picture.’ His strange sense of humour amused and alarmed me in equal measure as he left me stranded in a completely different environment, which was another feverish nightmare scene in which another man was struggling with his demons, who threatened to take him down into a deep abyss of which I could only speculate on the horrors it might contain. From my previous experience I simply identified all these tormenting creatures as artificial entities, materialised energies created from fears, frustrations and regrets. I accompanied the man through various changing environments, preparing myself to intervene if called upon. Fortunately, after a short struggle, the man relaxed. He had realised that he was dreaming and then he saw me. I must have presented him as a token of normality in this mad world and reminded him that he was just simply having a nightmare. His environment began to change, brighten and harmonise and then he disappeared from it altogether, leaving me to find another new and completely different chamber and its victim. I quickly began to tire of these surroundings and felt mental exhaustion creeping in. I considered the possibility of waking myself up and instead of going into my normal meditation simply going into my physical-world kitchen to make a cup of tea and, of course, write all of this down. Instead I decided to call on my new friend with an almost desperate plea. Phil predictably appeared. ‘You prayed?’ he said mockingly. I thought his sense of humour was inappropriate, but I couldn’t help being infected by his mischievous smile. ‘Take me out of this, I really think I have had enough. Why don’t you just take me to another higher dimension?’ I demanded. ‘There is still time for this,’ he replied. ‘I know you like art. Here, have a look at this.’ With that he handed me a large book, bound in yellow silk and elaborately embossed. I noted that the dream environment had disintegrated around us and instead we were standing in an open, featureless landscape, with bands of colour drifting across the open terrain like banks of shifting fog, swirling and shifting into wispy shapes and then disintegrating when disturbed by some invisible ‘thought’ wind. I opened the book and when I stared at the first page I realised that I was already standing in the midst of an illustration the artist had created. Soon I was drifting through a 3D watercolour illustration world of the artist’s imagination. Never before in my life had I been able to appreciate the work of other artists from quite such close quarters and I marvelled at the accomplishments of his unique and individual style and sophistication of execution. The figures which rose out of the images were personalities in their own rights, but endowed with the artist’s individual style. The outlines of their bodies skilfully described with dancing lines, the elegance of a woman’s beautiful body fleetingly hinted at with caressing puffs of colour that were rising into the air and defining new contours. The trees drawn with breathing touches of green and held in place by the indigo blues of the painted skies. I could see that this was how the artist had intended his work to be appreciated. This was what it was about and it was incredible. I drifted from page to page, from illustration to illustration, in real time, in a real world, and after about eight pages I soared into the work of another artist, totally different, unique and pleasurable beyond measure. After this I had other experiences, but for the sake of the narrative I simply filed these under ‘further observations’, of which I will go into more detail when discussing the higher mental and spiritual realities. I was grateful to my new friend, Phil, for having shown me all this. I did not quite expect to see this aspect of the higher dimension, but it was one of its many sides I needed to know and experience. I was going to learn how truly infinite the vistas of our non-physical reality really are. Until I can make the final choice for my relocation after death I know that meditation and my surrender to the Being state will release me from the confines of my social and biological self and prepare me for life’s most incredible adventures. I have learned that our physical senses are too limited by the comparatively sluggish working of our physical nervous system to really appreciate the depth of art and culture. I remembered Aldous Huxley reporting the opening of our senses when taking mescaline in his book The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell (1954). It may only be after we shed the heavy burden of our physical bodies that we will truly grasp the wondrous depth and infinite planes of our inner and outer universe. No date HealingandLearningPlaces I have read several books about life after death, mainly written by mediums channelling their communication. There has been frequent mention of the care and attention given to new arrivals who have finished their physical lives. As this documentary narrative solely relies on my personal experiences I can only give testimony to what I have witnessed myself. One of these observations was that when posing a question, asking for help or calling out for assistance, almost always a response was forthcoming, though not always in the way I’d expected. Sometimes this assistance arrived in the form of an energy boost. For example, when I struggled in my endeavour to fly and pleaded for help it felt as if somebody had given me an extra push or a lift upwards. The feeling of an intelligence behind this was quite often apparent, sometimes in the form of humour, like a chuckle when my flying efforts failed and I was caught up in desperate swimming movements or flapping my arms like a lame duck to stay afloat or lift off the ground. I can just imagine what a great source of entertainment Astral travellers can provide for people over there. At other times my request was instantly granted without the interference of an apparent intelligence, almost as if by magic, for example making a firm request to achieve clarity or to be transported to a certain location. However, calling out to meet a specific person did not always lead to a result, leaving me with a distinct feeling that the person was unavailable or did not want to see me. Occasionally I received very personal help in the form of a mysterious friend or helper who appeared in various disguises, but I always clearly identified them as individuals. Other Out-of-Body experiencers have reported meeting a very specific personal guide, who was dedicated to them and always appeared as the same entity. Except for one stage during my OBEs, where I had a regular Chinese sage training me to reach higher dimensional levels, I seemed to be blessed with different helpers more on the basis of whoever happened to be available or suited for the specific nature of my request. A couple of them had very strong idiosyncratic personalities, with a very personal brand of humour. I quickly formed a close relationship to these people, even if I only met them once or twice. I am not in a position to speculate about who or what these entities were, but they felt more like the individuals one might meet on the physical level, if one were fortunate enough. With regard to the mechanics kicking in when making a specific request that was met with an automatic response, it is hard to say whether it was simply the energy of desire which fostered the response. At least, on the more energised levels, a desire could simply materialise the object focused on. There seems to be some kind of infrastructure, autonomous as well as one implemented by intelligent agencies, even to the extent of institutions or health and welfare centres. Here is a report of one such place I encountered. I found myself in a large park. Right in front of me was a flowerbed raised up from the ground and supported by a wall of natural sandstone. Colourful clusters of flowers cascaded over the edges. The abundant quality of this told me instantly that I was on a much higher dimensional level than some of the previous ones I had arrived at. I bent down for a close look to fasten my awareness and to achieve full clarity. When full waking awareness was established I got up and looked around. There were people and couples strolling around at their leisure, like on a summer Bank Holiday, dogs playing and benches with tables, a scene that was instantly uplifting. I headed towards a large two-storey building with a wide entrance. The windows on the ground floor covered floor to ceiling and allowed a view inside. There was activity, but not in an organised manner. Entering the main door, I headed straight up a flight of broad stairs to the first floor, where I entered another door leading into an open-plan space. Here I was met with the friendly smiles of men and women who appeared to be nurses or at least wearing some kind of health worker uniforms. A little further on I spotted a group of people, two female nurses and one male, treating a couple lying on the floor. When I got closer I noticed the couple’s clothes were drenched wet; seaweed was wrapped around their feet and stuck to their bodies. The woman of the two just seemed to come around and was being consoled by a nurse holding her hand. I was mystified by the state they were in and the fact that they were wet and covered in seaweed. I asked the male helper whether he could enlighten me what was going on. He smiled and said: ‘These people had a boating accident. They got caught in a storm, their boat capsized and they drowned, and yes, they are dead, very much so, but they don’t know it yet. They think they have been rescued and in a way they have.’ He proceeded to attend to the man, who just came round as well and immediately enquired where they were and what had happened to their boat. The nurse informed him that the boat unfortunately had been lost but that he and his wife were both safe now. He assured them that they would be taken care of now and be given some dry clothing as well as a hot drink. I looked at the male nurse. ‘I don’t understand, how did they get here and why are they still wet and what is all this about with the seaweed?’ ‘They are here because they cried out for help as they drowned. We went, picked them up and brought them here. Of course, there is no need for their wet clothes or the seaweed on them, in a way this is just for decoration if you like.’ With that he smiled and I smiled too, noting his sense of pride about the added detail. ‘You have to understand that as far as they are concerned they have been saved from their fate physically. They are under the impression that they have been pulled aboard by a rescue boat and brought to safety.’ With a barely concealed grin the man continued, ‘Sometimes we have to put on a bit of a show to provide continuity from one state to the next. Imagine how confusing it would be if you found yourself one moment fighting for your life and the next moment being on dry land, fit as a fiddle without a drop of water on you as if nothing had happened. That could lead to an awful lot of confusion and a bit of a shock. No, we quickly adjust to a situation and do what is required to give these guys a smooth transition.’ By now the couple had both got up and were gently led away by the two female staff. The woman was clearly still in a state of shock and crying, while the man was eager to thank them for rescuing them. I knew then that they were in safe hands and probably about to enter a counselling session where they would learn the whole truth about their condition. Other institutions that are frequently flagged up by mediums and channellers are the now famous ‘Halls of Learning’. Are they real? Do they exist? First of all, I personally have not come across any institutions signposted as such (though that doesn’t mean they don’t exist), but I have come across art colleges and campuses, artist colonies and places where people were involved in ballet and dancing, which I commented on in the book Multidimensional Man. I have also been many times to the higher dimensional aspect of my beloved old art school in Hamburg, where I seemed to spend time producing new work in the company of other students within the large studios. Although I am not always fully awake when visiting, the few times I am I recognise that I work there, evident in the substantial body of work I find during my Out-of-Body visits. On these occasions I remember having put on exhibitions of my work, surprisingly of a painting style I don’t recognise, but nevertheless I identify them clearly as my own work. Earning my living as a digital illustrator, I often feel the need to return to my roots and indulge once again in some oil painting, but, as time won’t allow for it, I can clearly see that my desires are given expression on the non-physical reality levels. So in a sense it appears that many of us may be leading a double life, in which our dreams take us into realities that cater for our needs, even while still alive. 2009 (date missing from entry) Meeting anArtist As soon as I drifted off to sleep again I found myself fully awake on a large veranda looking through the open patio doors into an artist’s studio. This was not a lucid dream. There was no narrative and I knew I was in an OBE. I was clear as well, no need for the extra ritual to achieve extra awareness. Inside, facing away from me, was a man with dark hair. He was painting a picture. As I moved closer he turned around and greeted me with a friendly smile. He had a black moustache and his hair parted in the centre. He revealed a painting on an easel in the style of a German abstract expressionist painter. I became aware of other paintings in his studio and the style reminded me of the German expressionist painter Max Pechstein, who had been part of the German art group ‘Die Brücke’, but I wasn’t 100 per cent sure. For whatever reason my clairvoyant vision failed to put a name to him and I felt it to be too intrusive to enquire. Instead of asking who he was, I commented on his painting and told him that although I somehow recognised the style, they were nothing I had seen before. The ones he seemed to be working on were no larger than two by three feet, while others leaning against the wall in the back of his studio, which covered the whole ground floor of his house, were up to six feet tall. He told me you cannot stand still and have to move on and yet, clearly, expressionism had stuck with him, long after his death. Out of curiosity, I asked him if he had met Cezanne over here and he told me there wasn’t an artist from his era he hadn’t met. Seeing my admiration for his work, he volunteered to show me some other pieces. While we were talking, I noticed a small group of art lovers had gathered around us. I might as well show you what I am up to right now as I have got an audience.’ With that he took out a kind of remote control and, pointing it at a wall in front of us, he materialised five or six paintings. ‘I show you these because it is easier to explain what this is all about.’ He then proceeded to tell us about the secret of colour and the real power of good composition, while flashing new and surprisingly real paintings in front of our eyes that were strangely alive and not like projections in any way. The spectacle of conjuring up work out of thin air intrigued me. I knew then that once a painting is created there is no need for it to remain in visual reality. It can simply be called up like you would call up an image from the hard drive of your computer to the monitor screen; simple. As I mentioned previously, everything is forever imprinted in the universal memory bank. How that is possible and how it works is beyond my comprehension, but this is the miracle of Consciousness and we know very little about its actual working as yet. Back to the artist. Not only was I impressed by his work but, being the kind of tech addict I am, what was of equal interest to me was the technology he wielded with such confidence in order to give us such an extraordinary multimedia performance. It seemed that his wand worked as an amplifier that made it easier to restore his painting to actual tangible reality. I imagine at some time in the future, when we learn more about the nature of reality, this may well become the way we manifest objects, by assembling physical atoms from a digital memory bank on our physical Earth as well. After this demonstration I found myself back in the same town I had left earlier. It was very busy and it reminded me of the tourist town of St Ives my wife and I had visited earlier in the summer, except everything here was on a much larger, grander scale. I have always found that the English seaside town of St Ives has a somewhat non-physical aspect to it, and when Out-of-Body in a non-physical town this comparison frequently comes to me. But, as in St Ives, here too were not only tourists, but many artists and studios showing off their craft and wares; some were of a sophistication and splendour I had never come across. I stood in front of a showroom, which can only be described as a glass boutique. I was particularly taken by some enormous, multi-coloured glassware, which would be impossible to produce on this Earth. The iridescence of the material was alluring and simply – and literally – out of this world. Further along and right across the street, I saw a young artist painting a mural simply by using the gestures of his hands right in front of my eyes. I started chatting to him and asked him how difficult it was and what I would have to do to accomplish a similar feat. ‘It’s all in the mind,’ he said. ‘Simply use your hands and direct your thought: feel, imagine and visualise the colours and marks you wish to use.’ I tried it out on a six-foot-high whitewashed wall right in front of me and quickly got carried away by the ease and pleasure this created and the riot of colour that appeared before me. It seemed that the joy gained amplified the colour and the design of the creation. You still have to make decisions about your painting, although perhaps intuitively. Here the process develops and evolves naturally, as if the heart is wielding the brush before your eyes can even register it. I became aware, with a sense of embarrassment, that I had defaced the private wall of somebody’s house. I decided to seek out the occupiers, as I didn’t have a clue how to erase my handiwork. The door of the house opened as I approached and an attractive young lady appeared in the door. Before I could even fumble for an apology she already knew and told me with a big smile that I shouldn’t even worry about it; then she asked me inside. She introduced me to another lady, and a young man who was sitting on a couch. Both smiled at me welcomingly; I was touched. Without getting up, the man looked at some moving images that seemed to be somehow projected against the wall, but without a visible projector. The whole wall was covered in moving images and it reminded me of some multi-media content from a traditional computer screen. Seeing my perplexity, he told me that these images were informing them of any event that went on that they might be interested in. They could quickly select anything of any interest, keeping a ‘printout’ of the event on the wall. There obviously was plenty on offer, because a whole wall was covered with images of all kinds of events from theatre shows, concerts and dance events to things I couldn’t even imagine what they were. Curious about the technology behind it, I asked him how these systems worked. He told me there was a very elaborate and sophisticated communication network behind all this into which all the events anyone wanted to communicate were fed, and a filter system designed by the tastes of the individual ‘subscriber’ would highlight anything that could be of any value. I was stunned, as before me was an enhanced version of our internet. I imagined that in a few years from now such a system may well be implemented here on our physical Earth (and by the time this book is out may be it already is). Out of curiosity I asked him whether they used any form of electricity to communicate this information. He took me outside the house and pointed towards a mast a few hundred feet away. ‘Come along,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you.’ With that we were airborne and drifted towards the top of the mast. I was aware of some kind of energy radiating from the top in all directions. ‘Stand in front of the stream.’ I was a little anxious I might experience some form of unpleasant electrocution. He laughed and took the lead. As I reached the top I instantly became aware of a stream or burst passing through me, evoking a rather pleasant different emotion that I hadn’t expected at all and found hard to explain. After this I asked other questions, not all of which I can remember, but one I was keen to know the answer to was whether there was some kind of administration system in place or government. ‘There is no such thing as government or administration here as you know it in your world,’ he said. ‘Everything seems to govern itself. No higher authority is required. Although there are plenty of people who consider themselves to be authorities, but their attempts at assuming some kind of power or authority soon fall flat, simply because there is no power to wield as everything follows the principles of nature.’ He then showed me an image of somebody at one time trying to assert some form of authority. All he achieved was to annoy people and attract ridicule. He soon disappeared from the scene. Upon waking, I decided next time I was to venture into this world I would prepare myself with a clear task sheet to conduct a proper survey. Since this event a few years ago our technology has accelerated and we have already seen similar types of wall-projection technology in development. There are several types of technologies I have observed over the years, some of which I mentioned in my previous book. Others were not paid much attention to, simply because I didn’t know what to make of at the time. It is worth noting everything observed and recording it as accurately as possible, because sooner or later it may pop up on the physical level. 21 February 2010 Non-PhysicalCityLife This was just one of those numerous experiences which took place on a slightly higher dimensional level, which follows the one that is almost a replica of our physical world. This is a level where people are firmly established and have adjusted their whole life and life styles to the increasing creative powers of these dimensions. The greatly increased power for creative manifestation has quite a dramatic effect on the dynamics of the lives of the people living here. The inhabitants are living at a higher pace, not driven by industry and the need to work as we do here in our cities, but simply because of the availability of increased powers of creativity and manifestation. In these regions people feel motivated and at liberty to make almost all their dreams and wishes come true. When I first realised that I was on another dimension beyond my physical body, I was confronted with life in a large city that simply could not have any equivalent on Earth. It was the sheer flamboyant design of the buildings and the generous layout of the streets that demonstrated this. I was amazed by the number of people milling through the busy streets and wondered why this city was so populous. On further inspection I saw no reason why there shouldn’t be busy cities, although there appeared to be no need for an economic infrastructure. People enjoy city life on Earth for cultural, entertainment and social needs and there is no reason why people should choose to live anywhere else after advancing into new dimensions. In the obvious absence of economic requirements, the space was filled with incredible creativity and the production of all sorts of artistic artefacts, which was expressed in the extraordinary design of the houses and their incredible detail, the numerous malls and stalls along the streets. People were driving along in inventive forms of transport and quite odd-looking (to the point of humorous) flying machines. The atmosphere was busy and yet cheerful, frequently interspersed with an almost childish sense for play. There were street parties and a number of festivities and everywhere I looked there were things going on, such as street theatre or re-enactments on a grand scale. I could easily have spent days, perhaps weeks or even months, studying the hectic life and interacting with its people. My attention was drawn towards an attractive young woman; she wore a dress with a flowered pattern. She smiled openly at me and had obviously noticed that I was only a visitor coming from a different place altogether and still attached to a human biological body, unlike all the other people here. I am frequently surprised at being identified as such and still have not worked out or enquired how. She came towards me by floating across a few stalls filled with hundreds of beautifully crafted objects. ‘Do you like it here?’ She smiled at me, waiting for a reaction. I also couldn’t help noticing her deep-cut dress and her beautiful breasts being attractively displayed. I felt embarrassed when I looked at them, but she simply laughed out loud as if she was testing me. ‘You are very pretty,’ I heard myself saying in my justification for staring at her incredibly shaped body. She came closer to me and I felt a surge of sexual attraction, which I found difficult to disguise. She burst out laughing and took my hand. ‘You don’t have to be ashamed about what you feel. We see things quite differently here.’ I became aware of an easy intimacy here in stark contrast to our physical ways of social interaction. People seemed to be less inhibited in showing their feelings, probably because feelings here are much harder to disguise. On Earth we can simply pretend and pull the wool over each other’s eyes. Here people have to own up to their thoughts and emotions. Consequently they make allowances and are much more open. The girl then pulled me along the large hall, which was like an over-displayed museum, and pointed at all the beautiful objects we passed by. I couldn’t decide which held the greater fascination, her beautiful, open and charming disposition or the incredible display of figurines and crafted objects of all kinds we passed. They were fashioned artistically from the most unusual stones, crystals and ebony, and were not just very lifelike, but almost alive. Then, to my utter alarm, I saw the man at the end stall lift up a table and toss the whole display into the air, where it crashed down to the ground, shattering the precious display in a million pieces. He burst out laughing when he saw my expression of horror. Then with a grandiose, theatrical gesture he commanded all the pieces to reassemble like in a gigantic magic trick. I found this whole display rather disconcerting and not at all funny. This only seemed to make him enjoy himself even more as he turned to his friend, who was also creased up with laughter. By this time I felt rather overwhelmed with all the activity and craved some quietness. I went outside the hall and noticed that I had lost my female companion. She was nowhere to be seen. The street was crowded and the city appeared vast and I had no way of knowing of how to get out of it. It was not an unfriendly place, not at all like the inner city of London, which had none of this cheerful, carefree atmosphere. It was just too hectic and too busy for me. I considered focusing on the pretty lady to find out whether she was acting as my guide. Instead I felt a gentle knocking in my head, something I often noticed when returning to physical awareness, and became simultaneously aware that I was lying in bed, yet still immersed in the pictures of the city. Julia gently woke me and offered me a cup of tea. I smiled at her cheerfully, wondering whether female intuition had been at work to stop my potential infidelity in its tracks. She smiled back at me as if she knew. Later I asked, but she denied having had any extrasensory knowledge. 2 January 2013 EverythingWe Imagine Is PulledfromanExisting Reality Sometimes I come across scenarios I simply have not been prepared for as there is no equivalent on this physical planet of ours. There can’t be because our physical laws of nature won’t allow it. Some things are literally beyond this world and I am always open, even eager, to discover and explore new sceneries, something never seen before, something totally out of this world. Last night I made such a visit, unfortunately cut short when I was gently awoken by the clinking noise of a teaspoon in a freshly brewed mug of tea. It started off as a lucid dream, which only became lucid when I was told that I was the new owner of a two-wheeled Volkswagen Beetle. The strangeness of the vehicle, with only the front half of the 50s VW and the rest open like a chariot, catapulted me into full OBE awareness and into a world that was totally ‘out of this world’. This was not the result of early morning meditation, but no doubt triggered by heavy REM sleep. Often, when finding myself lucid, I use this state to meditate in order to enter deeper levels of Consciousness, but this was too weird and too good to be missed. After parking my two-wheeled VW chariot outside a huge leisure complex, I became instantly drawn into the outlandish leisure activities of people who could only be described as a bunch of the most extrovert holidaymakers I had ever come across. The first thing I noticed was when I was hit by a table­tennis-sized ball in the face. I spotted a man a hundred yards away telling me, via a second ball in my face, that I should get out of the way as I was in the flight path of their strange game, where the player threw several balls simultaneously, destined to hit other balls to be displaced towards various destinations on the playing field. Jumping to safety, I looked around and saw the most amazing architectural complex imaginable surrounding me. The best way I can describe it is a series of elaborate chrome domes, futuristic-looking but clearly inspired by 1950s automotive design, hugely extravagant and testosterone driven, distinctly male. This was an Astral vocational playground, frequented by attractive people and couples hell-bent on having fun. It was a style-conscious Las Vegas, but without the limitations. With my jaw dropping in amazement at this bewildering anarchy of designs I tried to construct a plan of how best to gather all the data of such ludicrous abundance of information in order to fashion a comprehensive picture of this strange world I had been plunged into. In the end I was left with impressions I knew would take years to put into some form of context, so I just drifted through the crowds, hoping that my non-physical brain would have the secret power to store what I was witnessing for later retrieval. Fortunately, or unfortunately, a return to physical waking reality solved the problem. I still have a clear impression in my mind of some of the architecture I have seen and as an illustrator it would not be too hard to reproduce it for documentation. What is much harder to document is the general atmosphere and some of the extraordinary detail, the gravity-defying constructions; if I were to illustrate some of these scenes people no doubt might simply accuse me of making it up on the grounds that I have illustrated science fiction book covers in my past. Having said that, I often wonder where some of my colleagues get their inspiration from. I could easily pick on illustrations and sceneries from modern films and categorically state that the images were simply inspired by actual non-physical realities indirectly or unconsciously copied from Astral environments. As an artist I know where our minds can take us when we let go of our physical focus. I have seen my colleagues unknowingly dipping into the storehouse of the great unconscious. We are equally resourcing as well as creating. Take our physical body out of the equation and what we are left with are the creations, as real and as solid as our focus of attention will allow. Everything is real and as hard as here in the physical reality, though not everything is relevant to our focus of awareness or the life we live at the moment. On higher energy dimensions, which are not dulled down by the negativity that inhibits free flow of creativity, anything we can imagine is tangible reality. All our own creations are, especially so the moment they become mass media information. Take any science fiction or fantasy movie set, and via the attention of the masses it will be cemented into consensus environments, which will endure even when attention is withdrawn. Attention manifests these thought forms on a higher non-physical dimension, where they become tangible reality. If you walk into these sceneries during an Out-of-Body journey, you will find they are real, and as you focus your attention and touch the objects you will add more detail as you go. Mysteries of the Afterlife 8 October 2012 The Art of Manifestation I don’t often go out of my way to seek OBEs and my first priority is simply to practise my meditation. As a result there can be months without my recording any worthy events. Anybody who has experienced Samadhi, and there are different kinds, will know that nothing on Earth compares with this sublime state of Consciousness, where the ego no longer claims a position and instead a total synchronicity with a deep state of pure being has taken its place. The easiest way to get a picture of this state of Consciousness is by remembering how we felt when we were completely absorbed in a task which drew all attention away from our self and into the moment of the experience. Nearly everybody has felt it, playing an instrument, painting, pursuing a hobby or sport, when we feel in ‘the zone’. Samadhi is already a natural potential and aspect of our Being state. In the much higher state of absorption, where there is no longer any interest focus to dissolve in, except Being or awareness itself, all needs and desires, even in their most sublime and elevated forms, have ceased completely. This pure attribute-free state of awareness offers little incentive to fill this void because nothing is missing. When residing in this state there is little incentive to stop and re-enter the world of the senses. Once experienced, it is easy to understand that some Eastern meditators feel inclined to remain there for hours at a time, several days, months or even years. By comparison, OBEs offer very little to compete with, but of course they are of a different order and nature completely. The fact is I feel always more drawn to deep meditation than spending the equivalent amount of time pursuing anything else. However, Consciousness is complex and beautiful and learning its mysteries and exploring its infinite vistas is not without its powerful attractions. On this occasion, after weeks of not showing the slightest interest in OBEs and completely out of the blue, I spontaneously became aware in my dream. When this happens I pay attention, because invariably Consciousness is showing me something deemed important. Inevitably new parts of our unfathomable jigsaw will be revealed this way. I focused immediately on my hands. The surroundings were very dark and not very clear at all so I called out for ‘Clarity Now’, which I don’t use very often. Immediately my surrounding came into focus. I proceeded to intensify my awareness by focusing on my hands until full waking Consciousness was established. I was inside a village on the village green. Fifty yards away was an open gate to an estate. A dog came bounding up to me as if I was its owner, very friendly, and I stroked him. He then jumped ahead of me and I followed him through the half-open wrought-iron gate. The dog stopped by a man who was his real owner, who patted his head and then welcomed me. We shook hands as he pointed out that he could see I was not a resident. I was then invited to say hello to his friends. We walked towards a country house, which was much smaller than the big gate we had walked through would have led me to believe. After entering the front door I followed him upstairs into a lounge. There were three women: one was sitting on a sofa and two were in armchairs around a small table. They were very friendly and soon engaged me in a conversation. ‘It’s not too often that we meet conscious travellers,’ one woman with curly blonde hair said as she offered me a seat. The room was tastefully furnished and at the far end sat another woman, who was preoccupied with something else; after casting a glance at me, she simply ignored me and carried on with what she was doing. The lady on the sofa pointed at my trousers and said that they were an unusual design and that she hadn’t come across any like mine before. As I looked down I noticed I was wearing the beige trousers I had bought in the summer in a men’s fashion shop. It was only when I came home that I noticed they had strange cross-stitchings above and below the knees and had a low waistline. I am not a fashion-conscious person and my purchase had been purely accidental. My wife Julia had tactfully pointed out that men like myself at pensionable age would normally avoid purchasing such a garment designed for sixteen-year­ olds. I then remembered from an earlier experience that on the next level people are not always familiar with design and fashions on Earth (just as I am not either!). The most vivid example was during an earlier experience where I was observing cars. Some of them were distinctly old-fashioned, but aiming to be modern and yet missing current car designs by miles. The most ridiculous car was one that aspired to be a modern Mercedes. Sadly, the only thing it had in common with this aspirational brand was the three-pointed star. The owner of the car seemed to be totally oblivious that a company like Mercedes would never dream of designing a clunky object like that. I also noticed there was no link at all to current Earthly design trends and I had the feeling that the people in this town had simply lost contact with the ‘real world’ altogether and had evolved their own culture by muddling along on their old and often outmoded memories. This was an amazing thing which I observed over and over again, the distinct idiosyncrasies in Astral cultures of closed-off communities. We find this on Earth as well of course, such as the Amish community or some native tribes still hidden in remote forests. On the non-physical realities this was just much more pronounced and common, as there was a quite natural cultural attraction of conforming tastes, so you can find distinct communities on the Astral level that form a kind of coherent style. Here in the sitting room I had been invited to, I noticed that the woman who had complimented me on the choice of my stylish trousers had reproduced them simply by an act of intent, and she was now holding a pair in her hands and brushing lightly over the stitching. I asked her whether she was fond of our current fashion on planet Earth, which she confirmed. She then proceeded to manifest a matching jacket to my trousers, which I did not wear, but she told me that this would go well together. I noticed the jacket had subtle lines like inverted cord in the same colour as the trousers. I noticed the ease with which she manifested these items and I asked her how she did that. ‘It is very easy once you get the hang of it,’ she told me. ‘You just have to use your imagination and simply trust it.’ ‘Show me,’ I said. ‘Have a cup of tea,’ she offered, and without any effort whatsoever she handed me a cup filled with tea, ready to drink. I took a sip and then put it down. ‘I want to try,’ I said. I visualised a teacup and in my hand a porcelain object formed. It was like a cup, but distorted, and there was a gap in the side which would prevent it holding any liquid. The woman laughed. She told me that I had to put a bit more effort into it. Not knowing how, I used my other hand to try to fix the gap with my fingers, as you would with a freshly thrown clay pot that was split. This cup was already solid and even glazed, displaying a distinct pattern, which I had no idea of where it had come from. I certainly did not imagine it and figured I must have added it subconsciously. Finally I fixed the gap but the cup was still distorted, showing the marks I had left with my fumbling fingers. Giving up on the idea of ever being able to produce a perfect result, I focused on filling it with tea. This seemed to be a lot easier. I imagined that this was because I already knew what tea was and simply expected tea to be there and it was. As I hadn’t managed to create a handle I picked up my grotesque creation and proceeded to drink. To my astonishment the tea was little more than water and my face must have shown it. My audience laughed out loud and one said, ‘Try it now.’ My second sip showed me that the liquid in my cup had magically turned into proper tea. We then started a long conversation. I commented about how real everything was and how physical it all felt and that it must have been very strange for them to get used to their lives here after they had first arrived. ‘There are many things more strange than this here. Although being able to conjure up things out of thin air took some getting used to,’ the blonde woman said. We talked some more. Did she feel this life was more real than her physical one she had left behind? She told me her past life hardly featured any more and meant little; it was a distant memory at most and more like a dream. This was much more intense and interesting, although also more disturbing if you didn’t adapt and keep control of your thoughts and feelings, she added. Her friends elaborated and told me that appearances were less consistent than on Earth. I remembered when Googling school friends I had known as a child and tracing their adult pictures after forty years, there would have been no way I would have recognised some of them. Here it was much more intense. I found that out when the individual who had introduced me to his female companions suggested I should follow him and have a bath. I was puzzled and wondered whether I looked dirty or, worse still, smelled funny. He laughed and told me that I would enjoy it because it was not like a bath I had ever had before. He led me out of the room, down the stairs into an open courtyard, and there in the middle of it was a bathtub filling with water. Just then a man walked past me with a towel around his waist. He was fat, with prominent blue veins stretching hideously all over his white skin. I was so shocked that I gasped. The man, aware of my reaction, turned round. As he did so, his appearance began to change. His body size and skin colour returned to a more normal state and the blue veins disappeared. Instantly I was aware that his body was simply expressing his state of mind and my awareness must have jolted his thoughts, returning him to normal. This was not the first time I had noticed that what goes on inside people very often finds expression on their outside. Seeing this so graphically and blatantly in operation, I wondered why none of the afterlife explorers and mediums had drawn much attention to this fluid state. I had observed it on many other occasions, this dynamic change of our outer appearance in synch to our emotions, thoughts and feelings which, unless we assert discipline or know how to stop this responsiveness, will naturally take place. I returned to the bath and stripped off. The water did not feel wet, but had a strange, invigorating quality. I became excited just swirling the water in the bath with my arms. My mind became very lucid and I marvelled at the crispness and vividness of my experience, and the fact that I must have spent the best part of an hour with little pull from my body. That changed abruptly when I heard a noise coming from my bedroom – physical noise of the shower door from the ensuite, which terminated my experience. Previously I had established that there are five basic natural powers which enable us to conjure up objects out of thin air, where intent is probably the most unnatural or complicated one, mainly because the focus is on the mind, which can be disconnected from the driving energy of emotion, as in my case with the cup of tea. It is far easier to expect something without even thinking about it, but even this may not result in the quality of the manifestation we’ve expected. Quality relies on the clarity and purity of the channel created. A selfish person will find quality manifestation much harder. The power of expectation is the second way of manifestation and a very common one, and closely linked to this is the power of habit, where we open the manifestation channels simply by repeated use of the same process. This is why we find people ‘employing’ other people to do the manifestation for them, like looking for a tradesman to fix our house or a painter to do a painting for us, though with a bit of practice we can do all this ourselves. The payoff for getting people to do our bidding is the benefit they receive that comes with service, mainly a brightening in their circumstances. Another power is the power of consensus, where a group of people work on a project together, and lastly is the power of desire, where intense desire becomes the driving force behind our manifestation process. However, this involves a mixture of attitudes of wanting and letting go, which initiates and stimulates subconscious energies to complete the process. Now another power to consider are the subconscious energies which manifest without us even knowing or being aware of them. It relies on pent-up or unreleased energies and is mainly responsible for sending us to the environment most suited for us. It is also largely in charge of our attire, our external appearance, and often adds other things in our manifestation process that is pulled from the subconscious, like in my case the pattern on my cup. The fat man with the veins covering his body is a typical example of subconscious energies at work. Changes in appearance is an accepted feature on the Astral level, though most people learn how to control it once they have established themselves there. When the attention is focused away from the self, I have witnessed some mind-boggling and astonishing subconscious transformations in the people living there. The following experience is a graphic example of this: 16 January 2011 Metamorphosis I got up early in the morning in order to meditate, but instead I spent most of my time thinking about other things. I opened my eyes, focused on my breath for a ten-minute break. Finally I managed to meditate as usual for about another hour. I then became aware of a strong hypnagogic image of a road with dark-grey gravel. When my Consciousness turned ‘dreamy’, I entered into the scene. The first thing to do was to establish full waking awareness. This was extraordinarily clear. I picked up some gravel from the ground and watched it closely as it ran through my fingers, making a musical tinkling sound. I repeated this three times as my waking awareness became more acute and I was confident that I had full waking Consciousness. The first thing I did after this was to take to the air to check out the environment. I sailed high up on wings of euphoria, leaving hills and mountains streaming past underneath me. The landscape below me was simply breathtaking. I noticed to my left a hillside community with cute dwellings nestling against the mounds. Moving closer, I saw that they were artists’ open-air studios. The first artist I saw, as I hovered about ten feet above her, was a woman producing a pencil drawing of a life model. To my surprise I noticed that the artist herself was covered in pencil marks, almost as if somebody had drawn her. A little further along, I spotted a large building also built into the hillside, with a number of studios jutting out like balconies into the open. I landed in a courtyard and proceeded to visit a large studio. To my utter astonishment, I found that the artists looked rather surreal. One in particular stood out, as if he was a cubist representation of his painting. Nearly all the artists in the studio somewhat resembled their own paintings. One man’s representation shocked me initially until I looked at the grotesqueness of his drawing, in which he had represented himself with snakes in place of his limbs, his drawing on the paper closely resembling his actual disfigured body. Had I not been in full waking Consciousness during this whole episode, I could have easily believed that this was just a very weird and surreal dream, but it was not. I then realised that the intense concentration of these artists had them identified so much with their work that they had transformed themselves into a 3D version of their drawings. When I spoke to one of them, with her concentration broken, she morphed slowly back into herself with a smile. This episode made me aware of how intensely psychological this world actually is. Looking back, in the past I did not always enter such strange events into my journals simply because I had felt that I could have fallen victim to an elaborate dream and that I had not been observing an objective consensus reality at all. After many more experiences, I am now more certain and convinced that my observations are authentic and true, even if I have come across few experiencers having reported these phenomena. There is much we don’t yet know, don’t want to know or can’t accept about our afterlife state, because it is simply too strange and doesn’t fit into our preconceived ideas of what reality should be like. Or we simply like to believe that after all our struggles here in this world, death should finally give us our much-needed break and eternal peace. Many people showing interest in the afterlife are only too willing to give undue credence to established hearsay, in an endeavour to build a ‘safe’ belief that all will be well after death. Reality is reality wherever we are, and fantasies and wishful thinking does not make it go away. We are better served by surrendering to facts. Many fantasies have been painted about fairies and nymphs frolicking around us in summer-land glades when we die. Yet to most who are psychologically sound, the next stage of their journey will show a cornucopia of benefits, but it is unlikely that they will be in a format that can easily be imagined. To many, as in the report about my brother-in-law, it will come as something of a shock when finding that reality is surprisingly real and hard and that in this sense nothing much has changed at all. It is only upon realising our true state and how our thoughts, feelings, intent and creativity influence and interact with this world, that we unearth the full potential that will take us into regions of Consciousness which even our wildest fantasies are unlikely to grasp. In the meantime, it is important to accept and contend with the powerful psychological interaction with our unconscious taking place, its influence on our environments and its far-reaching effect on our experience and life as a whole. Our psychology becomes much more apparent and forms the very fabric of non-physical reality states. Up until now we haven’t even scratched the surface. Here is another report of our ability to change our appearance dramatically: 13 July 2011 The AstonishingPowerof Shape-Shifting I woke up at 4:00 am. Started my meditation twenty minutes later. I was still tired and could not maintain my focus on awareness. Then I must have nodded off, but as soon as I entered a dream I was instantly lucid as I was walking down a tarmac road. I crouched down to look at the detail to make sure I was fully aware and awake. The environment was Earth-like and pleasant. I decided to take to the air to get a good look at the city to see if I could identify it as any locational counterpart of places I knew. As I couldn’t, I decided to rise to a higher level by chanting the OM. Although it raised my feeling, the city remained the same. Occasionally things happen where I feel they are simply too ridiculous, too fantastic or too unbelievable to be documented because they would simply undermine everything else and discredit me as a reporter. In the end I decided to put my reservations to one side and leave it to the reader to decide whether to give credence to the following happening or simply dismiss it. Something very strange and quite extraordinary happened. Right ahead of me in the distance I saw a dragon flying directly towards me, making a few turns on the way, one or two elaborate somersault manoeuvres, and then sailing closer, occasionally flapping its majestic wings. My first thought was that I was dealing with an unintended, subconscious projection, but focusing on awareness did not make it disappear. Instead, I was taken by its rather human characteristics. The strange, idiosyncratic manoeuvres and behaviour made it look rather benevolent, almost humorous. I felt touched and kept following its antics. I was feeling a strange fascination and hesitantly flew towards it to investigate. The dragon stopped before me in midair and, to my surprise, greeted me by brushing its nose against me. The animal, if you could call it an animal at all, wasn’t very big, perhaps twice my size and hence not very threatening at all. It was more like a dragon invented for a friendly children’s movie, with brightly coloured skin; it was modern and was almost hip and trendy-looking, like a girl dragon. That was just an impression, I couldn’t pin it on any external markers. At that moment, any idea that I was dealing with an animal went straight out of the window. Without saying anything, and by nurturing the curious sensation that I was participating in an amusing prank, we both took to the air simultaneously and after doing a few acrobatic rounds we landed in an open field. As soon as we touched ground the dragon morphed into a young woman, a strangely familiar one, an old friend I had known for ages but had lost contact with. The woman looked to be in her early twenties and was very attractive. The red colour of her hair and her contemporary outfit matched the colours of the dragon she had been only moments before. ‘I know you,’ I said, ‘but sadly I can’t place you.’ The girl did not answer and instead gave me a mysterious smile. ‘Did you enjoy my dragon act?’ ‘I certainly did. How did you do this?’ I have witnessed many times before that people in this non-physical reality have no problems changing into almost anything they fancy. I have seen it in carnival processions and theatrical shows and with my mother too, though she always remained human, young and female, but never had it occurred to me to try it out for myself. ‘It’s easy,’ the girl replied. ‘To become a dragon you have to become a dragon from the inside out.’ I took it that this meant using your imagination and your passion. She did not care to elaborate and instead we both decided to take a walk through the town. The rest of the experience lasted for another hour and involved us visiting shops, talking to the owners, examining goods and gathering information. I enjoyed doing this in the company of a mysterious and enigmatic friend who remained so until I ended my meditation at about 6:00 am. I felt slightly annoyed with myself for not having made more out of the experience, such as using it for meditation, but people can hold an enchanting spell over you, especially if they keep their identity and their relationship to you an enigma. I settled down for my normal meditation in my chair. I now had the freshness and wakefulness to make it a rewarding experience of stillness. 4 August 2013 DoWe Live aDouble Life? I rarely pursue OBEs for their own sake and have come to rely on Consciousness to put me in touch with certain learning processes, the people I need to meet or the circumstances during my free night-time dream state. When I do want to have an OBE for a particular reason I usually rely on Intent. There are many discussions about the possibility of the multiverse, and having watched a video by a famous scientist who had been evaluating data of the Planck satellite, which in her opinion pointed towards possible evidence of a multiverse, I was curious as to whether I would be able to project into one of these parallel physical universes of hers. This led to a series of rather complicated processes in Consciousness. What it showed up was that projection in Consciousness is not always a straightforward process, especially when dealing with confusing multiple layers, each one of which is a reality separate from the other. I went to sleep with the intent of projecting into a parallel universe and broadly leaving it to Consciousness to work out the detail, but instead of projecting as intended, I had a lucid dream, in which I felt certain that I was physically awake. It was early morning in my lucid dream. I remembered my intent of the previous evening and (in my lucid dream, thinking I was actually physically awake) I decided to go back to bed, unaware that I was actually lucid dreaming, with my intent to project into an alternate universe. Sure enough, as I went back to bed in my dream I promptly had an OBE after ‘falling asleep’. As I normally do, I first decided to enhance waking awareness by focusing attention on the ground. This had the desired effect. Once fully awake, I decided to check out the parallel universe I imagined myself to be in. I was in a small town. It was the height of summer and pleasantly warm. The town was exceptionally attractive. Instead of pavements there were flowerbeds with a profusion of flowers and plants, lots I recognised, some I didn’t. There was no traffic and people walked in the roads. It was hard not to be distracted by the quaint buildings and all the beauty around me, but I was adamant to stick to my plan. I tried to figure out a way of determining where I was, whether this was a physical reality in a parallel universe or whether I was simply on some higher dimensional level. There was also still the possibility that it could all just have been a lucid dream that was deceiving me into believing that I was having an OBE. When focusing on detail to determine whether the lucid dream would dissolve, I found that the scenery I was in was in fact solid, made of consensual world material. This provided certainly that I was in an OBE. I then felt a gentle nudge, which woke me up, or so I thought. It was Julia offering me a cup of tea and letting me know that it was time to get up. I was cross that she had interrupted my OBE and then I remembered that she would normally not do that because she respected the fact that I had most of my experiences in the early hours and she would simply leave the tea on the bedside table. I then tried to determine whether this was a false awakening and I noticed that I was in my house, but then remembered that at that time we were actually on holiday in North Devon in a house directly overlooking the sea. This told me that I was in a false awakening. I then decided to close my eyes and see if I could go back to the town with the flower pavements where I had been earlier. Instead I found myself sitting at a table with two other guys discussing lucid dreams and false awakenings and how to recognise them. I informed them of my original intention – that it would mean a lot to me to establish the existence of parallel physical universes. One of them handed me a marihuana joint with a cheeky smirk, telling me that this would help me make better decisions. I had not been prepared for this and felt momentarily unsettled, but then told him that this was absurd, because this was an OBE and also that I didn’t smoke. The expression on his face and his thoughts communicated to me that the subject of our discussion was the sort of thing people only discuss when stoned. He suggested I should follow him. Expecting him to be some kind of guide holding the key to the answer of my question regarding parallel universes, I was led into a classroom. There were about ten or twelve students and a teacher. To my great surprise they were all huddled over printouts of my own non­commercial illustrations; I immediately recognised them as having been made by myself, though some of them I hadn’t even executed yet. I asked my suspected guide what this had to do with anything, but he just looked at me with a broad grin. I decided I was in the wrong place and that my quest regarding parallel universes was being treated as a joke. Unfortunately, and to my annoyance, I then woke up for real, in my bed in North Devon, not having solved anything except being left with more questions regarding what reality actually consists of, and the awareness that people you meet on the other side may not always take things seriously or be willing or able to help you. I wondered how difficult it often is to tear all the different levels apart and whether we will ever be able to say with certainty what reality consists of. Creativity inNon-PhysicalReality Being a professional artist, the phenomenon of creativity on the non-physical realities has always held a powerful fascination for me. Those who read my previous book, Multidimensional Man, will have read the accounts where I visited art schools and observed artists, as well as ordinary people, bringing their creativity to bear by creating objects of unearthly beauty and in radically different forms or even on monumental scales by creating massive environments and whole cities. It’s hard to know where to begin when discussing creativity on non-physical reality as, by default, everything is created via the manifestation of creative energy. Instead the discussion will focus on qualities of creativity and the mechanics of their manifestation. As in our current life here, in non-physical reality creativity is governed by the quality of its supporting energy. On the lower, more negative levels, the absence of positive energy can be seen by the drabness of the environments and the inability of the occupants to manifest things using their power of intent, simply because the positive aspect of energy is largely absent. If they desire an object to materialise it will require great effort, willpower and focus, and the results will be characterised by the quality of their heart, mind and energy. For example, if they desire to manifest a glass of wine it may taste flat or sour or have no taste at all. Their clothes may be of poor quality, or even torn or dirty if their state of mind has drawn them into the lower, darker regions. Even rising off the ground and into the air is virtually impossible because this requires loftiness of thought and feeling. Love is the prevailing power in the creation process on the positive and higher states of being. If we stoop down to the very lowest and depraved levels, the absence of love and its positive creative energy becomes abundantly noticeable. Though we must not think that creativity does not exist, it is a creativity based on the powerful expression of emotions such as anger, resentment, hatred and the whole spectrum of feelings that generate their own energy powered by ill feelings. These energies mould the thought forms and environments reflecting the negative mindsets. Quite often they can be things found in horror movies, bleak and deserted places, empty, dark and haunted-looking housing blocks, thought forms fashioned into persistent artificial entities that appear to have a life of their own and are nothing short of horror-film monsters. These can be like persistent companions to some who have nurtured and maintained their negative obsessions to such a state that they have taken on a persona of their own. To their constant annoyance these monsters now feed on their creators and leave no stone unturned to pester and torment them. In a pathological context these could be seen as the obsessions and the inner voices some mentally ill people experience. We find many parallels to mental illness, psychosis and psychopathic behaviour on our physical level. On the non-physical levels these are represented in a much more graphic and realistic form. The point is amply illustrated by some of the reports from the lower levels. But instead of stepping into the rather depressing realms of the lower human condition, let us consider the creative principles in the higher dimensional regions where the majority of decent people will reside after they have laid any of their demons to rest, which they may have carried over from their physical life. With negative fixations gone, people are more inclined to focus on the positives such as realising their lifelong dreams. We will find that the most predominant creative forces at work are the subliminal ones that we don’t necessarily even notice in everyday life. For example, if we take happiness, love and joy, not only will these take us to a much more beautiful and abundant reality environment, but we will also subtly transform it by our mere presence. If we were to meet a friend we hadn’t seen for a while, the vegetation around us may assume brighter colours or sprout blossoms, especially if we were to offer or receive kindness. Most importantly, our appearance will be affected; we will look younger, healthier and more attractive, something I noticed when reuniting with my mother, as mentioned in earlier reports. Our clothes will be more attractive and we will literally radiate positivity. This radiation will not be so much apparent on the level which is in tune with our feelings, but if we happen to visit a lower and darker level we will stand out like a torch and the inhabitants of that level might even regard us as a messenger from a higher plane or an angel. These changes don’t have to be unnoticeable or gradual, they can be quite sudden. Here is a quick example. I was travelling over a shallow lake, about four feet above the surface, observing the multitude of colourful fish playing in shoals in the crystal-clear waters. As I took delight in their play they responded positively by brightening their colours, increasing the movements or jumping out of the water towards me. In the distance I saw a row of five houses, nestled against the lake. The one that attracted my attention had a veranda and the whole front of the house was wide open. There were pots of flowers in abundant bloom everywhere on the small terrace, which made an impression like a photo taken for a holiday brochure of a country retreat. I saw a lady sitting in an armchair in her front room looking out to the lake. As I got closer, she spotted me and smiled. I took this as an invitation to come and see her and perhaps chat to her. So I landed politely, if there is such a thing as a polite landing, three metres away from her on her open porch. ‘I am only temporarily here,’ I informed her, ‘and I am quite curious how you folks here live.’ ‘I figured that out already,’ she responded with a smile. She asked me to take a seat on one of the four comfortable chairs surrounding a low table covered with a beautifully crafted lace cloth. She had an object in her lap which I took for a book at first, but then recognised it as a craft item that I could not readily identify. I looked around and admired her tastefully decorated home. The furniture was antique, with old-fashioned paintings on the walls and richly decorated china vases displayed on a long sideboard filled with lush bouquets of flowers. The opposite wall of the room from the terrace was also wide open, giving a view to her back garden, which was really a courtyard as it was hemmed in by two extensions of the house on either side. I identified these as a bedroom to one side and a study to the other. The whole courtyard was completely covered in yellow flowers, which grabbed my attention and took my breath away because of their radiant bloom. I congratulated her on the visual feast to the senses; not only was I dazzled by the show of colour, but also by the rich perfume. She told me that her little retreat was compensation for the hard life she had left behind and that she needed this to focus on all the beauty life has on offer, instead of mulling over the past. I was intrigued by her story, but she did not give anything away. I could not see behind her words into her soul, which was a skill I had developed on this level in recent years. It was as if she had erected a wall to prevent prying eyes. She must have read my questioning expression, but also sensed that I respected her privacy and was not going to press her into disclosing anything to me. She then changed her mind. ‘I can see you are a trustworthy soul. Yes, I had a hard life.’ She then confessed that she had been cheated out of her life’s savings by a crook she had mistaken for a lover, how her heart was broken when he disappeared and how from then on her life had fallen apart. She became ill, no longer left her house and neglected her social life. As she was telling her story I saw sadness discolouring her face and removing her pink complexion. Lines started to appear and she visibly changed right in front of my eyes. The most astonishing thing I had ever experienced was that the flowers in her courtyard all suddenly began to wilt and die. She then told me that she couldn’t find it in her heart to forgive this man and what he had done to her. Her face flushed up red and her wide-open eyes gleamed with a sudden burst of anger. Simultaneously the flowers in her back yard shot back into life again, but this time they were bright-red blooms, with coal-black rims around each petal. All the plants were at least a foot taller than before, but I could clearly feel they were sculpted by menace. I was shocked by her sudden change in emotion and struggled to take in all the changes taking place around me. I could clearly feel her sense of betrayal and experienced powerful sympathy and an instinctive urge to comfort her. This took immediate effect and she calmed down. Her face relaxed as she closed her eyes. She seemed to be taking a few deep breaths and I continued pouring love and sympathy towards her; she soaked this up until a smile began to settle on her lips, which showed a return of the cherry red they were before. The lines in her face smoothed out. Most surprising was that the room became much brighter, even brighter than before I arrived, and when I looked into her courtyard the bed of flowers was once again transformed with multi-coloured blossoms, juxtaposed in different vibrant sizes, blues and violets, brilliant whites and yellows of all different kinds. A gentle breath made them sway and carry their sweet aroma right into the room. For a moment longer the lady of the house sat there, her chest heaving with her breath, her left hand placed on her heart. She then opened her eyes and smiled at me. ‘Thank you for your love.’ At that moment she said those words I could feel nothing else, only love. ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘Heaven sends its messengers and angels to make things good again. So thank you.’ When I departed I wasn’t sure what had surprised me the most: the sudden transformation in the environment in response to strong and powerful emotion, or the strength of my own feelings and the effect they appeared to have on her, so much so that she blatantly mistook me for a heavenly visitor. I now know more about the subliminal power each one of us wields just by showing an act of kindness when we are not even aware of it. I also learned how dynamic non-physical reality is, more so than I have ever heard being reported in current literature. We have to learn to live with our feelings and emotions as well as with our memories. Nothing remains hidden and is only an attention-span away. I considered the effect the woman’s lover had set in motion and what was clearly going to come towards him as a result, the moment the filters of the physical nervous system had been removed. I could see a dark vestibule of emotion irreversibly engraved into the infinite memory store of Consciousness and the filaments of it being permanently attached to this woman’s former lover, ready to pour its painful content all over him. I was glad to observe that she needn’t take an active part in this. She was free to reside in her little cottage by the sea and watch the fish in the crystal lake and the flowers in her garden cycling through different colours to follow her moods and feelings. One day, inevitably, this man would call out for her after suffering the wrongs of his selfish action with the same intensity as she had experienced when her life disintegrated as a result. He would then embark on the long struggle to find rescue and forgiveness. That day was inevitably looming and impossible to avoid. I had observed this very personally myself with my mother’s second husband, who had kept her away from all her friends when she became disabled as a result of a stroke, because of his rampant jealousy. My mother kept herself away from him for years after death, with him imprisoned by his jealousy in a dark place until I found out quite recently that she had softened somewhat and had forgiven him. To many people who have made victims out of their fellow beings, the way out of their predicament seems closed, because they rarely consider the kind of mindset needed to break them out of their entanglement hell. In physical life we often find that so-called ‘bad’ people, who have had an epiphany and have seen the error of their ways, sometimes enter a life of service to others (like hardened former criminals sometimes teaching in schools to tell children to stay out of gangs) or simply decide to help the disadvantaged. Devoting your life to the service of others is the straight road to redemption. If this simple knowledge could be shared or taught in prisons and rehabilitation centres we would find that past crimes and misdemeanours could ultimately be a force for good in our society. Most people who have embarked on a life of service either on physical reality or the non-physical, have a preference for keeping a low profile and not drawing too much attention to themselves, because they often feel that is a distraction from their task at hand. In some cases this may be unavoidable and they will perform their task with humility. On the non-physical level we have the ability, too, to cover our inner brightness so as to not attract too much attention. One method is by not assuming a material focus and remaining invisible on that dimension. The other one is to actively manifest a disguise from the vibrational material of the reality level we find ourselves in. This method is often used by the numerous helpers on the lower levels in order to blend in and not divert attention from the obvious task at hand. We are best served by connecting to our heart, empathy and compassion and to the free flow that comes from a much higher state of Consciousness. In this way we become a link to a divine energy that will purify us and bring light into everything we do. The liberation and feeling of freedom can be powerful and overwhelming, and we are no longer tied to the entanglements of our past action. Just as in the case of service offered in our world, in our creative aspiration as well we follow very similar links. If we wish to express our creativity, perhaps manifest objects or pictures or other works of art and music, we are best served by calling on the inner qualities of the heart; instead of manifesting via an effort of will, we should manifest by a focus on natural attraction and a link of love to the innermost energy residing in the heart. Our work happens in harmony with higher creative powers, which will weave all the finer detail into our work, once we put our intention on the general form. This can be a process with many levels, beginning with our intent and then surrendering ourselves completely to the inner creative flow. Our unique character provides the instrument through which the inner flow manifests and expresses itself into a unique work of art and manifestation. At any stage we may reset our focus and let the creative stream take care of the detail. This is the most powerful way of working and also the most rewarding one, whether we are dealing with living things or objects of creation. As a result of this process we will find on the much more refined non-physical reality planes works of unimaginable beauty and richness, with whole cities being created and crafted in this manner, enhanced by the consensus of the many and the most creative and passionate minds and hearts. These places are true wonderlands, with new surprises around every corner. I have frequently found that large parts of these places are not even fully inhabited, because the occupants are often too busy to try and manifest new environments which are literally inexhaustible. 20 May 2009 FellowTravellers andthe Art of Clairvoyance It was 4:45 am when I woke up. As I was wide awake I decided that my time would be better spent by retreating into my meditation room for an early morning practice. After about an hour of meditation, I began to feel tired and decided to return to bed, but with a strong resolve of attaining lucidity as soon as my body succumbed to sleep. Almost as soon as the first dream image of a wide-open plane appeared, I became aware that this was a dream and that all I had to do was focus my attention on an object to disrupt any possible dream content from emerging, then establish myself on another dimension. As I looked down onto the ground in front of me, I saw the grass and the dirt in great detail. The fact that I also saw litter instantly told me that I was in a dimension immediately adjacent to the physical. I recognised it too by the atmosphere and it felt that it was only the width of an atom between this world and the familiar physical one. In recent years, my confidence in determining the dimension I have found myself in has become very accurate, though without actually determining their material difference. This was not something that would allow me to assign a numbering system to it, but it was more a recognition of a subjective familiarity or intuitive feeling I recognised. Here, the kind of random details were simply an indication of the close proximity to the physical. For a moment I pondered how physicists might view this. Future scientists who have shaken off their belief that we live in a universe of just one dimension will find determining how different dimensions are stacked within one another the next massive challenge, against which finding the Higgs boson particle will appear like child’s play. Now here again, in this alternate reality, I had the compelling awareness that many people who had found themselves here might not even have considered the possibility that they had died. There was simply nothing externally that would allow us to tell our two worlds apart. This was such an Earth-like environment. When looking around I decided that this scene held little attraction. Why should it? It was simply like being awake on the physical level. I thought of ways of raising my Consciousness in order to lift myself into a higher dimension. To do this I used my simple chant and I was almost instantly airborne and dumped onto the high point of a cliff, which was populated by a small group of people enjoying a magnificent view over a bay. Right next to me was a young woman of about twenty-five with light-brown hair and a casual summer dress. She radiated a different energy so I addressed her: ‘Excuse me, please, are you a permanent resident or a night visitor like myself?’ She turned towards me with a cheery smile and told me that she was a visitor like myself. ‘But are you conscious and lucid or do you think this is a dream?’ I wanted to know. ‘No, I am fully aware that I am out of my body just like you are; isn’t this just fantastic?’ Her enthusiasm was infectious. I was thrilled at having found a fellow OBE explorer and quickly considered its possible implications. I abandoned my plans of rising into a higher level. It is relatively rare to bump into a fellow Out-of-Body traveller and I suggested that we could explore this world together and perhaps figure out a way of contacting each other when returning and then comparing our notes. This could be a powerful way of establishing veridical proof. For a moment I thought she would agree, but then she told me that she had other plans, that there were people she had to go and see and that she didn’t get many opportunities like this to take advantage of. I was smitten by her charm and how attractive she looked and wished her good luck but I was also disappointed. I then took to the air and went on a prolonged excursion, taking note of the places I sailed past. I was distracted by the auras of the houses, which I had never noticed before. Houses have auras and a subliminal coloured glow and an atmosphere, which allowed me instantly to know all about the people who lived there. My new-found clairvoyant perception, which enabled me to read the inner life of everything I passed, was too novel to be exchanged for an uncertain destiny into a higher dimension. In the course of my journey I visited restaurants and even joined a family party, mixing with the locals and asking plenty of questions in order to find out more about the lives of the dead. It was only when two young women giggled, looking down at me, that I became aware that I was still wearing my dressing gown. Unfortunately it was this that made me wake up in my bed. Without opening my eyes, I memorised what I had seen. There was no interesting narrative to my experiences, only a number of acute observations about non-physical reality that would allow me to substantiate existing facts and add new ones. There were a number of things which filled in the blanks of my knowledge of the afterlife. Rehearsing my observations and memorising them would help me when writing them down on my return to physical awareness. For the time being though, I was keen to return and, not moving a muscle and keeping my attention in check, I knew that all I had to do was to focus on the knocking sound inside my head, which told me that I was about to enter another altered state of Consciousness, and I was able to carry on from where I was. This is what happened. Knowing the wealth of information that can be gained by interviewing the permanent residents, I was intent on finding the right people whom I could question. The way this works is that when talking to people they inadvertently supply plenty more information than their simple words. You become privy to all their background information and instead of just listening to their words you act as a receiver to the mental pictures they create as they talk. This kind of clairvoyance is a tremendous bonus that allows me to travel to places which, on my own, I would not even have considered. For example, I talked to a man who had been a lorry driver when alive and for a period of time he still was a lorry driver over here until he switched vehicles. As he was telling me this, not only did I get a clear picture of the colour of his lorry and the sports car he swapped it for, but I was also privy to the regions he had visited and all in clear, coloured 3D images. On top of that, without his mentioning this to me, I knew he was frequently seeing his mother and uncle who were also here. I knew what house they lived in and what their garden was like without even seeing them or his mentioning their name. In real life I am not clairvoyant, but Out-of-Body I seem to acquire a set of extrasensory perceptions. It is much easier for me now to appreciate how gifted clairvoyants work. At one point, my eagerness for research got me into troubled waters, when I quite innocently gate-crashed a party and started antagonising a member of the group by asking questions. The man I confronted held his outstretched hand towards me and sent me some unpleasant vibes. I felt embarrassed and apologised, then decided it was time to leave and instead focused on raising my Consciousness so I could enter a higher level. Unfortunately it was too late. The effect of this little hostile intervention had sapped some of my energy and instead I tumbled downwards and woke up. I then also recalled other events, so typical for the Astral plane, which I had not even entered into my journal – how the environment responds to our feelings. Walking along a lonely path, which appeared to be at dusk out in nature, I recalled a place that simply could not be identified. I took in the strange colours of the vegetation and how the feelings that percolated through me subtly changed the environment with its outlandish reddish-greens, which I had never before come across, hues that simply don’t exist on our planet. I had also noticed a melancholy, which I was sure I had never experienced on this physical Earth, simply because there was not the same range of feelings. The ‘melancholy’ was perfectly reflected in the environment, in the subtle mists which rose from the silent stream running beside me, mist made of colours which had no equivalent I was formerly ever aware of, and the eerie feelings these colours evoked inside me. I was humbled by the vastness of this alternative dimension, which was able to offer new experiences in emotion, feeling and vision simply unobtainable within our worldly Consciousness. 6 March 2010 The Directors of CartoonCity Having been booked for a talk on OBEs, I felt it important to get fresh input, rather than relying on old experiences. So I got up at 4:30 am to use the wake-up-back-to-bed technique in order to achieve a lucid dream, which I would then try to convert into a full Out-of-Body experience. After filling in time for twenty minutes, reading and doing various things to wake myself up, I retreated into my meditation room, where I practised my sutras. This is a technique I have adapted to raise my Consciousness. My intention was to travel into a higher dimension to gather information about the multidimensional structure of the universe. The talk organiser had asked me to draw up a graph for a talk he was giving. I did achieve lucidity shortly after I returned to bed and dropped off to sleep. As soon as I entered a dream, I became lucid, but had difficulty controlling it. I spent most of my time struggling to achieve full waking Consciousness. By staring at my hand, I gradually cleared my mind and became fully lucid. I was horrified to discover that I had entered a world populated by life-sized 3D cartoon characters milling around in a cartoon town. I was irritated considerably, thinking that I was still in some sort of lucid dream state, and tried to figure out a way of piercing this illusion in order to arrive in a consensus reality. I needed to be absolutely certain that this reality was not a mental projection or fantasy. I tried various techniques, such as the command ‘Clarity Now’ and staring at the ground. It was of no avail. The characters, stiffly animated cartoon men and women with drawn-on cloths and painted facial expressions, were walking around all over the place like spooky robots. Staring at the scene and intending to dissolve the illusion had no effect whatsoever. I was darting between them, over streets with painted cobblestones and painted-on pavements. There were a number of shops as well. Some were brightly lit, others wide open, all beautifully hand-drawn, but I was the only live person in the strange cartoon world. Inside some of the shops were giant cartoon TV screens and on the screens cartoon animations of action heroes were playing. By now I couldn’t help but admire the craftsmanship of the animation, which was in black-and-white and exceedingly stylishly executed. I was tempted to stay and watch, but was only too aware that my purpose had been to raise my Consciousness and try to enter a higher dimension, with the aim of ascertaining more knowledge about the nature of that reality. I was trying to find my way out of this comic world and aimed towards the end of the road, where I could see some real workshops and two men busily operating controls that were quite flat, like clipboards. They were busy moving their fingers across it and, as I got closer, I noticed that these two men were in charge of the artificial cartoon world I was just escaping from. They smiled broadly at me as I approached. ‘Are you in charge of this?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ was the answer from one of the men; he had short blonde hair and was wearing jeans. The other guy was still busy controlling his character and barely acknowledged me. ‘So this is not my dream then?’ I concluded with relief. ‘No,’ the blonde man replied, ‘this is our dream, we created this town and the characters. Do you like it?’ It was only now that I could relax and admit that I was clearly impressed by their accomplishment. What was most impressive of all was the distinct style of their life 3D drawings. ‘What is this all for?’ I wanted to know. ‘It’s just for fun, we are comic nuts. It’s even more fun when somebody like you appears out of nowhere and stumbles into our creation. You should have seen your face.’ The other chap, whose hair covered his ears, now turned towards me with a broad grin. ‘I am impressed,’ I said. ‘How do you do this?’ ‘We can actually mass-produce these guys. Once we have worked out how to use them, they have a sort of limited intelligence of their own and we project the films we have been working on throughout the town as well. What do you think?’ I said that I was really impressed and that I could not fault, in any way, what they had achieved, but that I was puzzled imagining how this was possible. They explained to me that it is all in the imagination and if you are passionate about your hobby, you’ll have no problem creating whatever you want to. Then, out of the blue, one asked me whether I was hungry and nodded towards a conveyor belt coming out of a building with large windows through a hatch. This was very much like I had seen in some London sushi restaurants. ‘If you don’t like any of our food you can create your own, just imagine it. It’s easier if you actually like it.’ No sooner had he said that, than I saw a plate moving towards the hatch with a German curry sausage and chips with mayonnaise. I don’t know what made me choose this, but perhaps it had more to do with some distant nostalgia to my German student days than with a desire for genuine food. After all, I did not feel hungry in the least. As soon as my plate passed through the hatch, I noticed that I had created a real unappetising slush, with the chips drowning in ketchup and the sausage hanging limply and unappetisingly over the edge of the plate. When the plate reached me, I picked it up. My two hosts burst out laughing when I picked up a soggy chip between my thumb and forefinger. I thanked the two chaps for the demonstration and indicated that it was time for me to move on. It was difficult though. Somehow I seemed to have lost my motivation when I rose up into the air, conjuring up more elevated feeling that would help me to rise to a higher level. The other thing that interfered with my plans was that I was struggling to retain lucidity. For a few moments I sailed through a sea of coloured clouds of light, but then my attention was diverted to my neck, which had assumed a stress position against my crumpled-up pillow. Strange Non-PhysicalPhenomena 3 May 2010 Psychedelic Non-PhysicalRealities I woke up early at about 4:30 am and decided to slip into the meditation room for an hour of early morning meditation. I had been in contact with a fellow explorer via email where we were discussing fantasy during the OBE state. It had been two weeks since my last OBE and, not having answered the last email, I thought I needed to get out of my body to gather more material to underpin my theory of dream and fantasy overlays when out of the body. Unfortunately, I started to nod off after about half an hour or so. To wake myself more fully, I decided to go into my studio to check on an overnight render of my computer on a commercial project that was needed the following day. I then got sidetracked into tweaking the render parameters of the image, which let to my full waking. With a clear head, I went back into the meditation room to meditate and program myself for a lucid dream. When I returned to bed and went to sleep I was lucky almost straight away. I became lucid the moment my first dream emerged. I also became aware of a hazy feeling, like a mist overlaying the scenery. It felt as if I was too tired to reach the clear reality underneath it. All I could see was a pattern like a giant roll of gift wrap stretching infinitely into all directions. Then it struck me – I was witnessing first-hand my mind’s dream of fantasy overlay, so instead of dispersing it by commanding myself to become aware of reality, I remembered the discussion I had with my correspondent and decided to study it. I noticed to my amusement that the pattern had the appearance of a children’s gift wrap, green with little teddy bears repeated in regular patterns across it. I drifted horizontally over the surface, watching the pattern change. At one point I came across a 3D toy teddy bear and I dealt with it by tearing it apart with the power of my will and supporting hand movements to see if I could disperse this illusion. As I proceeded to fly over the patterned landscape, it became more three-dimensional. I noticed with curiosity that the pattern changed in accordance with my feelings. One moment I was sailing across green fields with billions of colourful flowers dotted randomly across it, then it transformed into a regular 3D crosshatching, like dried stalks of grass being woven in regular designs over a misty field of grey-bluish fog. I decided to raise my feeling by chanting the OM. This had a spectacular effect on the pattern beneath me, which took on a much more luminous and enchanting quality. The chant itself triggered some fascinating musical sounds, which began to surround me like a magical quadrophonic orchestra. Most fascinating were the ever-changing designs that seemed to be generated as I went along and definitely depended on my own feeling. I took this as evidence that this was not a consensus environment, but a world created by my own subconscious creative endeavours. While sailing along the psychedelic landscape, I was reminded of the time when, as a young art student, my friends and I took LSD to follow into the footsteps of our heroes Aldous Huxley, Max Ernst and others who had described these phenomena in either words or paintings. I also thought of Rick Strassman’s research into DMT as described in his book DMT – The Spirit Molecule. Furthermore, it confirmed that OBEs can follow similar experiences to those obtained synthetically using drugs. The obvious advantage, of course, is that drug users don’t appear to be in control and seem to be compelled to follow a movie script directed by something else. I too was following a movie that was produced by something else, but at least I was put in charge as a film director. I was fascinated by the way the mind created this very real-looking 3D world of images that were totally dependent on my thoughts and feeling and which changed by the moment. I intensified my chant and instantly I was lifted into the realm of joy. I expected to break the pattern and emerge from my dream overlay into the consensus reality of a higher dimension, but this was not what was taking place. Instead of piercing the illusion, the pattern just became more glorious, more intricate and enchanting, but above all much brighter and more dazzling in colour. I entered a state of rapture and grace. Then came, however, a moment when the brightness became too powerful and I began experiencing discomfort. I lowered my vibration by discontinuing my chant and by doing so I fell out of the state of grace and instead saw myself gliding over a dark, choppy ocean. I could clearly see forms of life and movement under the surface of the ocean waves and wondered what it would be like to continue my journey underwater. Then the moment I entered the waves I had a powerful flashback. I experienced a moment in some distant past when I had drowned. At first there was a distinct feeling of the panic I had felt at that time, which I now clearly observed from a very detached viewpoint; while simultaneously experiencing all the emotion of the drowning man, I studied the panic, observing and experiencing it at the same time right up to the moment when I faced the inevitable end. Seeing the panic subsiding and surrendering to my certain fate led to a painless, if not pleasurable, transition into the afterlife. I then woke myself up, determined to make sure this experience was recorded. Without moving, I ran through the whole event sequence to make sure it was engraved into my physical brain. I also wanted to return to where I had left off, so avoiding too much physical interaction was imperative. I then hazily recalled at some stage during the experience a vague awareness of a conversation going on underneath my ‘film’ of the lucid dream, very much like you would during a nap on the train, where you can still hear the conversation of your fellow passengers. These passengers, however, were not from the physical realm but a consensus environment in which my ‘dream’ took place. This told me that I could have ended the experience and entered reality proper, albeit in an alternate dimensional reality. What was rewarding was the fact that I was still in full possession of all my analytical faculties, which made me realise how powerful lucid dreaming is for the study of Consciousness. I can clearly see now that our future research into Consciousness will follow two clear lines of investigation, lucid dreaming and non-local reality experience, a division like physics and astrophysics. As an artist I would find it hard to decide which direction to follow. 5 May 2012 The Sales Assistant fromHeaven I got up this morning at 5:00 am for my meditation. Before I settled down I grabbed my iPad and discovered messages from two people I communicated with online, responding to my post on Raymond Moody’s book Glimpses of Eternity. The subject was concerning transformative experiences during NDEs and I quickly typed a response, concluding with the suggestion that I would try to find a more relevant answer during my next OBE. Then I went into meditation. The good thing about early morning meditation is that the mind is so alert and fresh. After putting a few thoughts to rest I focused on awareness. I never know where my meditation will take me because I never use my intent other than surrendering everything I am to the presence of stillness. Even finding out information about whether everybody who dies has a transformative experience, which I addressed only minutes ago, didn’t matter any longer. All that mattered was the Presence, or what I have come to regard as my ‘Silent Companion’. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a beautiful smiling female face appeared right in front of my closed eyes. She addressed me, calling my name in the sweetest voice imaginable, and then she turned away with a thrilling laugh and disappeared, leaving a happy feeling suspended in midair. I returned to focusing on awareness and allowed total surrender without paying attention to the lights that appeared amid images of seductive spaces. When I opened my eyes again an hour had passed; I didn’t have a clue where I was during that time, but I remembered my question and decided to go back to sleep, using lucid dreaming to attain an OBE and then contacting my guide. Soon after I fell asleep I became lucid. I was walking through an elongated white hall. I was conscious, aware and in OBE mode. Instead of calling for my guide to pose the question, my attention was drawn towards a group of people milling around at the far end of the hall, in front of a huge doorway. As is so often the case with OBEs, the original intention is superseded by what is happening at the moment. I soon realised without a flicker of doubt that I was in a halfway station where people were waiting to be incarnated into new physical lives. The entrance was guarded by two serene, beautiful beings. People were gathered in little groups, talking. On a chair nearest to the entrance sat a young girl, with her hands on her knees, looking down to the floor. She looked focused, with a beautiful smile on her heart-shaped face. She had white skin and dark-blonde hair and, although she wasn’t an overt beauty, her face expressed an innocent passion and eagerness mixed with joy. I approached her, and with my inner reporter springing into action, I decided to interview her. ‘Hello’, I said, ‘can I asked you what you are up to?’ She raised her head towards me and gave me a warm smile. ‘I am going to be a sales assistant,’ she answered confidently. As I had already absorbed that these souls were on their way to new lives on Earth, I assumed that she must have been well informed. I was still taken aback though, and quite amused by her certainty and joyful anticipation. If she had told me that she was going to be a millionaire I wouldn’t have been so surprised by her joy. I couldn’t help but smile and feel a great love and affection for her authentic genuineness; I realised that there are more people on Earth than I could imagine, who have distinct ideas about what makes them happy and what they need for their personal growth. It was quite clear that she knew what lay ahead of her and she had full trust in her decision. As she looked into my eyes I felt her kindness and I could not help but send her my affection. She suddenly asked, ‘Are you going to look after me?’ Her blue diamond-like pupils darted from side to side in eager anticipation of my answer. ‘I am afraid not, but I am sure you will be looked after by people only too eager to help you,’ I said with conviction. ‘I myself am not from here. I am from the very place you are going to, but I can promise you that I will make sure to be kind to all shop assistants,’ I said. She laughed and then closed her eyes again. I was keen to talk to one of the two guards by the door. I approached the one standing to the left who had been casting his eyes over his flock. ‘They all seem to be very keen to go down to our old Earth,’ I said mentally; in response I received a picture of an old woman and the guard let me know that that was not always the case. The woman had been trying to incarnate many times over the last eighty years. I came to understand that she had died during the Great Depression in poverty and every time she came into the hall she went back out again. There was no pressure on her whatsoever, but every time she left the hall she came back the next time a little bit more determined, but never quite convinced enough to take the plunge. I felt a dryness in my mouth and woke up from my OBE without so much as a break in Consciousness. I then realised that I had failed to pose my question, but what I had come back with was noteworthy for my journal. Into the Pleasant Lands andDouble Lives Up until now all reports may have provided a more or less accurate taste of the texture of the afterlife people who have led ordinary and down-to-earth lives are likely to encounter. All that is happening is that the content we carry with us in our conscious and subconscious minds will form and attract us to the scenery and environment of our new non-physical state. There is nothing on Earth that cannot be experienced or seen in the non-physical reality, but infinitely more that cannot be experienced in physical reality. We are finding that nature in its infinite perfection caters for the balance and matching response to any energy, including any feeling, emotion, aberration and deed, and not a single action set in motion remains unresponded to, unresolved, unfulfilled or not catered for. Once our inner nature has dealt with its own imbalances, unresolved issues and conflicts it is time to move on and respond to much finer and more sublime energies, which have been lying dormant deep within us. Nothing further can be gained by remaining in realities which simply work out and deal with our old obsessions, identifications, attachments and focus points. Many will find it almost impossible to move beyond these regions because of their fixations, and they feel compelled to mull over the same old issues again and again, ad infinitum, until something or somebody breaks the feedback loop. If this happens in the darker regions, deprived of positive input, this is where the idea of ‘eternal hell’ originated from, because people simply cannot find a way out of their own predicament and unresolved issues. I have no personal experience whether there is such a thing, an eternal condition, or whether it is simply a figure of speech. If I endure intense toothache for more than a day it can seem an eternity, but rarely is anything eternal, because the world of manifestation is in a continuous flux. So I suspect everything that is a manifestation will have to come to a natural end. Something at some stage will always break the pattern, this is just how nature works and the inherent condition of energy. Once our personal fixations have been dealt with we simply and naturally move out of the conflict zones and the drabness of non-physical life created by a shortness of positive energy and then move into much more acceptable realms. At the same time, our energy receives a massive boost. No longer squandered on narcissistic and self-centred pursuits revolving mostly around negative aspects of our psyche, we experience a sense of liberation. Externally we find that almost without exception our appearance is rejuvenated and we look much more attractive. As I mentioned before, I usually find that the attractiveness of the inhabitants are a dead giveaway as to which energy or reality level I find myself on. On the medium levels people inevitably settle into a state of attractive youthfulness, although not always with the same appearance, as my own mother has amply demonstrated. I cannot recall one meeting with her where she looked the same as in the previous one. This, though, is a matter of preference, as we are no longer tied to the shape or colour we wish to be represented by. It is mostly an issue of habit, but anything that can be imagined goes. On even more elevated reality levels, where Consciousness is exclusively feeding on positive creative energies, I have found that the inhabitants look highly purified and refined and the lack of self-Consciousness gives them the appearance of angels. In comparison, if an earthly supermodel with perfect features, but conscious of her attractiveness, were to stand next to her she might well blush with inferiority. It is almost impossible to paint a comprehensive picture of the non-physical reality in a single volume. It is like writing a book about the Earth. Where to begin and where to end? I do not wish to repeat myself and would like to direct the reader’s attention to my previous book, Multidimensional Man, and its website. A separate volume can be written about environments, spontaneous manifestations, thought forms, transformations and how subconscious energies terraform the world we find ourselves in. The mystery of environments would make a compelling subject to explore in a further volume. I have observed that whole complexes, structures and buildings often simply evolve out of the atmosphere, their creation being powered by and feeding back off the feelings and emotions of the inhabitants. So we find big gothic structures in place without an architect who designed it, their design mechanically drawn from an underlying database accessed by corresponding feelings and subconscious energies. Often these structures are moulded into shapes that accurately reflect the prevailing atmosphere of a place. Its features are simply quite unconscious projections of the inhabitants, projections which in turn feed back on the people. In this way I discovered the most intriguing and elaborate designs, often with pronounced nonsensical features and architectural detail. The world is alive and at the same time solidified by a prevailing atmosphere. Emotions are strange things that have colour and texture, which are congealed into thought forms which in turn rely on a matrix drawn into manifestation from what is its most accurate representation and then is modified and added to by completely unconscious energies. Often these structures evolve over centuries and determine the atmosphere of a place, which in turn attracts inhabitants operating on a similar vibration. On all non-physical reality levels this is the predominant process of manifestation. On the higher, more refined levels, though ample use is made of people’s freedom, their individual creativity and thirst for self-expression is just as it is here on Earth. I discovered for myself that during my double life when asleep I am the architect of several grand designs. To illustrate this aspect, here is another report. 30 April 2015 Non-PhysicalJobApplication Occasionally I find myself on very familiar ground, which serves as a reminder that we all may indeed be leading double lives that we are completely unaware of when waking from sleep in the morning. In this case I was fully aware when a couple of professional-looking guys were showing me to the top floor of a large city building, a kind of penthouse with sumptuous terraces and large floor-to-ceiling windows, or doors which would open up completely. The interior was of a very modern and contemporary design. What delighted me most about the building was the staircase that led from the ground level right up to the top. It consisted of a series of rounded-off rainbow-coloured steps of varying heights. Some steps were a metre high while others were only a few centimetres. The material was like a highly glazed porcelain, but the colours were shimmering in different hues from their base colour. It was obvious that the people on this level didn’t even consider the idea of climbing stairs. The steps were only a token gesture, you simply glided over them, either up or down, but the most thrilling thing was that, by doing so, the steps would emit a sound and a subtle melody would be composed as you passed over them. Now one would think that, after a while of rising up or down over the stairs, you would gradually grow tired or bored of the sound, but the curious fact was that the sounds interacted dynamically with the personal aura or character signature of the person stepping or gliding over them. I discovered that I was in a kind of media or arts centre, which was the work or meeting place of numerous media professionals. They were assigned to various projects to enhance the design and features of the city, including communication with its citizens. I quickly understood that I was somehow regarded as a natural candidate for an addition to their team. When I had a glimpse of some of the astounding activities taking place I felt the distinct thrill of privilege, the same as I sometimes feel when working back home as a commercial illustrator and being given a prestigious media assignment by a large multinational company. Sadly, in this case, the excursion was too short to find out more detail about the organisation who worked for the town, or even the town itself. I can’t even say whether I got the job joining the non­physical design team on this occasion. In previous reports, I have given ample descriptions of the extravagant designs of non-physical cities, with their incredible plazas, spaces and buildings. In one, the pavements were all simply flowerbeds framing the buildings, and the streets, with their intricate paving of precious stones, served as pedestrian zones, because traffic as we know here on Earth is largely absent. This doesn’t mean these places are less busy. Reassuringly, I have read similar reports by other Out-of-Body explorers of these magnificent cities, of which there is no shortage. It is in these community metropolises that the arts flourish at peak levels. More than on Earth, each community has its own character and a coherence in design and style without appearing boring or repetitious. They simply attract sympathetic spirits who resonate with the feeling and aura of the place, similar to when you visit the city of Florence or Beijing, which have their own characteristics without being restrictive. I found at least three places on the medium to higher dimension that I called my own. Each one was a grand design I seemed to have been working on during my hours of sleep, finally recognised during my OBE state. 4 Feb 2014 BuildingaGrandDesigninNon-PhysicalReality This is a somewhat lengthy collection of OBEs, but I am quickly gathering tangible evidence that our physical state of focus may just be one of other parallel lives we may be leading without consciously being aware of them. We are too preoccupied with this physical existence, but it would explain so much about our dreams. Last night during an OBE, I visited a house which was strangely familiar. It was a big place with a large courtyard, perhaps thirty metres by ten, surrounded by many buildings, such as the main living quarters and others that looked like stables. The most significant feature, though, was a large dome-like structure at one end. It was all painted in gleaming whitewash. As I entered the dome, I was stunned. I clearly identified it as my own property, which I had been working on and converting for years to bring it to the state it was in now. While going through the different areas, I remembered the attention I had invested to get it to this level of completion. As I entered the main atrium, I found a small gathering of people, who seemed to have taken over my place and had made it their own. One woman was using the main hall for her exhibition and, as I walked up the stairs, I found a bar tucked away just beneath the main dome. Another group of people had allocated part of a side extension into a kind of amusement area and were busy having a great time. Although I was pleased that my building had been put to such good use, I was disappointed that the murals I clearly remembered having painted along the ceiling had been covered up with white paint. I blamed myself for having neglected the building for so long. As I walked down the stairs again, I dislodged the handrail which the artist, who had put up the exhibition, had incorporated as part of her artwork. She looked at me crossly as I tried to fumble it back into place. I simply said, ‘Don’t worry, it is my own property.’ She looked startled at me as she recognised me as the rightful owner. While still in OBE I contemplated the significance of what Consciousness was trying to show me and I found it was twofold. On the one hand, the building represented my lifelong work on myself, my career and family. The murals dated back to my youth when I was writing and illustrating a children’s story, but never finished it. The murals were the different illustrations for the book, each of which had taken me weeks in real life. That was over thirty years ago, hence it had been forgotten and had probably been fading away, so then was simply washed over. On the other hand, Consciousness made it absolutely clear that I had been working on various other parts of the building over a very long period and I now clearly remembered it. I also started recalling other events with great clarity: paintings I had worked on, exhibitions I had put on, people I had met, old friends I knew well, none of which played any role whatsoever in my physical life. Here, in my OBE state, not just one, but perhaps two or more parallel life spans were rolled out in front of me, to my utter astonishment. Consciousness was clearly showing me that my physical life was just a small part of many other life experiences and that, at night, possibly in deep dream state, or even parallel to my waking state, I had been busy pursuing one or more alternative existences. With this thought, I sank into a semi-meditative state and I began to remember more and more detail with astonishing clarity; I gained the realisation that the life I am leading back in my physical body is only the tip of the iceberg, one of many lives I am leading – or, perhaps better, Consciousness is leading – each one of equal significance. 7 February 2015 Non-PhysicalProperty Developer I was surprised when revisiting a big building project that I instantly recognised as my own. Upon entering, I remembered clearly having acquired it some years back, an old neglected place, with rooms at the top filled with junk – ‘mind junk’ – that I figured the previous owners had left behind as they moved on. This particular building was in a large Astral city with a big mountain range towering above. The house was situated on a large open thoroughfare. I was standing in one of the street facing ground-floor rooms. Everything was in a state of renovation with no builders in sight. It became clear to me that I hadn’t touched the project for some time, probably because it was such an ambitious project. Curiously, there was no entrance to the property from the front of the house at street level. Instead it fronted a beautiful colonnade, with elaborate columns supporting the first floor of the house. There were just two large rooms at ground level of the front, a smaller kitchen to the left, with a large dining area just behind the kitchen leading towards the back. The other half of the house at the front consisted of a massive lounge. Behind these two front rooms were three further rooms of which the middle one was a large atrium, which also granted access into the property. To the left and right were two more rooms: one to the left was for entertainment and the one on the right was a studio. As I was walking through and inspecting the layout, friends of mine started to arrive, one of whom I recognised from my youth who had been a collector of my early work. I met him in the studio area, where he immediately pointed to a large work bench and said how ideal the place was to create large paintings without having to work on the floor. The whole place needed plenty of work and, looking at it, I recalled who the builders were, the people I had put in charge previously to tackle the work. They obviously had left it unfinished as my attention had moved on. I now felt I wanted to complete it. Armed with a tape measure, I started surveying the space and at the same time visualised its completion. I was amazed by the unfinished detail, the thickness of the walls, the exposed floor etc. I knew the next floor up consisted of five bedrooms, two on either side at the front, leaving a large open space in the centre, the whole fronted by an elaborate balcony. Three more bedrooms were at the back of the first floor. Above that was another penthouse apartment, consisting of no more than two large rooms. At the very top of the building was a massive round viewing room, accessed from the penthouse, with the round window filling the whole space. From here the magnificent city with the epic landscape rising behind it could be viewed clearly and with the utmost pleasure. Having had a thorough inspection of this magnificent grand design, I decided it was time for completion. I also remembered having had similar projects in the past, one of which I have mentioned above which had then been taken over by other people. This, however, offered so much pleasurable and creative potential that I felt it was worthy of attention and love, and I vowed that I would see it through to completion. 7 May 2015 The Squatters I had taken a week off where I rented a small converted boat house by the sea in order to work on this book. I had woken up several times during the night, meditated and gone back to sleep. At seven in the morning, I meditated again for half an hour, intending to go back to sleep with a resolve to become lucid, and it worked. I came back to my place mentioned in the previous report, exactly three months later to the day, and at first I did not recognise it. It had been completely taken over by a lively group of young artists. When I came into the main atrium, I was greeted by a young guy who seemed to recognise me and he immediately started showing me around and introducing me to his fellow artists. When I got involved in studying an exhibition section of the work of a woman with a French name – a vibrant series of coloured pen and ink drawings – he called out for her in order to introduce me, but she didn’t show up. We proceeded to look at other work and talk to other artists. The work was very diverse and enjoyable. When I looked through a window to the outside, I even found that the brickwork of the outside walls had been fashioned into fascinating figurative 3D relief work. I turned to my guide and said with a smirk and an element of pride, ‘Of course, you know I own this building.’ He looked at me, beaming back. ‘Of course I know. I knew the moment you walked in, but you are never here.’ I replied that there could hardly be a better use for this property and that I felt delighted that it was being put to such vibrant use. He then turned to me, telling me that they were expecting some people from the town, including two women who were art critics, and asked whether I would do the honours of showing them around. I was surprised by the suggestion and eagerly accepted. Although I knew exactly the layout of my house, I had yet to meet all the artists who were occupying the rooms and had carved out little studio spaces. After a short while, a small troupe of people arrived, two young women who I identified as the art critics and three other guys who I wasn’t sure what their particular interests were, but they were keenly interested in the open-house art academy that had sprung up over the last three months after I had turned my back on it. The guy with a golden chain around his neck jokingly asked me whether I had taken out a public indemnity insurance, because you never know what might happen. He pointed with his chin to a young sculptor who was precariously balancing on the top of his work to finish off some detail. ‘I dread to think what that will cost me,’ I responded, and we both laughed as he joked, ‘I can give you a quote because I used to be an insurance policy salesman.’ We then both walked to the top of the building, where a couple of chaps had turned the room into a small film theatre and were showing off some of their work, which was quaintly shot on old-fashioned 16mm film format, displaying scratches and slight discolouration. On closer viewing, I discovered that the film contained footage shot in the early 1950s. The operator told me that the idea behind it was to reproduce a clip with a strong nostalgic feel, but telling a modern story. I spent another half-hour or so meeting people and discussing their work. I felt a strong sense of ownership and pride because I had the powerful sensation that it was the aura and the thought form I had inadvertently imbued the building with that had attracted the artists and led to this inspired takeover and appropriation. When I woke up, I lay still in order to aid recall. Then I wrote my report. 20 February 2010 Creativity onthe Hoof This was an interesting excursion. I was meditating and it was very early in the morning. I was unable to maintain my awareness and simply nodded off to sleep. I then realised that I was dreaming. I instantly focused my attention again until I had full waking awareness. Unfortunately I was not in the most exciting or elevating place. There were a few houses, which looked rather derelict, partly overgrown. The atmosphere was rather dull and the light was dim, like just before daybreak, but there was no sun promising a bright morning. I decided to make the best of the event and if there wasn’t enough light I would make my own. Without closing my eyes, I started to settle down and meditated in the middle of a field, simply by becoming aware of awareness as I did before in my meditation. I simply focused on the present, which of course is with me always. No sooner had I started, when my surroundings lit up. At the same time I lifted up into the air and floated gently and effortlessly above the ground, enjoying the great peace I felt in my heart. I also noticed that I seemed to glow and that I cast a bright light around me, like a lantern, to a radius of about ten metres or perhaps even further. Wherever I went, my lantern came with me and illuminated my surroundings. Not only that, but the grass on the fields I travelled over rather slowly assumed a rich emerald green and I gradually became aware of thousands of colourful flowers springing into life and swaying gently as I passed. They could not have been there before, because it was too bleak for this. For a moment I began to consider the creative power to be accessed when our attention is no longer focused on anything external or to do with self-interest. It clearly opens ourselves up as a clean channel for creative energies and creating environments clearly designed by our unique inner configuration and pattern. I don’t even have to think about it. My state of being, left the way it is, automatically becomes the creative engine and the joy of this kind of manifestation is totally mine, a wondrous way of self-expression that requires nothing other than focusing attention on the joys of simply being and the present moment. The moment we allow this to happen we become instruments of the great power of creation. The beauty of this is that each individual will manifest a completely individual and unique environment. All that was needed to encourage this profusion and creative power was to become aware of the serenity I felt as a result of a meditative state of mind. The experience faded as I was about to rise towards a steep cliff top, with the sea spreading out before me. Behind me I had left fields of blossoming flowers and plants of astonishing variety. At this point, I returned to normal waking Consciousness in my body and resumed my meditation, but now fully awake physically. Alien Life Forms and Long-Lost Worlds Sometimes I imagine some of my reports, when read by people who have never had an OBE themselves, will quickly and simply be dismissed as pure fantasy, grabbed from the imagination to make what already appears like fantasy into pure confabulation. In the spirit of my report gathering, I will need to be consistent, totally authentic and not allow such considerations to interfere with my reporting. There are many things on this our physical level we still cannot explain. When it comes to states of Consciousness, we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of understanding. The following reports meet the same criteria as all the previous ones. They were experienced in full waking awareness with my self-identity intact and the full awareness that my physical body was where it was at the time of the experience. My reporting remains factual, no matter what it covers. The deeper I delve into the unknown and the mysteries of expanded realities experienced in full waking awareness, the more rigorously I will adhere to my reporting guidelines and have to be unconcerned with how they may be perceived or interpreted. I am detached from the experiences and care very little whether they are dismissed as fantasies or taken as factual reporting of pioneering probes into the multidimensional layers of our reality. They are what they are. It is up to the reader to decide how to regard them. I feel reporting factually as experienced is better than not reporting at all. Nothing was different in what I encountered in the following, except it was unlike anything I had experienced before. 19 April 2009 AnAdvancedAlienSpecies I got up to meditate at about 5:30 am. My mind was still, but after about an hour, the thought of my father, who I had lost as a nine-year-old boy, popped into my head. As I felt quite sleepy, I decided to leave my meditation and go back to bed. I succumbed to sleep almost instantly, but equally quickly became fully lucid again when I found myself walking along a road. I stopped for a moment, considering the possibility of being there physically. The only way to be sure was to perform the hovering test, which I did. As I hovered, I had full waking awareness. Again the thought of my father popped into my head. I called his name and was instantly overwhelmed by intense sadness. Images of the day he died flooded into my head. I was no longer standing in the road, but transported back into my past, into a darkened room, where I witnessed my father dying when I was a nine-year-old boy. The sunlight of the beautiful May day was blocked out by heavy, drawn curtains. I was all present, exactly as it happened so many decades ago, though this time I had no age, I was just myself, an awareness in the room. I saw my father’s gaunt jaundiced face, which was little more than a skull covered with skin and yellow eyes in their sockets. I cried. I did not cry when I was the nine-year-old boy. I just handed him the bag with the shells I had collected on the beach at the children’s summer camp I had been sent to. Then I had been in a state of shock and he couldn’t see the shells I handed to him. So I just put the bag on his pillow next to his head and left the room, in shock and without thoughts. But now I cried, because I had touched on an intense pain. My past had become my present and this present was hard reality. Everything was as I experienced it as a child. I was overcome with the intense pain of knowing that I was about to lose somebody, but the nine-year-old boy could not grasp the right feeling for it, what it was like to lose somebody in front of your eyes, who he had loved so dearly, who had never shown him any anger, only love. ‘Papa,’ my awareness in the darkened room called, I called, silently, then crying. The pain was unbearable. Just then the ceiling above me opened and, through a hatch, a bright light shone down on me and tried to pull me up, but the sadness had glued me to the floor and would not let me rise. At this point, I struggled to keep waking awareness and tried to rationalise that my father had died more than fifty years ago, but it was futile. My suffering was as intense and it was present and real, not a memory. Then my awareness was challenged by a hive of activity around me that threatened to blur out my waking awareness and draw me into dream narrative, because it became all too much. Against all odds, I succeeded in maintaining lucidity. I could not let this go. I noticed that I was surrounded by a group of people who showed great concern for the emotional state I was in. They asked me who I was and what I was doing here. They were all strangers to me. I also noticed that I was no longer in the darkened room where my father had died, but in a place I could not recognise. My attention was attracted by the sound of paper rustling. I woke up in my bed. Next to me was Julia reading the Sunday paper. She had been waiting for me to get up so we could have breakfast together. I apologised and told her that I had to go back in order to find my father. She smiled and nodded. In order not to be disturbed I decided to go back to my meditation room, hoping to find my way back into the same lucid state of my Out-of-Body experience. Settling into my meditation chair, I closed my eyes, knowing that by holding on to the last sequence I might just find my way back into lucidity again. It wasn’t instant but, instead of meditating, I allowed myself to drop off into sleep again to find a more natural way back with the intent of gaining lucidity. I then totally surrendered to the forces that might be and dropped off almost instantly and was back in the room again with the same people and instantly back in full waking awareness. This time they seemed to have lost interest in me and there was no longer any sign of sadness either. Instead I started following their discussion telepathically. One of the topics was the art of flying. My intent of meeting my dad had gone by the wayside as I again struggled to maintain lucidity and gradually felt myself being pulled into some nonsensical dream narrative. Then, without warning, I was again fully awake as if something or someone had made a deliberate attempt to wake me up, but I was not in my meditation chair. I was in the room again with the group of strangers as before, but my waking Consciousness now was astounding and made me feel that my normal life had been little more than a fantasy or a film script. It was not only that. I felt as if I had been injected with an extra level of clarity and intelligence. My state of super-presence seemed to be linked to the presence of the central character of the group, who stood out and commanded all my attention. He was a very tall man, dressed in a long, incredibly attractive gown, which seemed to change pattern and colour every time he moved. My first impression was that the fabric was thought sensitive in some mysterious way, and changed as it picked up feelings around it. But, above all, the most noticeable feature was the colour of the man’s skin, which was a whitish translucent blue, very soft, diffusing the light as velvet does. His strange, almost non-human look made him strikingly attractive. The feeling this evoked in me was the same I sometimes find in beautiful animals, which are not aware at all of their attractiveness. This man too carried a sublime and modest innocence, while at the same time bearing himself with confidence and a natural nobility. As I observed him addressing his group, not paying any attention to their mental discussion, the thought occurred to me that I could be watching a specimen of our human species at a future stage of our evolution, maybe a million years from now. I knew I was wrong when he suddenly looked at me and I realised instantly that I was looking into the eyes of an alien species. The resemblance to humans was only very superficial. Realising this, I noticed his appearance shifting slightly and that his mutating gown was just part of what he was. His gaze captured my attention with such intensity that my awareness acquired yet a new aspect of super-lucidity and a clarity of mind I didn’t know existed. While holding my gaze firmly, he sent me a batch of information telepathically. It was packaged in such kindness that I instantly felt a great wave of warmth and affection rolling towards him. There was no smile in response, just a quiet acceptance that let me know that love was the accepted norm of communication among his species. He sent me images of his home planet. Before I had even formed a question to ask he had already answered everything I was barely aware of. So intense and packed with information was the level of communication that it dissolved any boundaries between our species that might have been there. I had never experienced such total and boundless communication in all my life and, with it, I felt a benevolent invitation to accompany him to his home planet. It was only now that I started looking around to find out where I was, but there were no features, other than a space of light that dissolved into mistiness all around us. Half-expecting to be led to an alien spaceship, I was surprised when he told us to be seated on a fairly simple gossamer mat which, as if by magic, materialised underneath us. It was mostly white, and two to three feet thick, with ample space for all of us to claim a comfortable area. There were no controls. As soon as we were seated our transport began to move rather fast without as much as lifting up into the air and into black space, which I had anticipated. Instead of the black void of space, we soared into a blue sky with streaks of light shooting past us, the only indication that we were moving. I asked where we were going and was told that we would be travelling the equivalent of ten million light years towards another galaxy unrelated to our own. The blue space did not change at all. It was a constantly pleasurable journey. I could not tell whether the sounds accompanying us were the results of our heightened emotions or whether my sublime feelings were fanned by the sounds and the shoots of light or the speed, which was exhilarating. I asked why the space was not black and was given to understand that space was not black at all and that we were not travelling through physical space in any case, but a superior dimension of the physical. In response to my question why we had to travel at all through space in this dimension and were not instantly projected (which I always assumed was the possibility of higher dimensional travel) I was given to understand that, although we were travelling unimaginably fast, space was still a reality. He drew my attention to a concept that our current space journey still adhered to the reality of this higher dimension, which was much vaster than the lower physical worlds. I was then provided with instant access to a higher dimensional physics and natural laws that somehow made sense, which I failed to comprehend fully and could not retain. In a nutshell, I had insight that, on higher dimensional levels, laws of nature still applied and that not everything was a matter of thinking and materialising. We were still subjected to it and could not simply override it by a mere focus of intent or wish. By this time I was more taken by the extreme pleasure of travelling. Space had changed somewhat and was now extremely beautiful; luminous clouds drifted past us, nebula, lights and gigantic stars, and more radiant and magnificent lights. I became absorbed by the splendour of subtle ecstasy rising within me. We finally landed without my even noticing exactly how and where. All I noticed around me was what looked like an oversized control room, the size of a modern football stadium. The only thing I could identify with a semblance of certainty were drifting lights. Even now I was painfully aware how I would struggle to describe all this when returning to my physical reality and how I would record the experience. I was concerned how unbelievable my attempts would sound and how limited my language was and my possible metaphors. Aware of this, I clutched at certain features that would give a semblance to any cultural equivalents, but it was not possible. Nothing from my old culture, even with its most modern science fiction film-set designs, would be able to do it justice. I was simply stranded in an environment that was ungraspable, evading any frame of reference. Whatever words I would use in the end, the one fact which left me without any doubt whatsoever, was that I was not dreaming, not even lucidly dreaming. This was hard and tangible reality in a waking awareness mind, a reality unvisited by man. I was in the presence of an alien species in an alien world with no words to describe what I saw. Realising this, I found the greatest magic was not in what I saw, but in the fact that I was so wide awake, in possession and in control of all my waking awareness faculties; this I found was a miracle beyond comprehension. Meanwhile, I noticed other people milling around my host, treating him with great homage and respect. I was hardly paid any attention to and was taken away by the powerful charisma and aura of this being. Never in my life had I encountered an entity of such strength and inner power. My breath was taken by his appearance and the fluidity of his gestures and movements. I could have sworn his shape was changing as he dynamically expressed himself to his audience, flowing from subtle shape to shape alteration, which was harmonious and powerful without ever losing for a moment his underlying persona and charisma. ‘What a way of self-expression,’ I thought. ‘What kind of species have I visited? What is its evolutionary history? Why have they brought me here and, above all, why me?’ Although my host was the main focus of everyone’s attention, most of all mine, I watched the others now with more interest and discovered each individual carried an unmistakable yet humble nobility, behaving with sublime poise as if every movement counted. No gesture was in vain, all fluidly harmonised from person to person, like a swarm of fish perhaps, in total synchronicity, harmony brought to its ultimate perfection. How primitive and crude I felt as a representative of my own species, how unpolished, base and primeval. Among this noble race, I felt painfully ashamed and humbled, aware of my almost blind animal origin. As if noticing my discomfort, this noble warrior and host of mine addressed me with great poise, compassion and kindness. I felt a powerful stream of love radiating from him towards me. It was only now that I noticed all this fuss and milling around of his entourage had been to prepare him for a grand ceremony. I became fully aware of this as he addressed me. It was the purpose of my visit, my invitation to learn and to note that mankind is not the only intelligent species and that we are not even intelligent compared to his! ‘You may wonder what this is all about,’ was his thought sent towards me with a gentle nod and a smile. ‘I would like you to witness the “mating ritual” of our kind, to put it in its most simple terms.’ He told me that he was going to merge, meld or unite in some kind of courtship and union with a female aspect of his species. A concept like ‘mother’ was lit in my Consciousness. The female aspect of his species would not be what I might be expecting at all. He told me that his species on this dimensional level needed to procreate, just as we did on Earth, as a necessity to safeguard a future generation. It became clear to me that each being was subject to a life cycle just as we are and that they would progress to a higher plane when their experience here was completed. He also told me that I was the first human being to witness this. I was stunned, without fully absorbing the significance and the enormous privilege of this event. I asked him where the ‘mother’ was. I was told that she was actually in the very heart centre of their galaxy and that we would have to travel there as we did before we arrived. With that we boarded our gossamer craft. My host now looked even more majestic, dressed in a multi-layered shimmering gown. His entourage too was appropriately attired for this incredible occasion. Everyone radiated nobility and uncompromising attractiveness and beauty. After a short trip we arrived at an ocean of light, which I immediately considered to be the centre my host had referred to. Sitting in the midst of swirling light, I beheld a gigantic object of gyrating pattern and colours radiating a beauty which took my breath away. Without being told, I knew that what I saw was the ‘mother’. What was mind-shattering was the enormous discrepancy between male and female, as there was literally no resemblance at all between the genders. Not only was the female aspect at least ten to twenty times bigger than its male counterpart, but the difference was as if between two worlds. I was strangely reminded of some of Earth’s natural world, where a diminutive male courts an overwhelming female, and yet the female before me was anything but an animal or a creature, it was a powerhouse radiating love and uplifting blessings to anything that approached its gigantic aura. The mother had no recognisable human features or appearance whatsoever, but what I was most acutely aware of was an overwhelming aspect of femininity that radiated an irresistible attraction. I can only attempt to describe her by suggesting that you consider the most beautiful flower imaginable, opening its petals and breathing out the most enchanting perfume, while continuously performing a dance with its multitudes of leaves, exuberances, changing patterns and radiations of cascades of lights and sounds so sweet that those alone could take you off into a completely different world. What was before me was the super-aspect of femininity, the core essence of it, the absolute perfection of life-giving Source. I then observed my host opening his arms and drifting towards her as if being invisibly carried. As he drew closer, his aura lit up and he was received by the ‘mother’ into her inner sanctuary, where he disappeared. What followed from there was a spectacular uniting ritual, which was a song, a dance and a radiation of joy and ecstasy for all the surrounding witnesses to benefit from. Gently turning, the two were united as one. I felt powerfully what was taking place. I felt a burst of bliss and great clarity was radiating from the centre, and we all bowed down and sank to our knees. I followed suit instinctively without any thought and in reverence for what was taking place. The benediction that radiated out seemed to spread throughout the galaxy. It was so powerful. I was overawed by the privilege of having witnessed this event, plucked from a distant primitive planet, a society so unevolved and primitive that it made me feel like a mere insect by comparison. I had been ushered into the most intimate sanctuary of a completely alien species to give testimony that there are advanced alien life forms beyond our primitive Earth, and there is a life more unimaginable than any naturalist would able to fathom and yet, in its essence, so very human too. I knew I was here to witness and to record one of the greatest magical wonders of our universe, the generation of new life, the wonder of pre-creation and creation, the essence of what all life is at its core. The Forecourts of Heaven ‘Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known’ Carl Sagan In my previous book, I submitted several detailed reports concerning the highest levels of the Astral or higher dimensional regions, which, by most people who find themselves here for the first time, is seen as Heaven itself. There are crucial characteristics missing though, which distinguishes it from the much higher levels of Consciousness that can only be reached after the identification with our ego has been surrendered and all attachments that bind us to any remaining desires have been severed. These are regarded as the true Vistas of Heaven, as we shall see later. Nevertheless, these realms are extraordinarily sublime, symmetrical and beautiful, characterised by interplaying harmonies that are not quite as apparent on the less energised levels, which still can be extremely beautiful though. Over the years I have taken notes and created many images inspired by this region. Short of repeating one or two reports from my previous book, none of my notes I have taken since then will make a consistent narrative to provide a comprehensive image via one report alone of what these higher realms have to offer. Often I have simply locked these impressions in my soul and later reproduced them as digital paintings, though on their way down into that format they rarely looked like their original, but I feel I have still managed to put across the key impressions. It is highly unlikely, in any case, that any two people visiting these regions will come across the same scene, in the same way, just as it is unlikely that people travelling to America travel to the same exact spot. Though at this point, it has to be said that we do create consensus environments too. For example, if a large enough number of people watch a film like The Hobbit we are likely to find an environment just like it, or if enough people look at any one of my images and imagine themselves to be there, it is possible that scenery just like it will have been created somewhere on one of the higher dimensions. Imagination is a powerful force of creation, especially if emotions and feelings are employed. I have visited enough imagined creativity to know that this is true (see Cartoon City in a previous report). So instead of just handing snippets of journals, let me take out my word brush and paint a picture in the form of a collage of my most significant impressions. First of all, let me state that there are infinite numbers of worlds, not just related to Earth life, but also a limitless number of other planets that are accessible to us from here. On top of this there are so many nuances of each reality that can be experienced that we simply have to accept these are infinite. We will also have to get used to the fact that every individual experiences this reality from their unique point of view, being drawn into environments in tune with their state of mind, their character and often with an additional layer of idiosyncratic projections superimposed. The other striking awareness that becomes more apparent when entering these higher states is an acute feeling that we are closer to Home, no matter how alien the planet is we may have visited. This is due to the fact that we are more aware of the proximity of the core aspect of ourselves, our inner home, the soul’s natural resting place, of which all the outer worlds including our Earth are simply manifestations or forecourts. To us these may be treated as our cherished home ground, but still not provide the true feeling, the safety and security associated with the authentic place we spring from. So we can experience worlds far removed from Earth with wild and alien vegetation, with multiple suns, orbiting moons and planets, with unearthly atmospheres and ambient light, which is unlike anything we may have experienced before, and yet we will still feel very much a sense of being at home. We are closer, but not yet in the actual Home of Consciousness which is represented by the true Heaven states, explored more fully in the next chapter. It is also far easier to space travel on these much higher dimensional levels than it is on the lower ones. I clearly remember journeying through a multitude of different star systems all during one event, yet despite covering millions of light years I still experienced a feeling of proximity of home. All space and the multidimensional counterpart of space is a manifestation from the much higher dimension that I previously referred to as the Super Dimension. Now though, I simply like to call them the Heaven, the Vistas of Heaven or the Home of Consciousness, which I will explore in more detail. I am still finding it hard to subdivide the dimensions into vertical layers, which is often done by some esoteric models as a way of distinguishing between them, and if I talk of higher or lower I simply refer to it in these terms as more positive or negative, within a more or less expanded Consciousness, appreciated as more or less beautiful and symmetric and more or less bright etc. This kind of vertical discrimination is also quite challenging with regard to any other planes of reality and the only way it makes sense is by showing that Consciousness expands the closer we move to our Source, where we experience incredible harmonies unfolding as we approach. There is also a remarkable increase in the brightness of the prevailing light or the atmosphere, which of course is quickly adapted to. Sometimes it is possible to approach these elevated regions from the air during OBEs and they show themselves up first as a bright light in the distance, like dawn breaking in the morning. As we get closer, we find increasing discomfort when facing these brighter territories until we get acclimatised. This is another reason why I found it hard to accept that dimensional levels are in some way stacked vertically on top of each other. Although we can enter higher dimensions via a shift in Consciousness, we can also literally travel towards them. As seen in my previous report, people simply crossed a bridge to move into the next dimension. In my previous book, Multidimensional Man, I initially used buildings, and by using the stairs in order to reach the top floor I sometimes found myself in a higher dimension. On other occasions, I would try to break through a ceiling to advance. My conclusion was that by using such powerful ‘feeling visualisation’ we trick Consciousness into relocating us on a higher level. Unless it is experienced it is hard to understand or visualise, but the brightness of the higher regions makes it impossible for people of a somewhat lower state of Consciousness to enter; they are prevented from entering these regions on the grounds of experienced discomfort. We need to get attuned to it first. These are the great mysteries of Consciousness, which won’t allow us to view it in the logical manner we are used to on our physical level at all. We are better served by using analogies of our dreams, where symbols can be deployed as focus points to shift awareness from one state to the next. Sceptics should not be too hasty to dismiss this fact as proof that we are dealing with pure fantasy or imagination. Consciousness has its own laws, which simply are not based on our physical ones. In the many reports on near death experiences I have read, little mention has been made of the many prominent features of the higher Consciousness discussed in the next chapter. I concluded that it is here on these sublime Astral regions that most of the people having had a near death experience will have found themselves when they reported that they had been to Heaven. There is little on Earth that comes close to it in the serenity of its beauty, which is mainly the sensation of being in such close proximity to our true origin that we simply call it Home. The people living here permanently are, without exception, very attractive and beautiful. Here we will realise to the full extent of what a beautiful species we really are and I feel what a great privilege it is to have been chosen to live life as a human being. On the lower levels mankind’s core beauty very often gets overlooked and overshadowed by the negative aspects of mankind, which are given more exposure in the media, but having visited these higher regions I no longer feel this way. When seeing beyond the shadows, which are mostly brought about by ignorance, struggle and extreme hardship, we will see that we are imbued with radiant inner beauty that will shine through. Once we have shaken off the last traces of the shadow we become radiant beings, which fills me with joy and makes me feel privileged to be part of. Many whose natural home is on a much higher level of Consciousness have chosen to settle here so they can more readily be of service to the many people needing their help on the lower Astral regions or even the physical one. This is a kind of sacrifice they make in order to serve, because their true spiritual home makes the Heavens of the Astral plane appear like darkness by comparison. Frequently people who have had trauma experiences and escaped certain death only need to come as far as the higher Astral planes. Unless they were very unusually spiritually unfolded, they are simply unable to penetrate the true Vistas of Heaven, the Consciousness that is very close to the Source of its origin or Singularity. NDE victims of accidents and medical trauma only need to come as far as this to receive healing, comfort and counselling, and when they return they will give testimony of the beauty of Heaven, of the grace they have received and all the wisdom that has been imparted to them by enlightened beings. These beings can show and transport them, by their sheer intent, into the much higher regions where they perceive their ‘download’, their wisdom of the revelations which they will then report back to the people left behind on Earth. Here they will give testimony that they have been to paradise and back. Very few of them would readily accept that they had barely scratched the surface of Heaven. The people who help these injured souls return to their physical bodies are mostly enlightened humans, often very old souls, whose charisma and radiance can easily be mistaken for that of an angel or even God himself. People on the receiving end of their benevolence and love may easily project the image of their religious avatar onto them, a saint or holy man or woman; for the time of their stay, their benefactor may take on all the external appearances without ever deviating a moment from the authentic love they feel for their charge. These healing angels and spiritual benefactors are self-realised human beings from the planes of the super-dimensional realities beyond. There are reports, however, bearing the hallmarks of near death experiencers having reached past the Astral Heaven and into the pure light of Consciousness. This is no different from people having spontaneous enlightenment experiences, which have been reported more frequently in recent years. But it is only when we enter the true Heavens that the differences between the Astral and true Heavens become much more obvious. The most decisive ones are the dramatic expansion in Consciousness, the enhancements of all our means of perception, the increase of light and an all-present bliss awareness that is directly sent to us by the very Singularity which embraces and includes all. For victims to go straight from their physical Consciousness into the highest state would only cause additional trauma because of their old sense of identity being stripped away and the opening of a completely new sense of who they are. This could be a hindrance to their healing process. Some quite ordinary people on Earth have had spontaneous spiritual experiences of such nature and found themselves seeking medical help or counselling because of the impact it had on their lives. In spiritual literature or on specialised forums this is often referred to as a ‘Spiritual Emergency’. I myself have received letters from concerned partners asking for advice on how to deal with such powerful spontaneous transformations. Due to our ignorance, these people are often medicated or admitted to an institution where they are categorised as psychotic or schizophrenic. In reality they would benefit more from counselling by somebody familiar with their experience and being slowly grounded by focusing attention more on practical worldly tasks. However, when compared to Earth, these Astral Heavens are still unforgettable experiences that will frequently transform a person’s life when they return to Earth, but fortunately (or unfortunately) they are not exposed to the full impact of the much higher states. When reading reports by near death experiencers they almost all agree that they were reluctant to return to their bodies because of the pleasure they experienced. So the Heavens we find on the highest Astral regions could be referred to as our earthly Heavens and, unless you have a powerful impulse to penetrate into the very heart of creation and are prepared for it by a regime of daily meditation, most people would be content to spend the rest of their eternity here instead of the ‘real thing’. Let us linger here for a while longer to experience what it feels like in these lofty regions where we are so much closer to our true home and its readily available creative power. The first thing we will probably become aware of is that we are never in any alien kind of environment, no matter how remote it is from our familiar ground. This is because we are in an intimate communication with our surrounding world. We are no longer alienated in any way from what is considered outside of us. The environment responds much more readily to our feeling in a positive way. I have described this happening in the lower regions as well, but here it carries an intimacy and personal link that feels very wholesome. For example, everything that sways or moves emits a sound that will always harmonise with other sounds and our own presence. Walking along a riverbank, the gargling sound of the water will be more like a tune playing especially aimed at us because we are so synchronised with the world. Simultaneously we may feel it in the song of a bird nearby, singing its melody as part of a universal concert. Everything that happens around us is synchronised with us. If you imagine a bright summer’s day with its warming sun rays, the way you remember it from childhood when you may have played happily, free of any concerns, in the garden among flowers which appeared to be the same size as you, you will get a close enough match of what you might find here. On top of that, the environment responds to you intimately because all your feelings are living energies that interact with all other energies sustaining this world and its creations and being constantly at play. If you were to look with delight and affection at a flower it would come alive and display its most vibrant aspects to you by opening up and giving off its magical scent, or even increasing in size and splendour. At this level we no longer simply look at our surroundings and the beauty of nature, we communicate and interrelate with it and become increasingly aware that there is no such thing as dead matter, because everything contains the essence of intelligence. It is easy to be carried away simply by surrendering to the harmonies of sight and sound and the presence of love radiating from the Source of everything within all objects that make up our environment. Even though it may still not be quite as apparent as on the more expanded levels, we only have to open ourselves up to these energies and we will be enchanted as if by a magical spell. Devoted pet owners already know that their beloved animals have a soul, character and personality. When we arrive here we will directly understand how intelligent our companions really are, and we can freely talk and communicate with them as if they were people, even to birds. Everything we see or interact with on these levels opens up an additional component of enhanced experience. We may be reading a book that springs vibrantly to life in our inner experience or be looking at a painting where we get lost in it and, depending on the type of work, we may actually enter it and experience exactly what the artist experienced as they painted it, as I have described in an earlier report. If we listen to music we will notice that the sounds have colour and a concert can manifest a powerful display of magical light shows. Interestingly, in most of our earthly pop concerts this idea has already filtered through years ago and is employed to great effect by the concert organisers. Computer technicians have also seen the link between sound and graphic representation, and we can download software which turns music into art. As an artist, I personally started using it in my work with virtual reality. All these ‘special effects’ have already been available for thousands of years on the Astral levels and are simply a natural process. For every scenery and for every landscape here there is an enhanced version on the higher planes, enhanced meaning imbuing you with the unavoidable presence of joy and splendour; the inner presence of its creator as well as the physical grandeur of its more highly unfolded manifestation with sharper or softer contours, more vibrant or far greater ranges and nuances of colours and a comfortable atmosphere of hugging warmth. Where there is water it will be like liquid crystal without the sensation of wetness. It feels almost like having a layer of frosted glass removed from our sight, because everything is so crisp and clear. When walking through open landscapes there is often an additional component of feeling that previously we could never register or be aware of with our physical nervous system. When returning back to our body we realise how coarse everything is by comparison. Here these feelings are represented in the different qualities of lights with subtle ambient shades of colour, which casts a totally new and unique atmosphere into our awareness. We can have new and many different kinds of awareness as we enter the region and often experience completely new varieties of feelings for the first time. It is not just the much greater spectrum of emotions that we can discriminate here which our crude physical nervous system can never deliver or differentiate. Every sensory facility is greatly enhanced, but we will find that emotions have a much greater range, often with many more nuances of joy or other positive feelings, which makes the experience here so distinguished from everything we have ever known. A much broader range of colours with hues we never knew existed can be perceived and the same applies to sound as well as other perceptions, including smell and taste. We will simply have greater direct access to the intrinsic energy that is manifested in the objects of the world surrounding us, so when we look at a stone we will connect to the energy of the stone with its unique aura and consequently the whole world surrounding us comes to life, is lit up from within and may respond to us as we pass. We can even detect its inner intelligence, which manifested it in the first place, which gives everything a sense of presence. Frequently, when choosing to go for a stroll in these pre-Heaven realms and looking at the ground, a number of curious phenomena may be observed, such as the ground organising itself in a geometric and symmetric pattern, so it may appear as if one is walking on some kind of Persian rug, but these patterns will keep changing in accordance with one’s feelings. I noticed the same phenomena when walking on our physical Earth after an hour or so of deep meditation. My explanation is that the inner experienced symmetry during meditation is projected through the eyes into the world and reorganises everything more symmetrically. This especially holds true when walking on a path showing a random texture of pebbles or covered with autumn leaves, which arrange themselves into a symmetric pattern. Here on these higher dimensions I have experienced it as almost a given because of being much closer to the symmetries of the higher worlds. Sometimes it may even appear as if the ground is made of glass or semi-transparent stone. When walking into mountainous regions the rock of the mountain may appear to be made of semi-precious or precious stone like an abundant variety of translucent marbles. Everything nature has manifested on our Earth is here in the high Astral regions, and it seems of a much higher quality. Instead of stones there may be semi-precious or precious stones; instead of base metals, precious metals. Buildings constructed of marble are of a quality and pattern that simply cannot be found on Earth, with seams of gold or silver running through or clear crystal. There may be gravity-defying buildings and very complex and elaborate water parks with vegetation unknown on earth, flower forests with individual plants metres high, swaying gently in a warm summer breeze. I have communicated with animals and birds as if they were humans, which to me is proof that all creatures have much more intelligence than they are given credit for. Previously I have also reported having encountered mythological creatures. Little streams cascading down the mountain carry water that is crystal clear and emit musical scores rather than the white noise normally associated with rushing water. Were we to bend down and pick up the sand on the river bank and let it run through our fingers, we would hear musical notes emitted by the fine grains. I also frequently noticed that the underlying geometry shows signs of fractal growth, most apparent in the plants, bushes and trees as well as in the bark, which can show up in a very beautiful and symmetric arrangement of the leaves and branches making the most intriguing pattern. Considering our fellow human brothers and sisters on this level in their more unfolded state could require a whole book of sociological study. We are no longer so precious about safeguarding our status and image on higher levels, because we are on our way to letting go of self-importance in order to enter the much higher levels of Consciousness; this requires the total surrender of our ego attachments. Therefore we will find it a joy communicating with other people in whom we recognise an almost intimate relationship, as if they were our very own family members. I have already mentioned the attractiveness of the people here, all of whom will have resolved their ego-related fixations and problems and put aside their need for judgement or defending an opinion. We are actually experiencing utopian society, where everyone lives in peace and is free of conflict. Our disguises and roles we display in physical society have been dropped, our authentic nature and individuality shines though and radiates out into the world. We are inevitably at ease with our fellow humans. However, here, as well as in the lower regions, like still attracts like and if we haven’t done so on Earth, for whatever reason, here we are much more likely to find our soul mates. In my previous book, I reported the celebration of such a union under the chapter, ‘Marriages Are Made in Heaven’; indeed they are here. Intimacy as well reaches much higher states of fulfilment, which can include the sex we know but goes far beyond in its levels of ecstasy and intimacy we might have experienced via our physical bodies. I hope I have provided enough base information for you to lie down, close your eyes and project yourself into our higher regions until you find the recall and lost memory for yourself. The Vistas of Heaven The mystery of our ego and sense of self is easily explained by the fact that each one of us, along with every atom in the universe, is also its centre, from which everything radiates out. Getting into these levels beyond the Astral is an undertaking that requires a mindset and attitude free of all its previous identification and attachments. It is simply impossible to enter this state still connected to any of our cherished fixations of self-importance. If we are not prepared to do that, it would be like attempting a balloon ride with all the heavy weights and ropes keeping it anchored to the ground. It won’t take place for the reason that our controls are handed over to a much greater aspect of who we are and this aspect is intimately connected to a universal Consciousness, which no longer accepts the negative and self-centred struggles of the lower mind. Everything on this higher level operates on positive energies, which predominantly are love, joy and bliss; this is the very reason why it is referred to as Heaven, where no negativity can exist. In our Western tradition this state is referred to as Cosmic Consciousness, the Devachanic, the Mental and Causal planes in Theosophy, or simply the true Heaven in Christianity, and entering these precipitates a complete change in Consciousness that no longer puts the egoic self in its centre. Since writing Multidimensional Man and putting the Super-Dimensional Experience at the apex of the book, I have gathered further, more in-depth, experience, which compels me to place this state of Consciousness in a somewhat different light. For a start, I noticed that in order to gain entry into these states we can no longer rely on our own resources. Nothing happens unless a much higher aspect of Consciousness is tapped into to allow us entry to this most sublime reality. The Bible quite aptly suggests that one should seek the Kingdom of Heaven first and all else will be given. This is the broad outline of the process. The only qualifier is that the seeker has to have stopped seeking the kingdom, which is an apparent contradiction, because we will have to do both. It appears that considering ourselves as individuals with personality and social identity is not even half of what we really are. A much greater part of ourselves is anchored in these higher regions of Consciousness, directly connected to the greater Singularity or pool of Consciousness, which sees things in quite a different light from us. From our human viewpoint we are on our own, lonesome creatures, struggling like animals in the wilderness to survive. As a result we rely on our own resources and the ones who form our tribe pursuing the same goals, like family, schools and businesses. Over time we have become what we have trained ourselves to be and are completely identified with it. From the viewpoint of Singularity this lonesome being that we consider to be us, which struggles to survive, has in reality never been an independent unit, but always been part of a whole, no matter how it perceives itself or on which level of reality it is focused on. It has always been part of a greater unifying Consciousness, but as long as we struggle, want, desire (even desiring to be united with our Singular Source), we experience ourselves as separate. In this state of perceived division, Singularity cannot reach us and bestow its blessings of reunion because we’ve erected the artificial barriers of separation via our personalised viewpoint. When the barriers are gone, the blessing starts flooding in and we then firmly experience our natural connection to our original and authentic Source. As far as the Source is concerned, we have never been separated, not for a single moment, even if we were to dwell in abject spiritual poverty and darkness. However, in its seemingly separated state we have taken on board a number of identifications, roles and fixations. We will only be able to enter the ‘fold’ of Singularity the moment we sever all the strings to our former identification. To many this will feel like a process of annihilation, the relinquishing of our identity, roles and attachments to our former life. In other words, we will have to surrender everything we consider to be what makes us us. It can feel frightening to let go of all that seemingly defines us as the person we are. For most people this is an unacceptable and impossible task. They have spent years investing in their persona, struggled for an education to acquire a role and with it status and prestige. They have tried to distinguish themselves from their fellow companions and stand out from the crowd. They might have invested millions to get where they are now or spent years working hard to reach the top. They have groomed themselves to be noticed and appear attractive and pretty in order to achieve success and now to give it all up? For what? In order to let go of all these we will have to realise that these are nothing but red herrings and an illusion and that our core self is much more significant than that. For the singular Consciousness our adopted role is nothing more than a circus act and, however important we consider ourselves to be and pray to ‘God’ to support us in our illusionary acting role, God very often pays scant attention unless there is some kind of alignment with the laws of harmony, and then the apparent support in our assumed identity is almost purely accidental. This can change dramatically when our prayer is in alignment and we have relented our hold on the ego, and our prayer is sent through a pure channel straight to the Source or God. There are plenty of testimonials verifying some truly miraculous results of such authentic link-ups. In order to be effective, specific psychological conditions of the person delivering the prayer will have to be met and they usually require a selfless detachment from neediness. Paradoxically, we can only find this authentic link-up once we abandon our attachment to the object of our prayer via a realisation process that breaks our concept of separation down. This is much harder to achieve when we are completely wrapped up in the issue that prompts our prayer in the first place. People who follow the path of religion and prayer are best served if they seek first a union with God or, as St Teresa of Avila has put it, ‘a marriage with God’. There are plenty of stories of people who have made a powerful connection to the Source and because of it, on return to their old self, considered themselves to be ‘chosen ones’. Then the process starts all over again by strengthening and reinforcing their self-importance under a new banner, ‘Appointed by God to carry out the mission’: the preachers, the gurus, the self-appointed masters. They go out into the world, perhaps build a network of supporters around them, pronouncing their chosen status, build an organisation or cult, when in reality all they build is a new, grander illusion of self-importance, which frequently ends in disappointment, animosity and hardships. In reality we are all ‘chosen ones’, linked to our Source, but because we all are, it doesn’t make us anything special. On the other hand, I often applaud people who give authentic testimony of their inner – often very personal – experience, and thereby enhance our greater understanding of Consciousness, strengthen our general awareness and encourage people to reconsider their own paradigms, mainly that we are more than a physical body. For the experiencer personally the best they can do in order to nurture their connection to the Source Energy is to remain humble and open, and if they feel inclined to make the world a better place to do so with humility, naturally attracting support by the strength of their actions rather than inventing a new persona and promoting a new belief. Most people’s psychological entrenchment will often break down as a result of trauma, some kind of shock where they can no longer control a situation, no matter how powerful their ego or self-image. This point is often reached during a life crisis, such as a death, a break-up with a partner or bankruptcy and so on, though more often than not people carry out a heroic repair job to take things back to the condition it was before their crisis, rather than letting go of the old paradigm, questioning who they are and starting to think outside of the box in order to make a fresh start. This precipitates letting go of the former self. This act of bravery is exactly the attitude needed to enter much higher states of Consciousness. Blessings are not always received in the form of ecstasy brought about by intense religious devotion, but often simply by surrendering our self-importance during a crisis, which can have a powerful transformative effect. We may need several of these humbling or ‘letting go’ experiences in order to appreciate the finer aspects of our being, which are often found in stillness beyond the turmoil of our thinking and accessed by a feeling radiating from the heart. The heart finds it easy to let go of thought, and what else are our self-concepts and ideas of self other than thoughts? The other pathway to send our red herrings of self-identification on their way and appreciate the actual ocean they have been swimming in is by regular meditation, where we gradually and more or less trauma-free acclimatise ourselves to the process of ‘letting go’. Meditation is nothing other than that, letting go. Our Western mindset makes letting go very hard, because our main focus is on ‘holding on’, of ‘being more’ and ‘getting more’. The closest we have come to accepting this is by calling meditation ‘relaxation’, but this is clearly not enough. It is more like surrendering to the heart or the breath than hanging on to our thoughts, which are accustomed to clinging on to the old concepts and rigid structures. By a continuous practice of ‘letting go’, these rigid structures will be broken down and the rewards of tranquillity will start to materialise. We will then begin to realise that our brains can be trained and controlled like a dog and our habits surrendered. If we consider meditation as a continuous stream of ‘letting go’, we don’t exclude anything in the letting-go process until we become a blank canvas, an empty vessel naturally filled by what our authentic nature had in store for us all along. We are in a psychologically much better position to realise a state of natural transcendence, which had been obscured by our fixations and attachments to specific issues. Letting go will create the kind of mental space into which the higher aspects of our Consciousness will seep, or even burst through and translocate our awareness, stripped of its former identification, into completely new territories. If it happens during a sudden shift, the feeling often is that there is a completely new us, one we’ve never seen before but which feels strangely familiar. This new us is exponentially more powerful, more perceptive and cognisant. It employs completely new modes of perception and cognition. It operates in a field of unlimited freedom, unhampered by any former self-limitations. This is the mindset that opens the gates to our true home. When this happens we experience what is known as an ‘Awakening’. From that moment on we no longer feel separated from our Source and are in constant communication and exchange. In the early stages we may feel we’ve lost the connection at times, though deep down we know where we belong. We are no longer who we thought we were and although nobody else may notice it, we secretly foster our new awareness until it finally clicks into place and it becomes our new and permanent resting place from where we conduct our daily affairs from a completely new perspective, guided by intuitive wisdom and refined perception. In other words, we are beginning to explore our full potential, which begins to harness our chief characteristics, natural talents and abilities in new and more efficient and fulfilling ways. This is the state in which we are open enough to allow the energy of our singular Consciousness to vitalise our awareness in its own home ground and receive its blessing. Its transformative effect is experienced as ecstasy. Once we enter into the home ground of singular Consciousness, ecstasy, joy and fulfilment are the dominant attributes in which we conduct our new life. This is the psychological position the mind has to be in in order for us to enter the higher realms and non-physical reality systems of Consciousness during OBEs or deep meditation. These are the sublime regions of the higher Consciousness, the unexplored universe, the unlimited frontiers of the evolved human. It is here that we unlock all the great mysteries of who we are and what lies at the root of all existence. We are entering the realm of the cosmic traveller, who transcends space and time and samples the vistas of our infinity. I chronicled this process first during an Out-of-Body experience in Multidimensional Man and later related how it was experienced via meditation in my book The Ten Minute Moment. In both cases I documented how these states required the initiative of Singularity and were outside and beyond my own individual power. We may be meditating until the cows come home, but we cannot will ourselves into the position because the thing that wills is the very thing that needs to be surrendered. Singularity decides when we are ready to receive it and it does so by administering an intense experience of ecstasy and rapturous blessing. All we are then able to do is completely surrender and relinquish any trace of our old mocked-up or inauthentic persona. Sometimes we enter this state where nothing is happening, nothing at all, except a deep sense of serenity and peace, which we feel happy to remain in for hours. When this takes place we have entered a state of Samadhi, where all the subtle inner transformations run their course without us actually knowing. At other times the change in Consciousness this entails can be very dramatic, but should not be seen as a measure of its successfulness, though they often make for a better narrative. The following are my actual diary entries of what this state of Consciousness entails; I have tried my best to communicate the experience as graphically and as accurately as I possibly can. As can be seen by the different descriptions, each experience is totally unique. There are no precedents and there are no repeats. Nature responds in a totally dynamic way to the way we individually are in the present here-and-now situation, and for this very reason each experience will be a one-off and unique. In my previous book, I referred to these states of sublime Consciousness and their accompanying environments as the ‘Super Dimension’, mainly because it exceeded everything experienced before and ushered in a completely different state of Consciousness. That particular entry was based on a powerful experience I had as far back as thirty-five years ago. Since then many things have happened and although the account I produced was authentic and in keeping with my experience, I have since then had far deeper insights as well as experiencing a profound permanent transformation. Each time this process takes place it is also a reminder that we have not arrived at an end point, but always at a new starting point as the greater vistas of our infinity open up before us. I can no longer look at these states in terms of ‘super’ or ‘superior’, because it is a state of Consciousness that has no equivalent in any of the reports that have been written so far. I mentioned earlier that on the higher dimensions or Astral planes we find many people who, by their state of realisation, should be residents of the real Heaven territories, which I am about to expand on, but they have chosen an Astral body to be on constant standby to help in the lower regions. Here their energy radiates widely and enhances their surroundings. They bring a light to bear which makes them appear like gods. It is here that much of the healing is administered and the people whose lives are in the balance because of their near death experience will readily find help and be supported by them, as well as receiving teaching and wisdom from these exalted entities. They may even be shown things by means of their extraordinary powers that will make them appear god-like. These evolved people residing on the sublime Astral energy levels are, without exception, exquisitely beautiful and attractive, because there is no longer any negativity present at all. They also draw their powers directly from the much higher dimension and make up whole communities and councils; their wisdom shines through in anything they do. No wonder visitors from Earth imagine them to be the avatars of their faith and religions and even God in human form. It is not for me to question the validity of reports submitted by experiencers and it would serve little purpose, because all that matters is the learning and the benefit derived from such experiences, which are often life-changing and transformative. Having been exposed to a lifetime of drudgery and the challenges of physical existence, on entering such a refined region for the first time it is almost impossible to find other words than ‘Heaven’, ‘angels’ and ‘God’ in describing the enormous benefits received. Yet it is only when we break through the Astral barriers that we will become fully cognisant that what we experienced before was only the forecourt to the real thing, which is truly of a magnitude and expanse in Consciousness that is humbling when we first encounter this state. The relatively little I have seen and witnessed is less than a pinprick on an elephant the size of our sun, and I can make no claims at all that I know more than the most rudimentary information laid out before me. There have been some reports in the past by the Theosophists with regard to the Devachanic Planes, but even they skirted superficially across this enormous subject. How can you possibly report about the universe when you have only set foot on a few square metres of the moon’s surface? This is the challenge we are faced with. We are confronted with multiple dimensions a million-fold more complex and grand than our physical dimension. At the same time each person visiting it will also have to contend with the universe of their own making as a reflection of who they are, their own angle and custom-made Heavens, and this in itself may reveal itself to be infinite. No wonder the mystics who sailed through these regions referred to them as distractions when their only aim was to enter the heart of God. Indeed it is. I have been seduced into it myself by their sheer extravagance and the multitude of visual and sensory challenges, only to find myself getting lost like in an infinite labyrinth where the only way to find my way out of it was by clinging on to the tentacles of love and light attached to any object we find here. Where my words utterly failed, I have tried my best to create sketches and impressions with the insufficient tools of my trade in digital media, and in that, too, I have failed. Having been immersed in these incredible scenarios it is simply impossible to reproduce them adequately using conventional means, because what we find encompasses multiple aspects such as vision, sound, motion, colour, shape and powerful cognitive attributes of feeling and realisation, which cannot be reproduced in any media known to us. When I refer to vision, sounds and motion, I refer to these in their superlative aspect that can never be experienced via our physical perception. Our new perceptions are enhanced by a power of ten or more. Nevertheless, these exalted states found mentioned in esoteric and religious literature are universally described as states where there can reside no evil, realms of continuous bliss, joy and fulfilment. There is nothing on Earth, within our language or our knowledge, which could adequately describe what it is like and yet we find that our art and architecture have been heavily influenced by the visions of the few. I found in particular that Islamic art, with some of its magnificent mosques, has received inspiration from here, building the designs on primary geometric shapes like the hexagon and the rich repeating pattern. At the basis of creation are basic mathematical and geometric shapes, which build everything via increasingly complex fractal geometry in an instant. The fractal geometry is almost always to be seen and everything is constructed with it, although it may not appear obvious on the surface. Simply looking at plant growth, life forms, the coats of animals, shells, flowers, rivers, stars and galaxies, we find that the fractal geometry is even here on the physical level at the basis of everything nature designs. Fractals are such a powerful aspect of creation that it is now extensively used in computer simulations, and new computer games are designed around them to simulate a whole ever-changing universe and infinite gaming territories. When I have had excursions into these strata, I inevitably found these to be the building blocks of many things I encountered. Here is a short snippet from an undated journal entry of one such an observation. Of the little I have observed, it is the geometry and the symmetry of the higher regions which struck me the most. Even now I am left with the magnificent view and territories still lingering prominently in my memory because of the powerful visual impact they had on me. In one, I was walking along a path suspended in the air, but which was intermittently connected, every ten or twenty metres or so, via sublime ropes, to the walls of a tunnel which was porous with large openings like perforated cell walls, and I could see though the gaps into the environment these tunnels were suspended in. Beneath my walkway, I found streams of coloured light flowing underfoot like a raging river. Everything of every aspect of the designs followed a certain pattern from which everything evolved into new shapes, yet underneath it all it carried a common signature or characteristic design. My path meandered into the distance, which was obscured by invigorating mists of light that showered sparks of blessings over me as I walked through it, and even these mists were connected to the rest of the scenery in some mysterious ways. I was keenly aware that what I saw and touched was also an intimate part of who I was and yet at the same time I could never be quite sure what I would find around the next corner as the world kept shifting and changing, but one thing I could be sure of – nothing ever deviated from an intrinsic plan or pattern. Even the symphonies of sound, which I had never heard before, were only responding to the harmonies of their fractal manifestation or perhaps even generating it. This was nature working on its highest and most sublime level, following a cosmic order and principle that was at the root of all the magic I was to witness; and yet, at the same time, it was myself and my unique position which enabled its unique manifestation. It was easy to be carried along and enjoy the unfolding plans and symphonies, but it is just as easy to shift my intent and enter a completely different environment altogether, of which there could be billions, all different. Just by an act of focus and intent I could find a completely unique and new aspect of manifestation unfolding according to the same principles of divine mathematics arranged around my unique position. But as I said, this is just a snippet. There are many and they can change in an instant and reveal a completely new and unexpected environment, which makes you wonder how such incredible diversity, complexity and beauty can be achieved in almost no time at all. There are earthly scenes as well, pastoral landscapes with villages and towns just like on Earth, but simply on a glorified, bliss-inducing level; but even these follow a pattern based on harmonics. It seems that in this world everything is perfect and our imperfection only arises out of the chaos produced when the primal energy flow is disrupted on the lower planes by choking it off with negative sentiments. Here, however, the permutations of any landscape we regard on Earth as sublime will be found in this infinite space, but in sublime perfection, enhanced by a mind that has broken out of its confinements. Every aspect found on Earth, such as power and force, we will find here, but without any corrupting aspects and only in its purest state. Without any chance of tiring of such perfection we will find that the blissful glory of its roots will assure that everything we feast our eyes and senses on will create an experience of utter fulfilment and blissful enjoyment. Date missing The Gates of HigherConsciousness The whole experience lasted probably less than a few intensive minutes. I had been somewhat prepared to make Saturday a day of probing deeper into the higher states of Consciousness by becoming aware first of its intrinsic stillness. I had used intent the night before and meditated for an hour at six in the morning. After I dropped Julia off at her course at 10:00 am, I used the household chores I had to do for the day as a means for intense meditation. This meant connecting with the present and experiencing every action and every moment with full awareness. It soon put me into a very connected state, a feeling where I feel intensely at home and at a deep peace with myself. Gradually the division between myself and my tasks became more fluid and I began to notice that my Consciousness was no longer just residing within the confines of my body. I then went into the lounge and practiced Qi Gong for fifteen minutes. Afterwards I retired into the meditation room, where I meditated for about an hour. I was on the verge of dropping into a sleep-like trance, but something jerked me into full waking awareness, though it was not physical Consciousness. I observed passively new vistas passing in front of my vision. Incredibly complex patterns created an astonishing array of arches through which I began to travel. The scenes I passed through were continuously evolving and, at every moment and every turn, I found staggeringly new forms and manifestations which simply came from another world. I travelled through tunnels made out of complex fractals, patterns which revealed themselves to be the most natural way of Consciousness manifesting its creation. With their deceptive complexity, yet utter simplicity of unfolding, they allowed for infinite varieties of manifestations. As they evolved, not only did they reveal new detail, but also conjured up incredible powers in order to create vast and staggeringly beautiful monuments, which grew and unfolded in breathtaking glory and diversity. For a moment, I pondered what it would be like to get lost in these magical labyrinths, so beautiful and so fantastic in their ever-changing promise of adventure that it would be close to impossible to ever find your way out again. I then saw that the visual vistas that spun out in front of me, however glorious and rich and however magnificent their beauty, were little more than a trap for the senses and attention to keep me away from the place where I truly belonged. Instantly I recalled the stillness, the silent companion who had been waiting patiently for me to remember. What I had seen was little more than a movie screen. As I resisted the labyrinth of form, I was rewarded with a powerful wave of love rolling towards me. I began feeling pressure on my forehead and calmly reasoned that it was energy rising and settling into a cold, burning fire. I was ignited and instantly surrendered to the wave of love. The image in front of me began to change. Where I had witnessed the turbulence of ever-evolving thought forms there was now laid out in front of me the most heavenly garden. Whereas before I had been a detached observer, this time I was personally invited into enchanted grand parks, elaborately designed with paisley curls of flowerbeds, promising the joyful wonders yet to unfold. I was taken, mind, body and soul, towards an elaborate gate, shrouded in glowing mists, fashioned from gold, orange and amber stones and metals. It was pinned into a glorious golden sky that had no horizon. Here I was, standing in front of the most sublime archetype, so often reported by people who had crossed the borderlands of death – Heaven’s Gate – a clichéd symbol and yet in anything I had ever seen before in my life, this was more and promised to be another pinnacle. I could spend a fair amount of words in an attempt to do justice to its glory and magnificence, but the core significance of this great symbol was the realisation that I was just about to enter my true home, the place where I was born and where I had sprung from. That it was time to depart from a world defined by opposites and separation and become reunited with a long-lost love in sacred ecstasy. I abandoned all thought, just as a pilgrim might abandon his belongings and his shoes in order to enter a holy shrine. I was there in my entirety as the gate opened and I entered on a wave of joy, which swiftly became my driving force. It did not last. My guide had not reached me, nor was I ready. Thoughts which I deemed long abandoned clasped themselves around my heels and abandoned my joys. I was pulled back into the labyrinth of time, where one event followed another. The space around me began to fade and turned into a vision only, and then I sat back in my chair. But this was OK. I noticed that I had not been divorced at all from the reality of my essence, only from another form of presentation, and where I was sitting now was glorious reality too, in all its boundless peace. My mind detached from thought, I was still and free. I had moved into the place of my free choosing where I could partake in the offerings of my innermost secrets too. For an hour I rested in my chair, contemplating the big questions of existence and the mechanics of thought, how they were made and what they were made of. At these shores of time, I watched effortlessly their waves, their interaction, their mounting crests, the joyous delivery of treasures they brought ashore from the ocean’s depth, and every wave delivered new wealth. There is much more to a short experience such as this that is hard to put into a narrative format with the cognitive aspect with the insights and knowledge gained from such an experience. We have to bear in mind that Consciousness is vastly expanded in such moments and encompasses a non-linear awareness, which is hard to describe once confined again to the prison walls of our brains. When scientists and philosophers grapple with intellectual problems they mostly do so by employing linear thinking: one thought follows the next one, ideas are lined up like beads on a necklace, pitted against each other, logical conclusions follow into openings of new pathways for further thinking. All the while the neural network of the brain is working overtime, streamlining the grooves, becoming more efficient, faster, more productive. Occasionally whole areas light up, resulting in spontaneous epiphanies. This is not how the non-physical cognitive apparatus works. Here everything happens in nonlinear ways, at once, via knowing rather than thinking. There is no time delay, just a connection performed spontaneously, programmed by the tapestry of the inner person. That doesn’t make us into nuclear physicists, because it very much relies on what we are and our individual programme, but within the programme we have spontaneous access to all information relevant to us. So, for example, we can follow a line that connects us to a former life and this life will be accessed at once and in full high definition. We are still individuals and our higher status does not change this. These heavenly vistas are also very populous with such individuals, just as our world is here. We are like bees clinging to the honeycomb, congregating in cities and communities just as we do on every lower level of physical and non-physical reality. Whereas on Earth we socialise and interact mainly for survival, on these higher levels we interact motivated by aesthetics, interests and cognition. Our cities revolve around thoughts, ideas, our fascinations and the arts. Here is a short report. 7 May 2012 Life Experiencedas aTapestry When I am fortunate enough to be drawn into the ego-free zone of these sublime levels, it always feels like a new and first experience, and every time I am struck by how rich, multidimensional and incomprehensibly infinite reality really is. This applies to the Astral regions as well, of course, but here the slightest shift of attention can draw me into radically different types of awareness. Setting aside the impact on the accompanying emotional states of bliss and all-present joy of being liberated and yet residing within the secure feeling of shelter where nothing can harm one, I am confronted with unlimited possibilities of perception, experience and exploration, which makes every moment a new discovery and realisation. To give an example, when posing a question such as, ‘Where does the ego come from?’ I am not only presented with an answer, but with a clear graphic multimedia presentation. With the question posed I was instantly thrown into a vast network of intricate patterns, each element connected to its neighbours. The further I rose away from it the more I perceived it as one huge and intricate tapestry made out of billions of its individual components. But the moment I closed into one individual component, I found myself positioned at the epicentre of the universe from which all the pattern radiated out. The realisation was that wherever I placed my attention became the epicentre of the universe, and that did not just apply to individual people, but to everything in existence, from any object to every atom and every living thing. At any one point everything radiates out into infinity, giving the impression that every point I focus on and then out from instantly becomes the very centre of the universe. This is why every person on Earth considers themselves to be unique and the most important person, fashioning the ego-identity from this perception and the history of experiences focused on it. When I walk through the busy streets of London on a Saturday afternoon, I am surrounded by thousands of centres of the universe, where everybody considers themselves absolutely unique and special – and for good reason. Everything revolves around it in constant exchange with other unique universe centres and swirls around in the streets of London and yet, when a disturbance occurs in one or a whole section of the network, it sends ripples around the net. We have become more acutely aware of this since our physical senses have been expanded and connected via the media. On the whole, taking our vast numbers into account, taking one section out of the network doesn’t matter much to its Singularity, because sections are eventually repaired, as in wars or natural disasters; and yet, at the same time, every part of the network is affected just the same. Here is another journal entry offering a novel perspective of myself, which reveals a personal history where I observed my own and very particular aspect of my individual section of the network in close-up. Until then, I had been completely unaware of it. It showed me a comprehensive blueprint of who and what I was and am. This single experience happened on two consecutive days and, to me at least, it shows there is consistency within non-physical reality. Until very recently, I have hardly ever tried meditation lying down on my back, for the simple reason that it is just too easy to fall asleep. One afternoon, when resting on my bed, I noticed how quickly I was able to sink into a very deep surrendered state, entering a kind of trance, without actually falling asleep. During this trance state I was acutely aware of having totally surrendered to the presence of love, which had been with me all day since getting up in the morning. This underlying aspect of reality has been with me for a while now, which I often perceive as an actual presence and which I refer to as my ‘Silent Companion’. This will be examined more closely later. During my ‘lying down’ meditation on 7 May 2012, this feeling was very intense, almost like an ‘In Love’-type sensation, but on a much higher and more elevated level. It was a feeling that appeared to have no bounds. Eventually I drifted into a deep and wholesome slumber. When I woke up two hours later, I had a very painful strained and stiff neck, having rested awkwardly in a twisted position. I was unable to move my head in any direction without pain. This totally overshadowed and finally obliterated any of the sublime memories of my afternoon nap. To take my mind off the discomfort, I tried to get into the least painful position in my chair and then started browsing on my iPad for reports on near death Experiences found on various websites. I searched under the keyword ‘cities’ in order to see if I could find reports that would confirm, or were close to, my own experiences. Although some of the reports were sketchily written, they nevertheless catapulted my illustrator mindset into action and supplied sublime inner visions, which allowed me to flesh out the scant description. Very soon, in my mind’s eye, every scene described, however sketchy, was turned into vivid landscapes and sceneries that were begging to be manifested on my computer screen as attractive images. But I was tired and, taking a couple of strong painkillers, I decided to call it a day. No sooner had I dropped off to sleep when, in my dream, I was surrounded by the landscapes I had imagined so vividly only minutes before. But this was not all. It gradually dawned on me that this was not an ordinary dream, but a lucid one. The jolt of this realisation brought instant clarity. I had an Out-of-Body experience where I suddenly saw myself as I had never seen my body before – if I can call it a body, because what I perceived was a large stretched-out tapestry in front of my vision that I identified as the ‘totality of myself’ and what I consisted of. It unveiled why and how I had turned into what I was, including all the unexplored potentials that were still to be realised. It was radiating out from a centre with many other centres on the peripheries, which in themselves formed mini-centres from which in turn other patterns radiated out and connected with intricate and detailed designs like an elaborately crafted quilt. I was no longer the physical bag made out of muscle tissue and bones, but a living organism made out of a complex and multi-layered system of energy, which configured itself into a fascinating conglomeration of radiant beauty and strangely symmetric perfection. Every detail of this was a work of art that nature had created around that awareness, which called itself ‘me’, I now recognised because it was laid out in front of me as a fascinating design of complex patterns. ‘I’ had become a system rather than a person. ‘I’ was a work of engineering and crafting, with each constituent part having evolved and refined over time as a result of varied interactions with the environment and other similar systems like mine. I was a complex machine made out of millions of finely tuned parts so it could function as a intricate unit and tie as smoothly and with as little friction as possible into a much bigger machine which stretched from horizon to horizon in three dimensions, filling all space as far as the eye could see. There were darker and lighter patches, exuberant ones and fillers, areas that were not clearly defined or developed, but it was all needed to complete the whole. When moving further away I found, to my utter amazement, that I was connected to other equally beautiful patterns made out of the same stuff, marvellously intricate and unique in their configurations, which in turn were connected to others, until the whole creation of nature’s magnificence came into view as a cosmic net of astounding proportions. But there was more. This current aspect of the tapestry of mine was not the only one. My attention switched easily to another layer of existence, which from our temporal viewpoint could be interpreted as a past life, but this too was a relevant aspect of the whole; when I zoomed in, I found myself no longer on this familiar planet of ours. My attention was suddenly located on an alien world, and not just in the form of a single life there, but many, and each one completely different from the other. New identities, new manifestations formed around it, and surprising connections and very unusual experiences. Each detail was simply another part of this gigantic tapestry that was me. In one such life, I was wearing strange garments and handling a mysterious rock. The effect of holding the rock for any length of time was that it rendered me invisible, although only briefly. Then my attention shifted to another scene. This time war was tearing civilisations apart in another life so strange and alien I was struggling to put it into any context at all. Throughout all of this, one thing was absolutely certain, it was the same me, my essential feeling of self – my ‘Jurgen-ness’ – was consistent, except that I was always ‘dressed’ in another life, in other appearances and in an alien distant world with its alien environments and customs. Another scene appeared the moment my eyes were drawn, not far from this centre into a neighbouring one. This time I was a geologist, explorer, or perhaps a miner, and part of a group of six people. We had entered a gigantic iceberg or soft crystal via a massive cave. The inside was lit by a mellow light emitted by the crystal itself. Our group split up and started working on various parts of the cave. Buried just beneath the surface of the soft crystal rock were various changing hues of light. By carefully scraping the surface, living ‘images’ emerged. That is the nearest I can reference it, because there is nothing within my present vocabulary that is able to accurately describe what I saw, what the exact nature of these 3D images were or their purpose. We appeared to be mining for life forms which totally defied anything I had ever known and yet it made complete sense. All of this was happening within my being as an infinite self, the quintessence of my ‘Jurgen-ness’ tapestry, which in its essence was vast and intimately connected to something vaster still. This was also me the moment I perceived the whole and then I understood why love and compassion was such a natural linking aspect towards all these life forms I was a connected part of. Looking at myself in this context, I was both insignificant and humble, while at the same time awesome and majestic. It was when I became aware of this greater ‘me’ that I was, that another dimension opened and the light came rushing in, or should I say the light came rushing out? I had seen manifestation and now I became aware of the brilliant essence that manifested it. It had been there while I was observing and studying it and had been subtly tugging at me, to prise me off my fascination with its lower aspect, as if to say, ‘Come on, let’s go, this is not the true reality of what you are.’ Then I was consumed by a billowing cloud of light, gone or perhaps absorbed, I could not tell. A moment later, I became aware of my physical body here in physical reality needing the bathroom. I opened my eyes, sat up on the edge of the bed and instantly felt the sharp pain in my neck. I moved my hand across it. My hand was a curious object, a divine hand that felt unattached, made of light, and as I touched my physical skin, the pain dissolved. I stood up and moved my head slowly from side to side, then in a circular motion. There was no pain, but there was also not me as a physical body. The one that had risen from the bed and wanted to go to the bathroom was an unlimited source of light, a nebula of light or perhaps a massive sun, so great that it contained the whole universe. It was light from the fine strands of its hair to the tips of its toes, in this flesh. My Consciousness had changed very little from where I had been only moments earlier. I was still just as lucid in an awareness that stretched everywhere and left no atom in this vast universe of mine untouched. Wherever I directed my attention a great wave of incredible love rolled towards it and illuminated the spot surrounding it. In one moment, I understood what real blessing means and the incredible healing power of love. I thought of various places on Earth and my attention would roll towards it like a juggernaut of light and spread light for miles around. With a jolt I realised that I was who I was meant to be all my life, and that from now on I would be unable to be anything else. After I came back from the bathroom, I went back to bed and sank into a deep and wholesome sleep. When I woke up I was fully back in my body, my old self completely restored and plunged back into its accustomed state of unawareness, the one that was trying, day by day, to incorporate a deeper knowledge in its life, yet was only able, despite all its valiant efforts, to carry a faint reflection of its bigger self. I was reduced back into mundane existence, all the wonders of my radiant self withdrawn from this modest physical heap of my body. Was it all a dream? All the tangible evidence that I had brought back was that the pain in my neck had gone for good, but I was my old and ordinary self again. 8 May 2012 HomesickforaLost Planet Although the following experience no longer took place on the super-dimensional level, it follows on from the one I had the day before. It is rare that I visit the same place so quickly in succession. I imagine it was because of the potency of the experience the night before, in which I described being an inhabitant of an alien planet. Here I was again, fully lucid with full recall, not of the experience from the previous day but of the actual historic event, unearthed from the mists of time and another place in our galaxy. As a matter of established protocol, lucidity is automatically tested and almost instinctively converted into a state of full reality awareness, where lucid dream elements or fantasy overlays and projections are automatically dismantled. Following this protocol the surroundings had not changed. I had total recall by actually being on that planet again and began noting mentally the things that were happening around me in as much detail as possible. There were too many to remember them all or their inner substance, mainly because they were bizarre, with little that could be related in any way to our known world. This makes it a tremendous challenge; hard to remember the finer points and harder still to put into words. However, a couple stood out. In the previous experience, I was seeing myself handling the mineral, here I was actually mining it. I had total recall of being part of a mining operation that actually sourced this strange type of mineral that had the side effect of rendering people temporarily invisible if they came into physical contact with it. When the effect subsided the body was restored to normal. It was also used for healing, but its main application was in engineering, because of its ability to dissolve inorganic matter completely without leaving behind any waste. I observed lots of other unique aspects of this planet. The civilisation was clearly highly advanced. There was a powerful sense of community, with no conflict among the people; all efforts and energies were used to promote science, the arts and culture to create a paradisiacal environment based on harmony, cooperation and solidarity. I felt a powerful connection with the people and every aspect of this world. It had been my home planet at one stage and I felt a powerfully strong attachment. Then the life sequences on this planet came to an end; but now, finally, after millennia had passed, I visited the planet again. I remember a long, enjoyable journey through space, at first following an Earth satellite, then travelling through space and beautiful nebula, past suns and stars until I eventually arrived on my home planet. This time it was an ice desert. There were no people but it was still beautiful. It was covered in snow and beautiful crystals, some looking like flowers, arranged in intricate fractal tapestries, all glistening in stunning glory under a bright sun. Suddenly I became extremely sad as I clearly identified it as my home planet that had been deserted and all my people had gone. I knew then I had lost my home forever and I would never return. When I got up the next morning I was extremely depressed. When I made my tea the tears streamed down my face and I was glad that nobody saw me. The feeling of homesickness was overwhelming, so powerful that I sank deeper into depression. I tried to meditate, but was unable; the sadness was almost unbearable. My wife and I have frequently joked, when watching the news on television, that we couldn’t understand what we were doing on this planet, where most events reported were dictated by a level of clear insanity. Even when I was a young child, my older brother used to tease me, telling me I was not from here and that I was living on another planet. As a child I would never take any of this seriously – even then I was a rational guy. Later on, when they happened, I kept all my Out-of-Body experiences a secret and not even my closest friends knew about them. This particular morning I found myself rationalising the experience in order to dispel the sadness and come to grips with my depression. After all, although lucid, it could still be seen in psychological and analytical terms. I figured a rational explanation would serve best, that the home planet represented my attachments to this world and that in order to progress to a higher level, I would have to let go of them. But hard as I tried, all this felt hollow and it didn’t do anything to dispel my pain of loss and great sadness. I didn’t even fully realise how powerful my emotions were until later in the morning when Julia asked what was wrong with me and why I looked so down. It was only then that I finally broke down in tears. My sobbing stopped me from speaking and explaining; I wouldn’t have known where to start anyway. Fortunately my wife, a psychotherapist and counsellor, was patient and empathic and waited until I was ready to talk. I began by confessing my ‘homesickness’ and that I was unable to shake off the powerful feeling. Having emigrated from my homeland of Germany, homesickness could easily be understood. Then I gave her the whole story. Naturally, this is the kind of irrational story you cannot easily share with other people for obvious reasons. But when talking to my wife about it we considered another aspect. She, from a psychoanalytical perspective, pointed out that I had left my home country nearly forty years ago when we settled in England, that I had also left all my family and friends behind, some of whom had since died. She drew attention to the fact that in all these years she had known me I had rarely showed any signs of emotion or loss. She pointed out that my prolonged meditation might account for my bringing these deep-rooted feelings back to the surface. She also drew my attention to another fact: that I was retiring in a few months’ time and that, with it, I would also leave the most vivid aspects of my life behind me, that of having raised a family with children who were now adults with families of their own. It is only natural to feel such a powerful sense of loss. My ‘dream’, as she referred to it, had a very powerful and rational psychological explanation. Nevertheless, she felt sympathetic too towards my other feelings, as she too sometimes feels out of place here herself and had a subtle awareness that felt similar to mine. Whatever the interpretation, although the feeling of sadness had eased during the day, I was not fully convinced by the analytical take on my experience. However, I will have to accept that Consciousness is unfathomable and may have many parallels. The things we experience are reflected on many layers of reality, which simply demonstrate how truly great and mysterious Consciousness is. But whenever I think of the event, the feeling of ‘homesickness’ still comes back to me even now. 10 September 2011 Thought Cities Not having had any jobs for several weeks I spent most of the morning trying to drum up work, phoning my agent, making a list of clients to contact and thinking about ways of covering the financial shortfall. I was concerned, but only superficially so. I finally dropped the worries like an unnecessary distraction. Ever since getting out of bed in the morning I had been carried by a persistent joy. I felt this was what I should be paying attention to and it made everything else appear superficial. Now, as soon as I focused on this undercurrent of joy, it blossomed and filled me with firm knowing and reassurance that everything was OK as it was. It also ignited in me a powerful urge to find its source. I took my wife to her counselling job and then went to the supermarket to do some shopping. Standing in the queue at the checkout I felt the urge to get home quickly and enter my meditation room. As soon as I felt my impatience an inner voice told me to relax and let go. At that moment everything became still around me. All urges and needs dissipated. I felt an incredible calm, as if I had been taken out of time and placed into a no-time zone, where this concept of need no longer existed. I noticed that all the people in the queue in front of me appeared to have been similarly taken out of their time zones. They were chatting to each other and the cashier was friendly and conversed with the customers as if they were old friends. Suddenly I felt a powerful sense of belonging and incredibly privileged to be part of this human community around me. Here we all were, living in the moment, paying for our goods and being part of an intangible yet very present consciousness. Every person appeared filled to the brim with this present awareness. I felt an overwhelming love for everyone and tried to contain the deep rapture I felt rising within, which had been building up all morning. I was on the verge of letting it overwhelm me and the only way I could stop it was by opening the heart gates and letting the energy flow into the environment around me. When taking my shopping to the car I felt I was already home, at a more authentic home than my own house. The serenity surrounding me was tangible. Everywhere I looked I felt a buzzing spiritual energy, every particle was alive, everything my senses touched had a powerful presence, infused with intelligence and primordial consciousness and being. When I arrived home I unloaded my shopping and stored it away. Every movement, every hand gesture was performed through me by a presence which knew of an underlying significance I had never before considered. I felt an incredible gratitude that I had a house, food to eat and a place I could retire into and express my thanks in meditation. I went into my room and sat down. Closing my eyes, the light was already there, a powerful manifestation of the stillness which had carried over into my meditation. I passively watched and waited to see how it would unfold as I surrendered to the light. All around I saw incredible vistas of luminous lands emerging, heavenly planes opening up in unexpected complexities, richness and varieties. I was swept along by a sublime sound current, which did not arrive via my ears, but from an infinite realm far beyond the land I was travelling through, beckoning me to follow. It was a haunting melody, enticing me to let go and transfer control to a force I knew had my best interest at heart. I followed obligingly, being swept away over wide-open fields, which led into a vast delta landscape made out of a repeating paisley pattern, all covered in exotic plants of unknown species. I then took a side-turn, following the melody into an open valley, carved out by a river flowing through it. The valley was hemmed in by steep crystalline rocks glistening in an abundance of precious stone. Big boulders, broken away from the rock, studding the landscape like enormous jewels. I saw living emanations, protuberances coming from the rocks and reaching out towards me as I passed by. I was attracted closer to the river's surface because its enchanting sound was irresistible and mixed so perfectly with the melody I had been following. Eventually the stream branched out into many arms, filtering into a vast delta, carving out tiny enclaves and so creating a giant tapestry of intricate designs. The type of vegetation on the little islands changed from exotic flowers to clusters of flowering trees of a completely new and alien species, forever changing and evolving into new varieties. None of this felt strange and despite its unusual appearance I knew I was on home ground, feeling a persistent and continuous sense of welcoming. As I progressed the light increased. I felt as if the light was descending on me from above, like a great loving hand bestowing a blessing. A deep sigh rose up from my heart as I received a shower of rainbow sparks raining down from a space of light above me. The touch was most gentle but increased until I was encased by a luminous light, which let me know the reason why I was here. I recognised it as the same light I had felt in the morning when I woke up, before I spoiled it by considering how to earn my worldly keep. It was here telling me of a superior reality and reminding me that whatever I had considered to be important were simply thoughts with no material relevance or substance and that, without me concerning myself, everything had already been taken care of. Where I was now was my destiny. Now there was peace and I felt it spreading from this point throughout the whole region, leaving behind a quintessential sense of Being. I then became aware of my position in my meditation chair. I felt a heavy but not unpleasant pressure on the top of my head and when I opened my eyes the room felt strangely lit up. Light was all around me. I closed my eyes again and was instantly back home where I belonged, at the heart of all. Suddenly I remembered why I was here and the thought like a command came to me, ‘Take me to the cities.’ Instinctively I was instantly pointed towards a vast horizon. A gigantic lotus flower emerged in the distance, rising out of the glorious mists, which was the diffused light of an unworldly dawn. It was a city designed in the shape of a lotus blossom, symmetrical petals arranged around a luminous centre. Around the outer perimeters were countless morphing shapes of light and millions of sparks buzzing around like bees trying to extract nectar from a blossom. These were all people, individual souls. Each petal had distinct features and colours that percolated through different shades. I could have easily joined the swarm to discover more about the individual souls and the inner sanctuaries of their dwelling places. Instead I asked to be taken to another city and was instantly directed towards a huge swamp. The edges were lined with exotic trees, behind which a tropical rainforest covered everything as far as I could see. The light had a pink tinge like worldly evening light, but for evening it was much too bright. The waters were crystal clear and I could see another world emerging beneath its calm surface. Then, ahead, I saw a glow surrounding huge organic egg-shaped structures growing out of the ground and resting on an ornate island inside a lagoon, like the nesting ground of a giant dragon. The island was covered with different clusters of spheres around a larger centre, hundreds of domes of different shapes, colours and designs, yet all belonging together, harmonising and complementing each other. This too was a city, a vast information centre. Each large dome (the smallest being at least hundreds of metres in height) formed a vestibule of knowledge and was frequented by swirling lights. Each part of the city was connected via enormous arched tunnels. I was amazed that I could see the inside and the outside simultaneously as well as being able to connect instantly with the minds that populated this living structure, getting an intimate understanding of why they were here. Their commerce was knowledge, socialising, benefitting from each other’s experience and presence and merging Consciousness, souls and minds. My vision began to expand. I suddenly could see the whole world. I was no longer located in one place but my mind encompassed everything at once, the vastness as well as its detail. My mind had transcended its barriers. I saw and understood everything about this world I was a visitor of. There are more and bigger cities here than on our physical planet. We are a social species that fulfils nature’s purpose best by working with and for each other. The cities here are luminous regions with sublime architecture, generally radiating out from a great centre, which sometimes features a temple. They can be the dwelling places of highly unfolded individuals, who are in constant exchange with the unity Consciousness on the highest level. Their occupants are the most sublime and enlightened individuals, who reside in a permanent state of absolute realisation of Consciousness, having become the living conduits for it to disperse its blessings and power. The many palaces and buildings are, in a way, like reflections of the people who manifested them. Their design and appearance give an indication of the occupiers’ personality and characteristics. They are a reflection of their spiritual power and realisation as well as their individuality. When a visitor enters one of these central temples through the main entrances they will instantly become beneficiaries of the energies focused inside and be made aware of the sublime atmosphere in store for them. Entering such a temple through the entrance hallway with its rich pattern sees light seeping through every crevice and indentation, through the patterns of the arched walls and ceilings. The light seems intent on unloading its powerful force, pre-empting some of the blessing to be bestowed upon the visitor before they enter the inner shrine. Inside the main sanctuary the glory of the edifice becomes overwhelming and the visitor will have to be well prepared. Shafts of light break through window openings in the ceilings and walls and focus on the central point within the temples. On entry the sounds to be heard here can be anything from truly angelic choirs, to sublime celestial songs. I often wondered who or what produces these, but it is simply a natural vibrational link from the visitor to the sympathetic part of the cosmic database, which is triggered by the atmosphere and then released upon the visitors. Sometime the whole hall may fill up with hundreds or even thousands of welcoming thought forms of angels or human beings, attracted and generated by goodwill and abundant love to welcome the worshipper as if they were the most important Being in the whole universe. These types of manifestation are not restricted to such temples and can happen anywhere. Once the visitor is tuned in and their heart surrendered and opened up they will be greeted by a presence which may be just that, a powerful presence or an awareness of a Being without any visible form. Alternatively it may manifest as a sphere of liquid light or as a radiant Being with refined human or angelic features or Godlike appearance. The worshipper's powerful devotion may even attract the essence of their chosen avatar of their religion, which will manifest right in front of them, purified in the form they always imagined as a pure conduit of the highest Consciousness, streaming in and filling the divine vessel from beyond. At the point of contact the worshipper may be transformed and the temple itself may take on a different appearance. They may be swept away and transported by their avatar into a Consciousness unknown. Most people meeting these exalted beings no doubt will behold them as God, and will likely be overwhelmed by its presence. They may unite with its ecstasy. People who have come this far and have only once entered such places of power will never see their earthly place of worship with the same eyes again, whether it is a cathedral, a church, a mosque or a temple. Celestial city centres don’t have to have such edifices as their central landmark, although they frequently do. They can also be vast open spaces with fountains or monuments, buildings where counsellors reside, a place of aesthetic beauty or art, a lake, a precious jewel, an open playing field or a concert hall; but it is usually a landmark of a sort which reflects the character of a community and its citizens. Here, more than anywhere else, prevailing atmospheres attract people of similar inclination and leanings and everything is harmonised in accordance to their energies. There is no decision-making involved of where to live, only the instinctive pull of sympathetic forces. The moment we move further away and take a broader view, we see that everything is arranged in the most beautiful cosmic tapestry, where every aspect of our human nature is catered for to perfection and arranged according to the principles of cosmic order and synchronicity. There are more cities in these higher dimensional realms than there are on Earth. Cities differ enormously in character and design. Some follow a layout of vast symmetric pattern, like a lotus flower or a mandala. On the peripheries of these cities are many other wondrous buildings created by inhabitants who are nourished by the aspects or the prevailing energies, which help them to unfold and explore their own individuality. Because each individual’s core aspect is unique we will find that every city in these immense regions will be totally different, attracting into itself unique mentalities, stimulating development and progress along the chosen lines to the highest states of accomplishment. In the ‘suburbs’ of these cities we will find individuals residing at various stages of spiritual or intellectual unfoldment, who seek their nourishment according to their states of Consciousness and individual needs. Every building they occupy is a close representation of their character, but because the neighbourhoods are made out of people who are attracted by likes and preferences, we will find the styles of their dwellings are always in harmony and keeping with each other, even though the appearance of each may be oddly unique. It is the atmosphere expressed in colour and the different variations of the same original determining shape which gives them harmony. But people don’t just gravitate together in large cities. There are many much smaller communities, just as there are here on Earth and there are even very solitary dwellings. There are hermits tucked away in unassuming huts. Places may be very modest or inhabitants may not even choose any abode at all, as the prevailing atmosphere is one of being ‘home’, truly and finally being home, regardless of which part of these infinite realms of the super-dimensional territories you may visit. There is no limit to the choice of places where inhabitants may choose to pitch their dwellings, from spectacular residences carved into crystal caves, to floating islands in the air, in the oceans or palaces beneath it. Anything that can be imagined will find its perfect manifestation within this infinite world of the mind where the most sublime thoughts turn into tangible actual reality in super-Conscious awareness. Some inhabitants draw no attention at all and live humbly and modestly their meek lives, directing their attention and love towards more needy places or in the opposite direction, the higher realms, while claiming no benefit for themselves. Sometimes their only purpose is simply to surrender to the creative currents and observe passively the manifestations nature provides along the way. Interests and groups are as varied as they are on Earth. Some are the cosmic travellers, who journey endlessly and tirelessly from town to town, land to land, from planet to planet and universe to universe. They spend their eternities travelling from place to place and enjoy the idiosyncratic lives of the different and diverse cultures that can be found. They are the messengers, the communicators and troubadours, bearing witness of other cultures and different realities. They stage life events, projecting their massive thought forms into the public spaces to give testimony of their adventures. You don’t have to travel far, though, to encounter strange new realities, and most former earthly dwellers are content to assemble their families around themselves into small communities; others gather in groups of affiliated interests, celebrating their affinities as well as their differences. Distances are often covered by instant projection, because the mind embraces all. We can consider ourselves at any place by a shift of identification. Alternatively we can drift, fly, walk or simply surrender ourselves to any of the many energy sub-currents that pass through the regions like the wind or ride on the sound currents to be carried off into worlds unknown, or even into the fold of our very origin if our heart compels us to. I had previously learned, when my guide Philip introduced me to this region by showing the work of an artist, how I simply merged into the object of attention and how easy it was to acquire new knowledge and experiences – simply by looking at pictures, for example. We can embark on specific journeys in similar ways. Equally this type of focusing applies to everything else: works of art, music, a pattern, a thought, design or a colour, a feeling, the sound of a brook or the song of a bird. Everything, when focused on, can open a transporting vessel into its inner mystery, because everything is connected to us very intimately. We can become what we see. We can enter a plant and follow its growth, enter its life stream and watch it evolve. This is also the way the Akashic Records are accessed here, more directly and more simply than on the Astral regions below. A simple query, thought or clue can instantly connect us to any historic event or any one of our own past lives by accessing our personal pattern. In my book The Ten Minute Moment I outlined a meditation which utilises this principle of acquiring the ‘feeling tone’ of a word such as ‘love’, ‘unity’ or ‘strength’ and meditating on it to reach a higher state of Consciousness. Once we have broken all our lower mental boundaries we will enter the limitless regions of the higher mind. All these are our potentials, the blueprint for our evolutional path. Whether we will access these powers at a future point in our evolution, while still attached to a physical body, will depend on whether we manage to survive as a species. We are just young and have barely taken advantage of our great inner potential. At least on our physical level we are still blind, groping around in the dark, doing harm to each other out of ignorance and blindness towards our inner connection. I know this will change in time. We are only just beginning. Other species live in this reality on other planets and some have succeeded. We have the potential power to succeed as well, the moment we throw off our ignorance and blindness. 8 October 2008 The Hallof Stillness Meditation, which focuses attention away from the outside world of our senses, away from our conditioned mind and thoughts, is the only way to break away from the old and embrace new and unknown realms of Consciousness. Meditation is my daily bread, as important as the food I eat to sustain my body. I started meditation at 6:20 am. After one hour I experienced a series of visions and dream-like images and entered a dream state, but almost instantly became aware in it. In order to establish full waking awareness, I focused attention on the ground right in front of me. Normally it is by focusing on the minute detail that brings full waking awareness about, but what I found in front of me was a continuously changing psychedelic pattern, which made it impossible to pick out any specific detail. When I looked around behind me, I noticed that the pattern extended to the horizon, but ten metres in front of me it fell off over a steep precipice. Beyond lay a large mirror-like ocean with colourful sparkling ripples. Just as strange as the scenery was the atmosphere, which was nothing like anything I had experienced before. There are feelings which we recognise because we have a range of these feelings recurring throughout our lives, but this was new. It felt as if my perceptual feeling channel had just opened up a new spectrum of feeling experience with no precedence, a new entry into a catalogue of sublimity, a first and unrealised discovery of a new kind of sensibility. I could immediately feel the call from the Singularity of Consciousness and instantly and willingly surrendered to this new sensation. I allowed myself to be picked up and lifted into the air and began to notice that this feeling had motion and colour; green and pink mists intermingled and engulfed me, gently spinning me around in a transcendental pleasurable dance. With this I entered a new kind of elation, which gently carried me away. The experience came to an abrupt end when I found myself in front of a tall building, though the bliss still floated within me. I was still acutely aware of this rarefied feeling with its accompanying atmosphere. The building, though, had a strangely familiar tone, despite being elaborate and made out of a multitude of intrinsic patterns that would have been impossible to memorise. Nevertheless, there was a strange recognition as if I had seen it before. As I approached the door I felt compelled to refocus my attention to achieve greater clarity. I didn’t want this to fall short in terms of its reality. Full clarity came easily, but when I pushed against the door I passed straight through it as if it was made of air. Before me was a grand hall like a holy temple, massive columns rising on either side before extending into many archways. The architecture inside, as on its outside, was intricately patterned, but changing subtly as if the patterns had many layers that morphed and merged to reveal new permutations. All this was just in order to support a holy silence within these walls, a stillness that was unfathomable. The Topographyof Heaven Maybe now is the time to put the pieces in place and consider the conditions of these incredible states and Heaven worlds we are actually dealing with. Why do we hear so little of Heaven and only in relation to religion via the ancient stories? If it is at the heart of all religions, why are there so few testimonies? We have already learned that most people reporting from Heaven were mostly describing Heavens in relation to their material existence – the Astral Heavens. Why are these exalted states so shrouded in mysteries? The simple answer lies in the fact that our attention is mostly tuned into our everyday external world, which we consider to be separate from us and which we are set apart from. Our whole self-concept and conditioning is built around the perception of separation. This sense of alienation is what our state of mind is rooted in. The most important thing to bear in mind is the fact that such separation between the ‘me’ and a ‘perceived outside’ world no longer exists in the Heaven state, which creates the intimate experience that we are no longer anywhere else other than home. The ‘homecoming’ aspect is frequently reported by near death experiencers and we notice the feeling of homecoming becomes stronger the more closely our awareness moves towards its inner Source. It is for this reason that I feel more comfortable in referring to this state of Consciousness as Home Consciousness, because this is where we belong and where our roots are. We no longer regard our surroundings as an outside world, although we may experience it as such. The actual feeling is that there is no longer a separation between the perceiver and what is perceived. We are simply everywhere. We are truly at home wherever our attention is focused. People who have realised this state of oneness after years of meditation will also bring this experience into their physical life, where it is closely integrated with their day-to-day living. The second most important thing that we will have to accept is that everything experienced in this Heaven state is done in a heightened and vastly expanded state of Consciousness. It is a rare state mainly because it will only be experienced once we have met the criteria already described in the beginning; the dissolution of the ego and personal identification that has always separated us from the world and our fellow human beings. Even when people experience this rare condition, it is this altered and expanded state of Consciousness that makes its reporting such a challenge. It is far easier to keep it locked inside the silent heart than mining for words in order to give it credence and do it justice. Using words as a media for reporting appears almost brutal, because the experience takes place in realms where words are never needed. Language has evolved as a means of physical communication and its terminology revolves around the material world, its management and the abstract, logical manipulation of ideas and constructs. Beyond that we have evolved poetry, often employing metaphors to paint sentiments and feelings. Sadly it is only words we have to communicate with on our level, and perhaps only poets should wield them with humility and have them delivered by the voices of the best sopranos. We also need to liberate ourselves from the idea that this is a state of Consciousness reserved for some spiritual elite. Quite the opposite: it is humility and surrender that will grant the humblest of people residency here if their heart is pure, committed to authenticity and surrendered to its Source. My report is from my viewpoint. I have seen what I have seen and I am sure anybody else’s reporting will be quite different, because each focal point of Consciousness is unique, radiating from a different part of the universal web. There are infinitely different anchor points of experience and it is just possible that some individuals may experience this state more as a kind of lucid dream in which they have surrounded themselves with a complete fantasy world of their own making, drawing everything towards them that they consider their ultimate in joy and happiness. Not all experience this level of Consciousness in any objective or consensual reality. C.W. Leadbeater in his reports of the ‘Devachanic Plane’ (1896) pointed out that people assemble their families here in an ideal life they had never found on earth. They build an ideal existence, although the border lines are frequently blurred as the people we draw to us in our personal Heaven are drawn from and manifested via their own soul energy and are the real individuals we have known on earth. It is our love that draws them towards us and manifests their core energy. This just shows how truly diverse the Heaven states can be. I am unsure whether everybody experiences the cognitive aspect or even the visual ones that I am describing here and I can only be sure of what I saw and experienced myself. I find it difficult to subscribe to the concept of dividing these states into levels stacked in some hierarchy, because to me the levels of experience are simply infinite and also very dynamic. It could be that these celestial realities are perceived differently by each person and past experiencers might have thought of ways of conveying it via a graphic understanding, which has then turned into a dogma of sorts where we can count the levels in numbers, stack them on top of each other and divide them into clear categories. Anybody who has actually visited these states will know that this is a lost cause and will no longer accept such arbitrary constructs. Each person will experience these realities completely differently depending on their temperament, their individual makeup, their interests and their stage of personal evolution. As best as I can, I would like to describe aspects I consider to be objective, forming the fundamental structure of these sublime dimensions. For me it was like a powerful awakening that catapulted me into a state of clarity which simply rendered my heavy and clumsy physical brain activity dull by comparison. It became immediately apparent how unquestioningly we hold our limited materialistic knowledge in such high esteem, by insisting that it is the brain alone that is the master of all our humanness and knowledge and the machine that generates the very Consciousness with which these observations were conducted. I can see how one day we may squirm with utter embarrassment once we appreciate the real power and supremacy of our greater Consciousness compared to which our brain is no more than a mere attachment, like an antenna, in the same way as we now squirm that mankind ever considered the Earth to be flat! Compared to everyday brain activity, thinking here no longer exists as a linear process, but is replaced by instant knowledge or parallel processing, following several lines at once, which is expressed in ‘Knowing’. Thoughts are no longer abstracted verbal sequences but three-dimensional multimedia entities that display all the information at once via their shape and self-expression in animation, sound and colour, attached to which is an instant revelation of all its content. These thought forms are dynamically moulded via our interaction and respond to our individual makeup to grant us the best possible and most efficient access to their essence. In that sense they become dynamic entities with a life of their own, sustained and powered by an intrinsic intelligence. The mystery is whether we are the creators or the receivers of thoughts. The answer is both, because on these levels the observer and the observed merge into one. We become our thoughts and the thoughts become us; that is the only way to understand the instant revelation of its content. AWorldUnlike Anything KnowntoMan The first idea we will have to rid ourselves of is the widely held belief that Heaven has anything at all to do with clouds, which is the way Heaven is often depicted and hence imagined by many people. Clouds simply have nothing to do with higher states of Consciousness or the topography of it. Home Consciousness is neither in the sky nor in space, and bringing clouds into it may just be an attempt to fill in blanks or simply a demonstration of ignorance. The closest resemblance to clouds I found are unmanifested swaths of finer matter, which can swirl around like nebulas or mists in multicoloured bands, but everything else in these regions is as solid as anything here on Earth or on the Astral levels. This does not mean there are no environments that are less solid, in the same way as we on Earth find environments where morning mists obscure the solid features of the land around us or the nebulas which fill our outer space, but here on the higher levels there is the extra aspect of being able to merge with such features and experience their intrinsic nature first-hand. Whatever picture or representation of Heaven we may have seen depicted, we can be certain that any such representations are poorly imagined, because any artist, including myself, is going to under-represent the incredible impact these sceneries have on the soul on multiple levels. The most striking aspect is how grand everything appears compared to our own earthly structures, how truly awe-inspiring some of the architecture or features of the landscape are. If there was not a pervading atmosphere of bliss and sublime joy, by their pure external appearance some of these grand designs might be seen as overwhelming in their extravagance and the incredible complexities of their inner and outer structures at play. Using words such as majestic, wondrous, enigmatic, mysterious, simply will never convey the actual experience of it. Sometimes it is just the sheer scale of some of the buildings and features, the intricacies of the textures at play, the light they cast into the environment and the interaction with it, which creates experiences that are simply unknown until we set foot into these lands. On Earth the most talented artists and designers may be able to conjure up the most astounding images or film-set designs, but they will not be able to impart the bliss or the prevailing intimacy with the environment these people will feel at every step of the way. Talking about the vast expanses of the gardens and parks, which in themselves will put you in a state of awe, is completely meaningless unless it is experienced not only in a state of total bliss but on a very intimate level as well. This dispels the feeling that you are in any way separate from the experience every step of the way in these incredible sceneries. This is so hard to grasp, even where their designs of our environments follow some relatively basic and traditional formats, like an ancient or classical city perhaps; but without becoming intimately connected with the essential textures in a constantly evolving state of rapture, we will only have an external image or movie scene, not an experience. For example, when seeing evolving epic designs or thought forms, made out of three-dimensional changing pattern that can billow up high into the sky and at once herald the arrival or appearance of some cosmic event or influence from another higher dimension, we would be hard pressed to find any equivalent of this in our known world. When walking along riverbanks with ‘vegetation’ made out of complex and morphing pattern, ‘emitted’ rather than growing out of the ground and rocks along the riverbank, we experience something completely new and unique. I have searched in vain for graphic software that could in any way enable me to represent the incredible ‘happenings’ on my walk, which changes the scenery around me moment by moment, not giving me time to hang on to anything so that I might enjoy it or be absorbed by it, the changes happening continuously and each change appearing more glorious than the one just passed, travelling over vast swaths of land resembling intricate paisley pattern, forever changing, bringing forth an infinite variety of vegetation not seen before on any of the lower regions, not even the Astral ones, let alone Earth. Wherever we are we may be at the birthplace where nature invents the next generation of physical manifestation, either for our Earth or perhaps for a distant alien planet millions of light years away from us, perhaps in a different galaxy or another part of our universe … or they could simply be the spontaneous, playful expression of the omnipresent creative forces surrounding us. How are we ever going to know or find out what the mysterious powers are that create such abundance and unfathomable splendour? How can we possibly deal with the immensity of potential manifestation? How can we begin to imagine the true vastness of creation when just a tiny section we find is already close to infinity in its wonder and complexity? Perhaps nature is protecting us by throwing a veil of darkness over our minds so that we don’t drown in the exuberance of our senses, which have exploded into realms of incomprehension. Maybe our darkness is a sign of its mercy. We are not forced to ‘endure’ the beauties of such Heavens, we can seek the serenity of calm, the silence of the lake, with equal ease and contemplate our inner peace and stillness without moving an atom in our surroundings. It is easy to imagine that once a soul has left Earth and ventured into the glorious lands, it may forever get captivated by the infinity of possibilities of these unending regions of creation, never to be seen again, never to emerge in any of the physical or Astral worlds. In reality it is only the few, the cosmic travellers, who are willing to risk journeying into the infinite lands of fascination and turbulent attractions, travelling from system to system, embracing and relishing the creations of the great Singularity, knowing that they too are the creators of all these worlds. They are the ones, the most bold, most adventurous spirits who will break all barriers of the great Maya and venture into the infinite vistas of the higher consciousness itself. The Self-Organising Universe There is nothing in the whole universe that does not have this inner life; nothing can exist without it and everything is fed and sustained by the unifying Singularity of Consciousness. Everything we see, hear, feel and think contains it. We can borrow its creativity and construct whole worlds of our own, imbuing it with our own intelligence and unique manifestation while all the time it is the intelligence of Singularity, with its universal databank, which fills even the minutest detail of everything we think, do and create, and nothing can be done without it. We will find that thought forms in these dimensions rule supreme, although I am challenged in defining what forces were at work to create such incredible vistas or how they were manifested. Instinct tells me that the magnificent landscapes with their mind-bending features and textures were simply subject to the same creative forces that made our physical universe spring into existence, though on a scale and level of dynamics which is a multiple power of the diversity of creation here on Earth or even much greater than the power of our own imagination. People postulating that the whole of the afterlife state is simply a projection of one’s mind will be forced to qualify their statement by saying that it is mostly a projection of a universal mind that is beyond comprehension. The question arising continuously when drifting over endless oceans of such diversity, which has no representation at all in our existing world, culture or art, is: Why does all this exist and how does it come into being? Why does it come in shapes, designs and configurations that have no equivalent in our world or even our imagination, nothing that would even remotely represent it in the slightest? Who or what comes up with this? One thing that becomes all too obvious is that everything that exists in our world is originated here in this super-dimensional reality; even if we accept that evolution and natural selections determine Nature’s unfolding, the inner processes are enacted here on these levels and created and acted out in the most sublime form of perfection. It doesn’t matter whether we consider the inventor of an object to be ourselves or Mother Nature herself, it all springs from and is being nurtured by the primordial Source of creation and intelligence, which is Consciousness itself. Consciousness is a continuous cauldron of creation and experimentation, where whole worlds are created in one moment and then collapsed again the next, as a complex interaction of sounds manifesting and feeding back simultaneously in a constant interchange of seemingly intelligent energy, which is simply beyond all grasp. This is Nature at work in its most primordial state, establishing a self-organising universe, creating, testing and evolving in a continuous stream of experimentation where only the most perfect configurations, which remain stable enough, will make it to the next level and eventually into the physical world. Billions of such experiments take place moment by moment, some of which draw on the participation of individualised intelligences, including humans or groups of individualised Consciousness, but the vast excesses are powered by the higher dimensional Mother Nature herself. For everything that exists down here there are millions of different versions. The best way to understand this is by imagining a square room made up out of six mirrors, one covering each side, and in the centre of the room is an object like a daisy, for example, which is reflected over and over again via the mirrors, but each reflection is a different daisy and of the millions perhaps only one or two may evolve to completion, being structured in such a way that it can manifest and survive in physical reality. There is a blueprint or a matrix for everything There is also unimaginable abundance. Everything that exists or has ever existed in any of the other dimensions exists here in its perfected state right at the source in all its permuted manifestations. This is what drives the universal matrix database where the individual manifestations on the lower energy levels are called up from and moulded into the required shapes and forms. Home Consciousness is the hard drive of the universal data bank. The more we are in tune with the creative energy, the more successful our creation. If we intend to manifest an object on the Astral level, it is already in existence here and created dynamically and interactively. All we need to do then is to provide the right channel or attitude for the energy to manifest our intent. That is the reason why it is so hard to manifest on the denser energy levels, because we are mostly cut off from or in disarray with the forces of materialisation. Here we also find complete universes without physical counterparts; infinite varieties where some make it to a parallel physical level, others only to the Astral. Each universe is unique, some small, some infinite. Some are in the process of imminent collapse, others are in the process of birth with only seconds to live, some with all the life forms that go with it. As human beings we only ever see a tiny part of it and I cannot tell much more than these imperfect glimpses I have received; I hope my reporting is a true representation of what I saw, but there is infinitely more than I appreciated and much more that I was unable to grasp at all in the form conventional understanding is accustomed to. Here on Earth, we employ science and mathematics to understand the mysteries behind creation, and by using massive particle accelerators we are trying to smash our way into the deepest mysteries. The fact remains that the core of all existence lies beyond the detection capabilities of our coarse instruments; but it lies in the core of the minds themselves, which create the tools with which we endeavour to unravel the great secret. We could argue that everything in these dimensions is in a state of synaesthesia, where whatever we perceive also exhibits other sensory aspects. For example, shapes and colours have sound components and sounds have colour and shapes that animate to the continuously evolving and changing sound score. Even static objects are vibrating from within with dynamic energy, which adds vibrant life and a powerful element of presence. Thoughts are represented in intricate three-dimensional configuration, where each structural component accurately and unmistakably reveals an underlying sense or aspect of the thought. They can be grasped at once in this way and are experienced rather than seen in a detached way as we are used to when using our brains. Comprehending the inner mechanics of these incredible thought forms is not something we are compelled to do. It is more likely that at the first encounter we may be simply seduced by the awe-inspiring beauty and symmetry of the world surrounding us, without feeling obliged to unravel their inner nature. This is a fluid reality; a world where every thought and concept has manifested shape and every aspect communicates meaning and its inner truth. Every part of the state offers an irresistible invitation to unparalleled adventure and never-ending wonder. Everything we encounter or look at can open a new doorway to unexplored possibilities, where each new option can be subdivided into completely new pathways, ad infinitum with an endless cornucopia of treasures revealed as we wander, fly or meander along. This realm fulfils our potential, creativity and aspiration at the highest level. The same opportunities can happen as we travel through some of the astonishing sceneries, where the slightest shift in Consciousness can transport us into a completely different world. Or we may rest and focus on a stone or a crystal, for example, and our focus may open the inner structure of the crystal and reveal a landscape that carries the same characteristics as the crystal, but now we are in a completely new world altogether. This simply shows that this world is truly and absolutely infinite. Every image we may have formed of Heaven with angels, God, throne, clouds and all the surrounding fantasies are simply a documentation of the feebleness of our earthly minds. I have observed matter at various stages of manifestation, sometimes as light, swathes of clouds or mists, drifting colour transmutations through complex patterns, seas of mirrors sparkling and moving in rainbow colours, ready to form new phenomena unthought-of and never seen before. I have seen them manifesting in subtle landscapes of staggering atmospheres. Above all the grandeur and the beauty of these dimensions we are safely and permanently anchored to filaments of bliss and, at any one point, we can pursue or trace these filaments to their original source. We cannot get lost if we are attached to the ever-present bliss that connects us instantly to the core of our awareness. Or we can allow ourselves to get lost completely as we travel on our pleasure boat of the senses, rocked gently along, in complete surrender or in active participation, always aware that we are on home ground wherever we sail. Whatever we look at or experience we perceive its intimate connection to an intrinsic intelligence and Source. No part can be divorced from it because everything is made from its core building block of light. (Date missing) Inthe Beginningwas the Sound Let us now dwell for a moment on the sound aspect of this world, which appears to be the Source where everything also springs from. How and what generates the sound in the first place is the great mystery, but it is sound and the pattern sound creates with its accompanying wave functions that appears to be the primary aspect of all materialisation. In my professional career as an illustrator, when asked to provide illustrations for a large A3-size book on the cosmos, the editor had asked me to create artwork visualising the Big Bang. Asking the author what it looked like, he told me that nobody knew and that my being an artist I might provide a more visually attractive guess. I felt very concerned about delivering an illustration for a science book that was mostly a guessed fantasy. So a few nights later, I induced an Out-of-Body experience in which I requested to be taken to the Big Bang. Within moments I was placed within a dark and endless void. Then, from four sides, four sounds materialised that interacted with each other, but nothing else happened. There was no Big Bang. Without telling him how I had arrived at the idea, on my return I bounced this sound concept off the author of the book in a telephone conversation – that the universe might have been created as a result of waveforms. The writer, a respected astrophysicist, told me that we would have to stick to the Big Bang model because that was our accepted theory. I mulled it over in my mind and speculated that the four sounds could have led to a feedback loop, similar to what we sometimes hear at pop concerts when the microphone picks up the sound of the speaker and feeds it back. I figured at the start of our universe such a feedback loop might have led to an explosion resulting in a Big Bang. But this was just my amateur speculation. I still wonder whether there could simply have been a series of sound-originated waveforms turning into matter and forming the start of our universe via some kind of chain reaction. But I am only an artist and amateur and a very poor cosmologist and could only report what I actually saw. Generally speaking, everything has a sound component at its root and so has any object, including any thought, which reflects the aesthetic quality and character of the object, driven by the symmetries of their original underlying creative powers. It has long been known that sound creates wave forms which can be made visible, as has been demonstrated for many years in Cymatics. Each sound creates a unique pattern, very distinct from any other sound. On the higher Consciousness level these can be observed in glorious 3D format, where sound not only creates waves but gives colour and structure. Any changes in the sound, the frequency and the pattern is simultaneously expressed in its three-dimensional configuration. We can now clearly see the origin of manifestation. Mystics across all cultures unanimously agree that sound is at the origin of creation and is there permanently every moment to sustain and regenerate it. Sound is equated with Consciousness and this celestial sound is the first aspect of creation. Everything created was brought forward by sound. It is the sound emanating from beyond the absolute regions that manifest the incredible vistas of the heavenly landscapes and all the universes below, including our Earth. The other powerful aspect of this dimension is the prevailing atmosphere or feeling, which can best be represented as an all-present love awareness. It is not in any sense personal or directed love, but an atmosphere of universal and omnipresent love. Disharmony is absent here as this is a characteristic of the lower dimensions brought about by an absence of positive or love energy and the disintegration of synchronistic order. Here, in these higher vistas of Home Consciousness, we literally live in a world of aesthetics and beauty, surrounded by enchanting sounds, propelled by the laws of harmonics, symmetry and balance and, above all, engulfed by the omnipresent and profound joy and love. We quickly discover that love and harmony are part of the driving principles on which the world is manifested, perhaps by a sound or song of love. It is not just the harmony within each object of creation, but also within the fields or community of objects, where things are governed by mutual attraction and synchronise with each other. One thought object may attract another sympathetic thought object simply by proximity, vibrational synchronicity or the placement of attention, until whole clusters are created, which in turn create new super-structures, emitting a whole new harmonic symphony of sounds. We quickly realise that we become witness to a super-principle of creation at work at every level and wherever we focus. In the physical universe this force manifests as the basic energies, creating clusters of galaxies, stars, nebulae and planetary systems. In the natural world, it is at the heart of swarms, colonies of creatures, vegetation and insects, which are drawn together. On these sublime dimensional levels we can see these forces at work in their most transcendental and original form. Whole communities and cities are formed this way, but we can also see how nature organises its own structures on these its core levels. Everything on Earth is intimately connected to a counterpart in these home realms of Consciousness and nothing can exist without this link and connection. People with clairvoyant vision will be able to look at physical objects such as a piece of rock and actually observe its underlying structure, as I have done after deep meditation, when focusing awareness back on the physical level. We can see the molecular and atomic structure and beyond the pure energy at work in its configuration, which is more complex and more beautiful than our current particle instruments are capable of revealing. Without the link to the super-dimensional essence, our earthly or any other life would just not be possible. This includes our every thought and feeling and every breath we take. No thought would be possible or could exist without its anchor in a super-Consciousness energy level. The incredible reality is that every object we contemplate on in this way can connect us to its core energy and the Consciousness that is at the very root of it by allowing ourselves to merge to its centre. Any object we hold our attention on and surrender to in deep contemplation can lead us to its primordial source and connect us to its Singularity. In fact every point in the universe, every atom, even in this dimension, can function as such a gateway if we allow ourselves to merge and surrender to its original pure force. Meditation can consist of anything we focus our attention on, as long as we follow its internal thread to its core. Cosmic Consciousness is not automatically realised at every point of the wide spectrum of these home dimensions. Where the energy flow is more diluted and at a slower vibrational rate, we can only work within those ranges until we enhance our sensitivity. So people don’t automatically enter cosmic Consciousness. In fact the vast majority of dwellers are quite content to lead their blissful lives unconcerned with its inner workings or much wider and more sublime aspects. Neither may they feel inclined to follow the infinite adventures on offer. Just as on the lower dimensional levels, conscious awakening happens in degrees and is multi-layered and in accordance with the individual’s inner programme. Some live out their fantasies and simply fashion their own subjective world from the fine matter surrounding them, while others pursue a course of training and further evolution by developing their potentials. They join any of the vast consensus communities that are abundant in the cities, with infinite opportunities for exploration and development. It soon becomes very apparent why people feel inclined to spend the equivalent of millennia here by earthly time comparison. There are more opportunities for not just exploring our potentials, but expanding them, than on any other reality level. All the while inhabitants living here still find themselves in a state of continuous rapture and bliss, because of the total absence of negative exposure and a constant positive feedback from everything they encounter. People may argue, ‘How is it possible to experience happiness without experiencing its opposite, and what is the point of it?’ The answer is that this is a state of Consciousness unlike any we are ever able to experience in our physical presence, simply because our nervous system is designed for physical survival in a physical world unaware of the truly limitless scope for experience on a much higher dimensional level. The tools for our physical survival have evolved to deal with physical adversity, not higher Consciousness awareness. We are basically animals programmed for survival in a world of adversity, largely unaware of the full potential for our future evolution, which is beyond anything our animal brain can comprehend. The challenges for us, within our true home state of Consciousness, are of a totally different order, as is the potential for learning. Our powers of comprehension, processing and action are exponentially enhanced to such an extent that we might easily spend the equivalent of thousands of Earth years here without even having scratched the surface of our learning or experiencing potential. It is a misconception to believe that once we arrive in ‘Heaven’, as some religious faiths may want us to believe, that our journey is over and that we simply reside in a state of ‘eternal peace’, doing nothing else but ’praising the Lord and singing hymns with the angels’. The childlike image is simply reflecting our lack of comprehension. The reality is that once we awaken to our super-Consciousness level, which is already part of our blueprint, we will simply embark on a new stage in our evolution, and our journey as human beings will have only just begun. We will have moved a further step away from the animal kingdom from which we have emerged and will have entered a vast new playing field for our evolution. The light at the end of the tunnel is only the beginning of a larger tunnel, not the end. Laid out before us are dimensions unknown, and we have not even developed the tools to register them in any form. (Date missing) MeditationOBEs I was meditating this morning at five o’clock. I reached a point of stillness and inner freedom so sublime that I no longer considered myself a person limited by the outer contours of my body. When I opened my non-physical eyes I was squatting in front of a pond with clear blue water. I was tilting towards it at an almost 45-degree angle thinking, ‘My God, what a wondrous world we live in. One moment I close my eyes in meditation and the next I opened them and I am outdoors in a totally different place, overlooking a magical pond.’ It felt so natural. Such a simple moment of deep contemplation, and with deep gratitude I began to praise this miracle of nature. I calmly observed the water and experienced an irresistible pull to be submerged in its cool crystal liquid. I was very aware that I was still meditating and, despite the change of location, I was still experiencing the same incredible calmness, stillness and connectedness. I closed my non-physical eyes and carried on meditating. For minutes I was focused solely on the gentle rapture of knowing that I was linked to something too wondrous to describe in words. When I opened my non-physical eyes again the visions came in very powerfully. I was now in the vistas of the highest dimension, having surrendered myself joyfully to the inner being that was guiding me through new landscapes of such alien beauty that I began to wonder what kind of God had conjured it up. I was presented with a gift of incredible beauty, an offering to me as an artist and admirer. It was an intimate presentation from one lover to another. I was gliding in a state of silent rapture over strange and unknown lands, changing and shifting as I progressed. One moment the whole world was made out of millions of shades of silver, the light and the atmosphere with the features of the landscape obligingly following the feelings evoked by the colour. The next moment the lands beneath and all around me warmed into mellow pinks, with many lakes and hills rising into sharp peaks. Yet the atmosphere was soft like a sunset, yet bright and strong. The air was pure light and spirit. Wherever I looked, beautiful architectural features appeared, squatting on little islands with strange exotic trees facetted around them as if holding precious jewels. Yet there was no moment when these alien sceneries did not feel like my home lands, where I truly belonged, despite the fact that the features changed and evolved as my free spirit conquered new territories. There was no awareness of time and whether I spent minutes, hours or days there, I could not tell. There was yet more to come. I felt the intimacy and closeness to my home becoming stronger, despite the strangeness of the lands floating past me. I became aware of an invisible presence, which I connected to a blue star that appeared over the horizon. It was set within an elaborate kaleidoscope like a diamond in a rare and precious ring. It was getting bigger and bigger as I focused on it, although in reality I was simply swept along as I was drawn towards it in absolute surrender. As I drifted towards its centre, the star became a sun brighter than anything previously known, and here words and thoughts disappeared as our union was fulfilled. Practitioners know the great power of meditation lies inside the heart, in the fearless abandoning to love. Many spend years in meditation trying to force the mind to focus. All the strict effort may be wasted if the heart is not employed. Why not spend minutes surrendering to the heart and consummate the union with your very Source instead of forcing Nature along routes it is not designed to go? Then, when you have drunk all the joys the heart has to offer and you feel replenished, keep the fire burning and humbly and secretly take it with you wherever you go. The reason why there are so few reports of these incredible home worlds is probably because of the powerful attraction of the light of Singularity, which the visitors instantly give preference to. The light is never far away and it only needs a shift in awareness to surrender to it. So the moment you surrender, there is no telling where it will take you. Compared to entering the core reality of our being, our true home, anything appears poor by comparison, even the Heaven I have been trying to describe at length. Here we enter the realm of the Absolute, which is greater than anything; greater than Love because it is absolute stillness and absolute clarity. It is this pull that will not let us rest until we’ve found this origin. Once we are united with it, we willingly go out to become its servant, even if it means descending down into dense and dark realms, where people have lost all hope and all connection to themselves and are wandering around in a state of confusion and disorientation, while clinging desperately to their fixations, fragile beliefs and old patterns out of sheer habit. I have come across humble workers here on Earth caring for lost and suffering souls who would blush if it were suggested that they were enlightened. A large number of individuals who are firmly connected to their Source settle in the Heaven worlds at the other end of the spectrum, from where, in a vastly expanded state of Consciousness, they perform their service, by lending a guiding hand to their chosen charges, groups, animals or subjects of interest. They live in consensus realities in the Home Consciousness, in cities and worlds more magnificent and illuminated than anything established on the denser levels of reality. But here in our world they can be found too, where they work anonymously and in disguise, never giving away the slightest inkling of where they are from and where their true home lies. Homecomings When entering and enjoying the spectacular creative drama taking place in these sublime dimensional realities, it may sound as if we are turning our backs on the omnipresent all-pervading grace, but this is hardly possible. Wherever we are there is a strong connection to the Singularity powering all. To the strict mystics this may feel like a distraction, but in reality it is a celebration of the glory of Consciousness and, to the believer, a celebration of God. Our connection to the Source is an ever-present awareness. Although we may be called to our intimate union from the Home Consciousness to our Source, it may feel like travelling through a tunnel of light, where everything appears as a pattern around us along the way. The secret of the cosmic traveller lies in the deep connection to his Source wherever they are, whether in the labyrinth of time or the open Vistas of Heaven. We remain faithfully connected to the inner stillness even here on Earth in the midst of turmoil and even war. Some mystics, programmed by years of concentration and devout discipline, may regard these worlds as mere distractions and turn a blind eye so that they follow the singular call to their Source and reunite, but once the stillness of our union has become our blood we only have to offer our attention to feel the connection again. It no longer matters where we are. We are always residing in the stillness of our Singularity. 14 March 2010 The Heart of Home I was intending to find my way back again once, with the intention of gaining access into the home dimensions, and used the same awake-back-to-bed technique of the previous week (see ‘The Directors of Cartoon City’). I was tired of being tied to the lower dimensional levels, which were little better than the Earth I was accustomed to. I wanted to achieve a higher level of Consciousness and the level of clarity associated with it. After meditating for half an hour I went back to bed. A short while later I began to see shapes through my closed eyes for a brief moment. I studied their features. They were people with rough dark skins, quite close by. I also noticed that I had difficulty clearing my mind and it felt as if I had been drugged. A couple of times I tried to achieve full waking awareness by focusing on my hands, but all I could muster were two fuzzy shapes. It was a strain to acquire awareness with the dull, heavy feeling hanging inside my head. I decided to wake. I got out of bed and noticed a slight headache, which I thought was the result of having spent the night with the window shut. I then went into the kitchen to fetch a glass of water. Duly refreshed, I went into my meditation room. It was 5:30 am. Enough time, I thought, to enter into an Out-of-Body-state, hopefully brought about by deep meditation. I started by using a normal spinal breathing meditation technique, followed by the sutras to raise my Consciousness. The side effect of this can be that it can lead to yogic sleep, with the strong possibility of achieving lucidity. My first glimpse of awareness was unsatisfactory. I found myself in a semi-lucid state, struggling to acquire waking Consciousness. I seemed to be bouncing like a yo-yo between dream state and semi-lucid awareness. Finally I found my focus and pinned my attention on reaching higher Consciousness. In order to achieve this I allowed myself to detach from everything, my body, my personality, my environment and my identity, in the simple act of complete surrender. I yielded absolutely to the knowledge that a unifying essence of Consciousness is all there is and nothing else, a Singularity which was the Source pool of my existence. Then I even surrendered the concept, the intent and the interest. Almost instantly I rose into the air, as if pulled onwards by invisible strings. I travelled through a kaleidoscopic tunnel. The higher I rose the faster I accelerated, until the patterns merged into bright bands of colour, which became brighter the further I travelled and zoomed, until I shot into the most glorious infinite firmament that opened up above me. I then felt an incredible benediction, a reassurance that I was recognised by the force as one of its own. With that came an outpouring of intense love of which I was unable to tell whether I was the giver or the beneficiary, it was just love in its purest and most sublime form with an intense joy of being completed and utterly fulfilled. At the same time, the intensity of the colour and light that poured towards me engulfed me in ecstasy unknown. I made one last distinct effort to retain conscious awareness, but the ecstasy drove me into oblivion. It was too much to bear, too great to take note of. All I was left with was immeasurable bliss and an intense feeling of being welcomed home, once again, to the very centre of my own being. Again, to make sense of this I tried to focus my awareness on new levels of wakefulness, but instead I became aware of myself sitting in meditation. Easily I entered stillness without any more visions or, shall I say more appropriately, any more visitations into these celestial realities. When entering the states of Consciousness that are clearly outside the personal identification we are so used to, it is hard, if not impossible, not to be drawn to our very Source and find reunification with what we are in our very essence. The way this entry takes place is via an intense and transformative ecstasy. Ecstasy is always based on an intense and very intimate form of unification. When we unite with the person we love in total love and surrender in sexual abandon we get a small glimpse of what it means to experience ecstasy. But reunification with the very Source of your whole being is in a category of its own. There are no equivalents in physical life. The best we can experience in sexual loving climax is a poor and very distant analogy. Here everything is the pure and absolute original, untainted by needs, desire or wants, a pure selfless handing over, completely in the certainty that this is the only thing there is and that there can be no greater act than this. We are caught in the rapture of realising that we are a billion times more real and significant than we ever thought we were; this only happens because we have abandoned the last trace of significance in utter and total surrender the moment we cut our ties to our ego identification. However, ecstasy is only an experience and there is more to our individual and cosmic structure than being reabsorbed into the Consciousness pool of our own origin. We are here for a purpose. The whole universe with its uncharted and infinite dimensions is here for a purpose too: one purpose is a limitless expansion and regeneration in new and different permutations of being; the other purpose is a blissful life in service to others. We are not exempt from the great game of manifestation and have our own place in this. We are a part of it and it quickly becomes apparent that it is not in our design to be reabsorbed into the Singularity and to remain dormant in it forever. We soon find that our individual place in Consciousness becomes one of service in the same way that we ourselves are served with life. It is service that connects us and maintains the free flow of Consciousness, and makes us whole regardless of where we are. The Silent Companion In my previous book I reported a spontaneous event dating back to the early 1970s when I was an art student living in makeshift student digs, where I experienced a strange mind-shifting event. While having my breakfast and taking a bite of my sandwich, I stopped in mid-action, realising that I had lost my relationship to my hand holding the sandwich and then to my body. I became aware that I was not my body. This awareness escalated into a spontaneous state of Samadhi. This happened at the outset of my journey and I still believe that this may have triggered the long series of spontaneous Out-of-Body experiences that followed, because the identification with my physical self had been broken. The most lasting effect, though, was that I became aware of a new underlying awareness that was hard to explain. It felt as if I was accompanied by a silent presence always. Looking at it rationally, I quickly dismissed the idea that this presence could be some kind of ghost that was following me around. In any case, at that time I didn’t believe in ghosts, but it felt as if I was accompanied by a benevolent presence wherever I went. Dismissing any supernatural phenomena as irrational, I figured it must have been a semiconscious awareness of a higher and more sublime aspect of Consciousness, more like an innermost part of me that had a sovereign identity of which I knew very little. Whatever word I used the feeling was always the same, the awareness of a silent presence being with me always. It felt very benevolent, peaceful and still. I could trust it like a friend and felt it always had my best interests at heart, though not always in accordance with my desires, wishes or intentions. I noticed more and more that when I did something against my better judgement, acted inauthentically or selfishly, it simply was no longer there, but it was not vindictive in any way. In time it became an awareness that allowed me to pose questions, particularly in times of uncertainty or crisis, which were responded to on an intuitive level. I had to find subtle ways of listening to this guidance, which often came in the form of an inner knowing. Response, however, was not a given. I never had to consult or confide in anybody because I knew I could find the answer by listening inside to the silence, and it was given to me in the form of knowing. When I once consulted a friend with a personal issue I did it against my better judgement and it backfired on me straight away. From then on my silent companion became my first port of call, as I quickly learned all advice could be found within from a most reliable source. It was also this Source that guided my meditation, revealed mantras to me and let me know when it was time to drop them. When reading spiritual texts, it would point my awareness straight to the essence. It guided me through the fires of external conflicts. It patiently taught me what I needed to know on my path of unfolding. When I was on the right track it would reward me with silent joys, when I was wrong it would withdraw until I made the appropriate change. I felt no need for any kind of teacher, master or guru, because the Source was right there teaching me in silence. Because most advice came in this subtle form of inner knowing and stillness, I began to refer to this aspect of awareness as my ‘Silent Companion’, who I knew was with me always. On several occasions it would reveal its absolute reality; in spring 2013, on a solitary retreat in Scotland, it would emerge fully and demonstrate to me that my Silent Companion was me and had been me all along. I was no longer seeing it as separate. After this event I had become it, but before this it was my guide and master. Here is an event that demonstrated the intimate nature of this aspect of Consciousness and how it initiated a union experience with Singularity awareness. 11 May 2011 Samadhi– the CalltoUnity I was in the garden sanding down an old chair while enjoying the spring sun. I couldn’t tell what the reason for my joyfulness was. I simply attributed it to the fact that I had just completed some commercial work and relished a breathing space between jobs, perhaps added to the fact that the garden was just so beautiful with the birds singing and the flowers blossoming all around me. But that was not it. I also became powerfully aware of a silent presence, not a personal presence, but a presence of being, which saturated the very air I was breathing and lingered on anything my eyes, hands and ears touched. Occasionally I had to pause in what I was doing and let the feelings wash over me, leaving me with a deep sense of joy and gratitude. Then I carried on sanding the chair, enjoying the satisfaction it brought. But the feeling did not leave me. It became more and more persistent and intense. I finally decided to retreat into my meditation room in order to focus my attention exclusively and without any distraction on my companion. Before I could even sit down into the meditation chair, I felt a tingling sensation in my body, rising up my spine and quickly spreading through my body while I slumped down into a half-lying position. As I closed my eyes, instead of seeing the dark shields of my eyelids I was staring into an intense light. It was a light that was not just in my eyes or even my head, but cascaded like a waterfall over my sprawling body. But unlike water, it consisted of countless fine luminous filaments pulling me upwards towards an enormous sun. I noticed that the moment I lay spread-eagled in my chair, I had already abandoned my persona and ego completely and there was simply nothing holding me back. I had entered a new autonomous mode of existence, which was simply made up of the fact that I was alive, nothing else. My new surroundings consisted of a space of pure light with nothing in front or behind it, just an intense reality of essence, luminous and consuming. But it was anything but merciless. As soon as I offered myself it welcomed me with intense joy, which instantly transformed into ecstasy I had rarely known before. For a while it was teasing and playing with me, offering new intensities of rapture and pointing my attention towards endless vistas of luminous orbs that were nothing less than the infinite centres of themselves. Each one could have been a whole new universe to explore. I was stunned by the panorama. I felt blessed that I formed such an intimate part of it. As I turned away from the lights, I became aware that I was being elevated into a new reality, where the chair I was lying on and the room itself were no more than vaporous mists, objects of little permanence and reality. What I saw here was essence in its purest form. Wherever I looked, I saw new landscapes emerging, rising out of luminous mists, sometimes as thick as clouds, drifting and percolating through metamorphosing shapes, which created fascinating objects. These clouds were unmanifested matter, shifting landscapes of colour of different densities and character, springing into shapes, responding to some mysterious creative impulse and then dissipating. Within no time, I was surrounded by a glorious archway, which expressed perfectly my wonderment about this region, and from there other archways opened ahead of me, each different, created by my continuing thought process, each more glorious as I walked through them. They adapted intimately to my thoughts, inspiring me to look further with a mind that had ceased to think in a linear way, but instead spread out like the rays of a sun, exploring simultaneously its many options all at once. There was space without the sequential movement of time. It was a space made out of existence, Being, if this makes any sense at all. As I ventured further through archways of thought, knowing intuitively, explicitly, why every aspect of their grand intricate design was shaped the way it was from its luminous fibres, I sensed the reasons why new archways opened as I progressed, because every archway signified a new realisation. Every shift in my perception and thinking pattern simultaneously affected every part of the world surrounding me. I was surrounded by mental matter, not as abstract waveforms of mental energy, but waveforms solidified into incredibly complex shapes, in phenomenal detail, each design element communicating directly why it had to be exactly the way it was. And clearly, whatever was created had at its root a luminous light, a light that gave it sustenance and life. It was easy to focus on the underlying light and identify it as its Source for existing in the first place, a light which was a luminous sun or suns. At every end point of thought, shape or feeling were these luminous suns. I saw that all thoughts and all things were rooted in Pure Consciousness, and all thoughts in their final analysis will inevitability reveal their serene and exalted origin. I am aware that every cliché known to man is likely to be catapulted into life by an experience such as this. I am conscious of the limitation of pressing language into the service of describing something that clearly belongs to a language-free zone, the opposite hemisphere of the brain. But there it is. This light is like no physical light at all, more like a space lit up, a stillness that was wherever I was, a presence of luminosity right beside me. It felt as if it smiled the moment I turned my attention towards it after tearing myself away from the wondrous sights surrounding me. It regarded me like a child, lost in its world of play and – like a loving parent accepting its child with love and joy the moment it turned away from its play – fully assured that it would not be left out of sight for a single moment, no matter how far it strayed. At any time I could enter into the light wholeheartedly and it would accept me with joy and without reservation. It was this reassurance that made me linger and explore my new environments, being aware of my intent for research, but I was more like a child being entranced by the vibrant world surrounding me than a researcher. Wherever I looked I saw new patterns emerging, creating an infinity of finely woven objects. I was aware of the presence of the light, my silent witness and guarding parent all the time, waiting patiently for me to follow it home into its very heart. Each time I called it appeared, reliably and joyfully, and each time it revealed a new and thrilling, yet unchanging, aspect, reassuring me of its eternal companionship. It was this that gave me the freedom to turn my attention towards gigantic rings of fire surrounding me, with symmetrical flames, casting vast changing patterns miles high into an endless sky. Immediately after the first ring reached its apex another ring formed above it with an irresistible invitation to be carried skywards by its overwhelming force. Simultaneously, I became aware of my body once more and felt a powerful yet pleasantly cool pressure on my forehead, as if some God had placed three fingers on the spot between my eyebrows, urging me to take its energy and let go of anything that was still fastening me to my former self. The ring of fire and the touch on my forehead were the same energy. At this point I was gripped by an intense ecstasy, which was enough to sever any remaining link or attachment I might have had. It was the same light as before, but of a new intensity and of a greater order. The fogs of thought that had seduced me only moments ago were licked away like the morning mists by a midday sun. The sun was clarity, with layers of clarity revealed as each gave birth to a light of even greater intensity. In the end there were no attributes, just the neutrality of being. No insights to be gained, no wisdom to behold, all insights and all wisdom were nothing more than shapes painted into the sands of an incoming tide. There was nothing to be spoken of because there was no medium to convey it. Only Stillness – Being. For a few further moments, I could see with the eyes of creation, looking out from the centre of clarity of an unfolding world of shapes and appearances. Strange shapes that emerged in ever unfolding patterns, creating new worlds around me. I heard a celestial song in the distance, which then solidified into the mundane siren sound of an emergency vehicle. I knew I had spent just over an hour in my chair. My wife’s hairdresser had arrived and their animated chatter floated across the landing towards my meditation room. There was a distinct peace underlying the sounds, and peace cemented all the shapes of my old world together again. Deep meditation can give us a preview into the pure spiritual realms of our Core Consciousness, with which we may be able to merge one day permanently, after all our personal identifications have been surrendered. Although to some, including many mystics, this may be the apex of their realisation, it may not necessarily be the ultimate goal, or even desirable. The great question is, why do we have a physical body? Why are we part of this creation process and why would we want to turn our backs on all of this, which is so clearly our reality and by default the intent of whatever power has put us here? Our most powerful urge in life is to avoid hardship and our whole economy depends on escape, from poverty, discomfort, sickness, pain, boredom, torment, etc. What if, instead of escaping, we were to enter into it, wholeheartedly? Not from the viewpoint of our separated individual and ego-identified self by getting lost in the world, but from the vantage point of the creative power that makes and sustains it. This would require realising our inner core self in an act of self-realisation that would change our perception dramatically. It would mean liberating ourselves from our identifications with the outside world and our fixations and instead merging with the core energy and power which drives it at the level of Pure Consciousness. For most of us our whole self-concept and conditioning is built around the perception of separation. This sense of alienation is where our daily state of mind is rooted. After we profoundly experience that the only thing that has actual reality is our Core Consciousness, which is at the root of everything and forms the true Universal Identity of who we are, it is impossible to turn the clock back and see the world as we did before. Everywhere we look we see ‘ourselves’ in our pure aspect. An ‘outside’ world is no longer recognised as separate but is instead experienced as ‘Home’ in exactly the same way as we experience ‘Home’ when entering the higher levels of Consciousness after death or during Samadhi. This means we will instantly enter the higher levels of Consciousness after we die. Doing it while still in a body will present us with all the benefits of Heaven here and now on Earth, while we are still alive; at the same time, it will grant us a place in the non­physical states wherever we choose. The advantage for us in reaching these states now, while still in a body, means that we experience the profound peace and stillness of an enlightened mind, while attending to the day-by-day running of our business, even if we are surrounded by human suffering. This is a paradox difficult to get one’s head around. Living at the core level of Consciousness, we live in a profound state of tranquillity and stillness, still witnessing the pain and pleasures surrounding us but from a position of peace and profound compassion. The paradox is that we can still recognise our pain and the pain of others, but without the suffering. We can also experience the pleasures, but without being swept away by them, all the time being aware of a profound inner stillness that extends into the world around us and makes everywhere we are our Home ground. When this happens, everything in our life becomes equally ‘spiritual’, because wherever we look we see the manifestation of ‘God’ if you like or, if you are an atheist, see ‘Pure Consciousness’. We no longer have to set ourselves apart, we simply are and accept what we are. That is what creates true stillness and it is also what all the sages, mystics and past masters have always talked about. It is an attainable reality because we already carry it within us. Our Core Consciousness is already residing in this state of continuous stillness, love and bliss, but as long as we are identified with an illusionary ‘outside’ world, we are not privy to this observation and experience. The followers of Mahayana Buddhism do not aspire to enlightenment in order to free themselves from suffering; they do so out of compassion, in order to liberate other sentient beings. There is, however, another aspect of looking at liberation. Do we want to escape into the unity and sever our strings to duality or do we want to enhance, celebrate and enjoy the world of duality with a mindset that is firmly rooted in stillness? We don’t hear much about this aspect of a fuller life in the esoteric texts, except perhaps in the old Vijnana Bhairava Tantra texts, which celebrate and embrace life, by witnessing the grace of oneness in everything from sex to sensual enjoyments. Also known as the Radiance Sutras, the teachings point to an awareness that Consciousness is omnipresent and residing within all things. For people practicing Out-of-Body techniques, this kind of awareness, that Consciousness is omnipresent, allows for a new kind of Out-of-Body travel, by simply not travelling at all. This experience is best described by seeing the physical body simply as part of the inventory of Consciousness, which has no greater significance than any other object within reality. Our real self is the space of infinite Consciousness that is simply everywhere, the all-pervading reality Source of everything in existence. It is the infinite space around us, the chair we sit on, the cup we drink from. This kind of awareness makes it easy to cut the strings that tie us to the world and so liberate us from our attachments, identifications and fixations. When we adopt this kind of awareness, we no longer leave our body, we simply become aware of another focal point within the vast field of Consciousness, which could be anywhere, in some dark region or in the highest Heaven. However, having our awareness rooted in the stillness of the Source Consciousness, no matter where we are, we will be equally connected to bliss. The question is, do we follow the whispers of angels, beckoning us and persuading us to let go and follow the sweet sounds of their voices back to our true home in the highest Heaven and remain there forever, or do we relinquish our privilege and pitch our place on one of those lower regions, the Forecourts of Heaven or lower still, as many of us have done before? Realising stillness within all things doesn’t make us refugees from the world of opposites, duality and pain – quite the opposite. More than anything we will embrace reality and everything that is thrown at us. More than that, we will appreciate it, the pain, the suffering, the loss, because wherever we look we will perceive the secret workings of Unity Consciousness; but above all we need nowhere to go because our Heaven and our ultimate destiny is already where we are, here and now. Preparations for Life after Death One day every one of us will have to pass through the portals of death. We don’t have to reach a state of enlightenment in order to enter the pleasant lands, but we can’t ignore the fact that where we are now, emotionally and spiritually, will determine where we will go to spend the next leg of our infinite future. We can push the idea of death from our awareness via distractions or entertainments of various kinds, by leading a hedonist lifestyle as if there was no tomorrow, but we will have to bear in mind that what is in our sub­consciousness will become our new external reality when we die. There is no doubt that the best way to prepare ourselves for the future is by conducting our life from a place of calmness and inner stillness, here and now in our present, which becomes our instant link to our infinity. We can embrace the infinity of our existence by pursuing a life where every moment counts, and living it by being mindful and aware of our thoughts, feelings and actions, informed by kindness and the loving heart. We can learn to look at our conflicts and crisis points as learning opportunities for building a better base, and treat our inner demons as our educators. We can look at our enemies as our teachers to learn compassion and harness our own authentic strength in order to liberate ourselves from the rule of others. Instead of putting self-interest first, we can learn to appreciate how our actions are experienced by others. The easiest way to accomplish this is by acting, thinking, speaking and experiencing reality by employing the heart in everything we do. Psychology teaches us that we cannot hide our unresolved issues or inner demons if we wish to lead a healthy and balanced life. The foundation of happiness is to be found in a life of balance and psychological hygiene, free from the toxins of negative and destructive attitudes. We are aided by our ability to respond dynamically to situations by not remaining stuck in rigid constructs and hardened beliefs, which are unable to adapt to the flowing forces of nature. Religions of old have tried to make it simple: do good things and you’ll go to Heaven, do bad things and you’ll go to Hell. Reality is more complex than that and works on multiple levels. We will need to find our own way to our inner heart and authenticity, often via trial and error rather than by following prescriptions. We don’t need to read books about ethics and morality, about what is good and what is bad, we simply need to read the book of wisdom laid out within us and read in a state of calm and reflection. We can find out how we can love and serve, how we can enhance the world rather than impoverish it, how we can add value rather than devalue it. Every action of love and goodwill, even if it is only in the shape of a fleeting thought, an appreciation, a sense of gratitude, a joy, a happiness shared, will be a stepping stone to higher, more elevated Consciousness and bright and pleasant surroundings. By living through the heart we no longer have to figure out for ourselves what effect our actions will have on others, we simply open our inner channels to allow the most positive energy to flow into us and guide our actions. We can trigger love by appreciation, out of which a loving, empathic and compassionate heart is much more likely to rise. It will be a guarantor for a rewarding life rather than a mind calculating our effects, torn by conflict, obsessed with self-gratification and motivated by greed and self-importance. To keep these channels open and connected to our authentic self close to our Source we can practise regular meditation, engage in selfless service and live life by fostering inner wisdom in calm reflection. If you are part of a religious culture and tradition and used to prayer, making prayer a surrender to God, rather than adopting an attitude of neediness, is far more effective for alignment with the higher Consciousness. Offering yourself to God and surrendering your negative issues and sense of self-importance is far better than begging or pleading to God. Some of the greatest saints in our religious traditions have aimed for a ‘marriage and union with God’ rather than putting God on a pedestal and out of reach. Our prayers should have the closeness of lovers wanting to be united, because God is at the very root of what we really are. As Christians we might follow the example of the great Catholic saint, Teresa of Avila, whose highest aspiration was to seek ‘a marriage with God’; her legacy shows that she succeeded. Or we can look at the mystics such as St Francis, who regarded all nature as the mirror of God and treated everything popping up in reality as being intimately related and a part of him and therefore related to God. Every religion has brought forward their shining lights of sages who provide inspiration and encourage in us the right attitude to develop a powerful connection to our Source. It doesn’t matter whether we follow Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Taoism, Buddhism, Zen or any other faiths, as long as we don’t get blinded by dogma and fanatical stances. Mindfulness, which focuses attention on the sensations, thoughts and emotions, while remaining rooted in the present moment with an accepting and non-judgemental attitude, can be practised whichever religion we follow, because it will put us in a position of ‘being’ rather than ‘becoming’. This attitude will keep us in touch with reality and will cleanse our channels for a positive downflow of creative energy. Whatever cultural context we use as our basis, we are best served by looking at the core aspects of our faith, where it connects us to the Core Consciousness it springs from rather than diluted interpretations and evolved dogma. Even if we don’t believe in God or any form of spirituality whatsoever, we can still rely on the simple acceptance that we ARE and enquire into the mystery of our Being. Deep meditation does not require belief, it just requires a focus on ‘what is’, on the reality of ‘Now’, and this way we also can find stillness, even as atheists. It is simply narrow-minded propaganda that preaches atheists will go to hell because they don’t believe in God. Nothing could be further from the truth, and many atheists are in a better position to reach enlightenment than many devout followers of religious beliefs. Buddha himself did not believe in God and yet he is the figurehead of one of the most enlightened ways of living on the planet. Fanatical subscribers to religious belief will no doubt be quick to condemn such a liberal stance, but they will have to remember that there is not a single person, life form or atom that is not intimately connected to God or Core Consciousness, whether they may believe in it or not. Getting into deeper reflections, we will find that Consciousness itself will give us the answers, especially if we allow our heart to participate in our focus and inquiry. Atheism does not, by default, exclude the possibility of an afterlife, simply because our current science has not found proof one way or the other, so why not remain open and dynamic to the possibilities of our infinity? In the end we will discover that, whatever our beliefs, actual first-hand experience will deliver the final proof for continuous existence and we will no longer have to rely on the testimonies of others or books. Nothing is more powerful in delivering proof than first-hand experience. We will have to decide for ourselves which teachers, if any, to enlist and how to open the inner channels to the seat of Consciousness. The simple rule to be guided by is to avoid anything that cuts us off from the free flow of love energy, such as narcissism, dogma, selfishness, fanaticism, hatred, bigotry, intolerance and all the negative feelings related to our own self-importance, which will restrict the free flow of creative energy. All the energy we set in motion and which enriches the world without diminishing others is energy stacked in our favour. By focusing on the things in life that truly matter, embracing reality rather than denying or running away from it, and by nurturing our authentic self, fertilised by the generosity of the heart, we create the best conditions not only for the afterlife, but for our current life as well, because life is a continuum. Transformation The Powerof Meditation I feel there is little doubt that meditation is our greatest hope, not only for transforming our state of mind into an attitude of blissful living, but for our society as well, and thereby helping to cure our economic, political, educational, sociological and environmental ills. Why is that? We already have statistical data to cement this statement, but the reason for this transformative effect lies in the process that happens when the object of attention is no longer divorced from the attention-giver, when we no longer see ourselves as separate from the outside world. By focusing awareness on the Source of Awareness we create a natural connection to the core of our being, which is what gives life to everything else around us. It is here, at the core, that all Source material for life itself is generated. How will meditation shape the quality of our afterlife? The negative publicity we sometimes hear about meditation is almost always connected to the release of underlying trauma into the open, which may have been festering away for years in our sub-Consciousness, frequently referred to as ‘the dark night of the soul’. This can also happen as a result of prayer. This ‘rising to the surface’ should itself be regarded as a positive. What is negative is our inability to look at it dispassionately, resisting necessary changes or not seeking support in dealing efficiently with our Shadows, via counselling or education. Meditation can be the pipe that releases the built-up of pressure of stress into the open, while at the same time supplying our daily life with energy and well-being. We can regulate the stress release, if necessary, by adjusting the flow through the pipe and reducing the practice accordingly until we are balanced, and by giving ourselves the space and the time to deal with personal issues that may have come to light. Counselling can also be considered as a powerful way of dealing with deep-seated problems. Problems, if not dealt with in this present physical life, will determine the quality of our afterlife, as in our afterlife our unconscious will manifest our external environment. If we deal with our ‘Shadow’ now, a term Jung used to refer to our unconscious side with its unresolved inner conflicts, we will sail over into non-physical reality in the most enjoyable and life-enhancing experience. Instead of having to struggle and confront our Shadows, we will explore our potential, realise our dreams and our life’s secret ambitions. We can embark now on our journey to our glorious future, without becoming victims of our Shadows. The most important aspect of meditation is not to see it as a form of entertainment or just to have experiences. Far from it. Good meditation is the opposite of having experiences. It is finding the resting point within us and spending as much time as possible in the stillness of it. Ordinary people can transform their lives with such practice. After years of meditation, I finally reached a tipping point where I began to experience my life as a continuous present rooted in the blissful stillness of the moment, mostly remaining unaffected by any turmoil surrounding me. This tipping point was preceded by many awakenings to my authentic self, until finally the point of no return was reached. It was as if a frosted-glass cage had been shattered and had set me free and then offered a clear vision of the world around me for the first time. There was no way the billions of glass pieces could be put back together again and I knew I was liberated from my restrictions for good. Because it happened to me, I know it can happen to anybody who focuses their attention; no magic or special talent is involved, just sustained meditation. Everybody carries the blueprint and the genetic programme to realise their potential already. Released from skewed attitudes and self-delusions, we begin to operate from the stillness centre of sanity, rather than being dominated and flung around by tidal waves of emotions and external events. Here is a short summary of what life might look like once released from your cage: Attention is focused on the reality of the present moment rather than being disconnected by prejudged interpretation of reality. There is an enhanced sense and appreciation of reality and the pertinent factors underpinning it, which are often sensed intuitively, leading to increased discriminatory powers. There is a persistent feeling of being ‘Home’, because we feel ‘connected’ regardless of where we are in the world, which provides us with confidence and a sense of security. We are free to experience enhanced aesthetic appreciation, which can prompt spontaneous peak experiences in everyday life. We will have an enhanced empathy with other people and a non-judgemental attitude. Increased creativity and joy in engagements will benefit others. There can be an awareness of a higher aspect of Consciousness that asserts a guiding influence and we may feel like a benevolent presence. Some people report it as being connected to ‘God’, the ‘Higher Self ’, a ‘Guide’, a ‘Guardian Angel’, or simply the presence of a universal Consciousness which they can feel all around. There is no longer a sense of loneliness, even when alone. Fear of death has ceased, without affecting our instinct for survival. We find it easier to deal with conflicts in a detached manner and employ enhanced modes of dealing with them. Our dreams become more coherent and often lucid. We get an increased sense of our own sovereignty in freedom from attachments. A feeling of liberation and being in charge of our life and destiny is experienced. We become indifferent towards roles in society, such as status, acclaim, fame, position and wealth etc. We become more authentic, accessible, benevolent, empathic, nurturing a sense of humour, tolerant, perceptive and wise. We will experience purposeful and rewarding relationships without attachments or dependency. The perception that every moment is new arises. Reality is not seen as repetition even though apparently repetitive events occur. We have no interest in psychic abilities, although they may arise. We have no interest in following a ‘spiritual’ path, because every moment is complete and spiritual in its core sense. Dream life is regarded as being as important as waking life, and vice versa. Self-importance is replaced by a sense of natural humility and being content with the ordinary and modest things in life. We no longer see the world as a hostile place, but one free of enemies. We become impartial, detached, peaceful, objective. An ability to adapt and experience any viewpoint from the viewer’s perspective is developed. We will not consider ourselves as enlightened or special in any way. We can clearly see that when stillness is manifested in our everyday life, achieved through the daily practice of meditation, our lives will be transformed here, now, and there is simply no question about how our afterlife will be played out in the highest of states, the Astral or even higher Heavens. We do not need to concern ourselves with having experiences. These simply materialise as a natural by-product of meditation when they are right for us and serve us; they are not a goal in themselves. We should not practise meditation with an eye on having experiences or manifesting OBEs. We are better off practicing OBE techniques for that. Using meditation for that would just compromise the free flow of creative energy needed to take us close to our Source when we die. We don’t even have to concern ourselves about entering states of Samadhi. We just need to focus our awareness and let Nature take its course. Meditation is not about ‘achieving’, but simply about ‘being’. This is the distinguishing factor from our habitual mindset, where we strive for entertainment, filling in time or aiming for a certain goal. Meditation is the opposite. We simply rest in the acceptance of what is, by focusing on the object of our meditation, which can be a mantra, a point of light inside our head, our breath, or awareness itself. It can be the world surrounding us. It does not matter. Giving preference to the object of our attention instead of to our thinking will gradually train our brain to submit to the natural flow of love energy. We do not have to concern ourselves with entering higher states once our inner channels are cleared. Nature will take us to our natural place. With practice, we will be drawn quite naturally into an inner awareness of no-thought, of stillness or oneness. Although everything I have reported in this book is the result of meditation practice, it is not the inevitable result. I have friends who have meditated for as long as I have who have never had any such experiences. We react individually to the fine-tuning of our energy bodies and Nature provides what is most suited to us as individuals. If we seek to have Out-of-Body experiences and see for ourselves what the greater reality has to offer, we are better off developing our skills in lucid dreaming and pursuing the techniques mentioned at the end of the book, although other people who have been lifelong meditators report different extra-sensory abilities such as clairvoyance or healing abilities, Out-of-Body experiences and other phenomena. I personally support Out-of-Body practice because it can develop into a path in itself to lead to the same outcome. Having reached an Out-of-Body state, it can also be used for effective meditation. Lucid dreams can be used in the same way. Many practitioners who have followed this advice and used a power mantra during their OBE have experienced entering more beautiful levels or even reported an expansion of Consciousness by transcending into higher states. This can help to gain new insights and inspiration, thereby furthering personal development. We can also attract teachers on the non-physical levels of reality who will train us and provide assistance, as I have reported in my previous book. Hundreds of books have been written about meditation and it is up to the individual to find a technique they can most closely relate to. Very often it is a matter of practice and not expecting results overnight, maybe not even over months. Often the things that happen are so subtle that we believe nothing seems to be happening at all, even after years. But the results are often not what one would expect. Expectations are informed by what we know; meditation often delivers what we don’t know. Keeping up the practice of meditation, without expectation, will open the connection and effect subtle changes that are guaranteed to put us on a higher level of Consciousness in this life and, as a consequence, in our afterlife. The Powerof Service Many a rich person, especially if their wealth was acquired via the sacrifices, exploitation and suffering of others, can be found living in utter squalor on the lower light-and life-deprived regions of the Astral levels. Others, having acted selfishly at great cost to their fellow men, such as individuals involved in crimes, frequently endure a feedback loop of regret when they experience first-hand the consequences of their actions in their afterlife state. The problem is that such action cannot be undone and forgiveness is not always forthcoming. When confronted with the entanglement of such action, however, they may strive to make amends by entering a path of service and gradually work their way out of their predicament. We also have to bear in mind that we are a ‘tapestry’ composed of thousands of patches representing individual lives, each one needed as a part to complete the whole, ‘good’ bits and ‘bad’ bits, where the ‘bad’ bits may just be the essential ingredients to complete the ‘good’ bits. The crimes we commit and the effects we reap as a result may just be the essential additives for us to become whole and render us compassionate. We should not judge ourselves or others by the effect created within a single lifetime. Consciousness has a well-laid-out blueprint of what is required to effect completion and perfection. On the human level we judge, condemn and punish immoral action, but on the level of the highest Consciousness we do not, we simply integrate it as a simple element of a much greater pattern. We live in a world of activity and it doesn’t matter whether we are alive or dead. We can also rely on the fact that we are not isolated and cut off from the universe, even though it might appear so. All our actions result in an outcome and affect the energy surrounding us, whether it is physical action, words or thoughts. We have already seen that, on the finer strata of experience, thoughts and feelings have an effect. Although we may not perceive this in our physical sense awareness, they still shape our environment and surroundings on the subtle levels where there is no physical body. So our thoughts, feelings and activity can be constructive or destructive, positive or negative, altruistic or selfish. On the one hand it enriches, on the other it diminishes us and others. One way of looking at non-physical reality is by regarding it as a kind of mirror that reflects back all the content of our thoughts, feelings and actions, where they appears exactly as they have affected others. Until we are confronted with our mirror, we may never be aware how even the most innocent act had an effect on others, positively as well as negatively. We will find all our actions manifested in our non-physical environment once the protective capsule of our physical body has been exited for good. We can determine, by our external environment, whether we have served or drained the world we have lived in. It is the nature of non-physical reality that nothing can remain hidden, and who we were and who we are will be clear for all the world to see. We cannot hide it or hide from it. Our actions, thoughts and feelings will render our looks beautiful or ugly. If we lived our life at great cost to others, the diminishing effects will show in our appearance. If we served, enriched and empowered others, it too will show and manifest in a positive way. While alive, the capsule of our physical nervous system acts like a shield to block out the subtle movements of energy that we put out, and we often only see what we want to see. When the shields are gone at death, we are suddenly confronted with all our output. We can’t avoid it. Everything we see will be a clear mirror of what we are. We will not only see it, but will feel it intimately too. If we engendered joy in others and enhanced their lives, we will now become the beneficiaries of our own good energies released into the world and our environment will be bright and cheerful, our appearance attractive. If we have caused pain and suffering, we will feel that too, more acutely than we would want, so much so that we feel every bit of the pain exactly as our victim felt it. So what is to be done? How can we redeem ourselves for what we have put out? How do we create balance and safeguard our future? How do we repay our debt without becoming victims of our own actions? There are several ways. The obvious one is finding our victim’s forgiveness. The other way is to devote our lives to the benefit and service of others, and we can do that right where we are now by fostering an attitude of giving, nurturing and loving. We can disentangle ourselves from our past actions by clearing our inner channels and allowing the core energy of our being to enter our lives. It is easy to get trapped in a feedback loop, when recognising that the effect of our past action has affected many lives and cannot be undone and has left a lasting mark on the people affected. We can disentangle ourselves by altruistic acts of love, service and care-giving, but it has to be fully realised by the inner heart. Our Core Consciousness loves the sinners equally as the saint. By opening ourselves to the Core Consciousness we are beginning to realise our true Source and will find what Christianity hailed as forgiveness. Of course, the most powerful way to get out of a lower mind and lower environment condition is via spontaneous awakening, but this is not the most common route. Normally it is a laborious path of dealing with personal entanglements step by step and one by one. People who have been in therapy will know how much time can be spent, session after session, until realisation or an epiphany sets in – and that is with the assistance of a professional counsellor. By focusing on the inner heart energy we can quicken the process by largely circumnavigating the negative mind with its laborious pondering, justifications, debates and blockages it puts in our way. The compassionate heart connects us directly to our soul energy and opens the channels for transformation. The other way is by entering the Singularity of our Consciousness, which is most likely to be happening in stages. The best way is by providing a loving and dedicated service to others. The power of this lies in the fact that we are opening our channel to the positive outpourings of love from our Core Consciousness, the place of Heaven. This outpouring has a remedial and healing influence on others and will raise Consciousness for anyone coming in contact with us. If people understand the true power of loving service, our world will be transformed beyond recognition. It is compassion, empathy and love that carry an enormous amount of positive energy and are more valuable than all the material wealth in the world put together. Most of us provide a service via the work we do, but we can build on this service by adding our heartfelt love and devotion. If we provide our service not solely for the monetary reward, but in the spirit of love and dedication, this will be reflected in the quality of our afterlife and will make our work much more gratifying and enjoyable in the process. Any person providing a service can do this now and transform their lives. If there was an answer to life's problems everybody would be following it. The best thing we can do is to use our thoughts, words and deeds in such a way that they serve others and by so doing they serve the greater Consciousness; then we will begin to see changes happening in our lives. Once we adopt this attitude during our everyday working lives and see our involvement with the world in terms of providing a service rather than looking for compensation for a sacrifice, things become more joyful as we begin to be beneficiaries of the bliss of the higher dimensions. It then matters much less what role we occupy in providing our service. We already live in a society which is largely build on service provision, but only very few people realise this via their hearts and use the opportunity to generate bliss awareness. The great and beneficial power of service is largely underestimated in our society, which is often built on greed, selfish gain and in fostering an advantage over our fellow human beings, which will show up when the filters of our physical brains no longer function. On both sides of the divide our service will invite pure higher energies that will manifest in the quality of our lives and others. Service is a powerful force and sometimes it requires little more than a smile, a touch, a hug or a few generous words. And sometimes no more than silence. Travelingthe Vistas of Infinity ‘Only when we drink from the river of silence shall we indeed sing. And when we have reached the mountain top, then we shall begin to climb’ Kahlil Gibran All experience only happens in the present, Now. Life is a continuum, and pinning our hope onto a distant future, believing that we will be mysteriously ‘saved’ as a result of our beliefs is an illusion, no matter how hard we wish to make it true. We can see the suffering and damage of wishful beliefs as demonstrated by fanatical groups who base their actions on a distorted interpretation of their religion. The idea that we will sail into Heaven by default simply because we have had a life of struggle and hardship is an illusion too. Nature would not work if it was not based on reality and our Nature has to be reality-based too in order to function. The reality that is inside will be externalised for all to see when our life comes to an end. When I set off on my journey through Consciousness more than forty years ago, I was not aware that anything other than the physical world existed. My spiritual practice started when a friend suggested I try meditation to deal with stress and depression. Very soon I became fascinated by the history and origin of this ancient practice and I embarked on a powerful inner quest to find the Source of my very being. I have been steadfast in my quest. As a result I have received the greatest blessings any human being could wish for. On the way I have been handed many gifts that have become part of my path and have resulted in these reports. I have also discovered that the ancient texts, testifying that we are rooted in a state of unifying Universal Consciousness, are true, not an ideal beyond our reach, but a state that can actually be experienced in the here and now of our physical reality. When I first read about the testimonies of the great sages as a young man, I always thought they were the privilege of a selected elite of spiritual giants, and never imagined they could be experienced by ordinary people like myself. I was wrong, and when I experienced it, I found that it was more a matter of recall, remembering that we are already connected to the inner Source. After I had total recall of it, it became permanently evidenced in my life, moment by moment, renewed every second without repeats; a profound stillness and presence formed every breath I take. An awakened and illuminated life is our natural blueprint as human beings and a state we are meant to inherit. Our fixation on the external world and our interpretation of it are no more than a dream. Reality is a state rooted in the Stillness of Being and exceeds all boundaries. All actions rising from the Stillness are actions that enrich us and the world. Meditation allows us to wake up from our self-absorbed dreams, not only the dreams we chase during our waking life, but also from the dreams Nature offers to us at night. We can become lucid within our dreams and begin to glimpse eternal and infinite vistas stretching out before us, knowing, no matter how far we walk, we will always just be at a new beginning and a new adventure. The most powerful aspect on our journey is being filled by the energy that creates all that exists on every level and dimension and in every universe that has ever existed or will exist. It is the aspect of love. It is love that reunites people after they have been separated by death. The closest we come to a person we may have lost is via love. The best way to heal after a loved one is lost, is to love. It is also the best and most effective way to reconnect with them after they have gone. Love is the short-cut into the higher realms of non­physical reality and the passport into the pleasant lands of the higher realms. As I get closer to the next leg of my journey, I can’t even begin to imagine where it will take me, what other galaxies await me in the next dimension, let alone in the much loftier dimensions beyond. I know my journey has only just begun and wherever I am, I know that I am only at the very beginning of an infinite journey; perhaps, with every staging post, I will rise higher and higher, knowing that even the ecstasies so far were only a prelude. What do we know of what lies even beyond our true Home? How do we know that what we consider to be God may not just be the entry level to an infinite realm of pure consciousness? How far does Consciousness reach? Is there a point at which consciousness turns into God or can the atheist and theist travel along the infinite road side by side united in the experience that they are not separated at all. When we use language to talk about things beyond language, we create an abstraction of the experiences which quickly becomes a belief. The only option to us is the experience of it where the words only serve as a vehicle to lead to the experience. If the experiences tells us about God, the fountainhead of love and creation, so be it, if it tells us about absolute clarity and light, the fountainhead of love and creation, so be it. There are mystery schools which teach that there are many more regions beyond what we have explored so far, with many more levels of consciousness which go further and deeper than this book can explore. I have always been reluctant to refer to the unspeakable as God, because I have always felt I was in no position to speak its name, because I feel the ultimate reality cannot be named, cannot be put into words as it is unfathomable. I prefer to call it the Unknown, the Unknowable, the Source, the Singularity, because I suspect that, when I have climbed the mountain top, I may find I have only reached the foothills of a greater mountain yet to be climbed. In the meantime I am a traveller of the cosmic lands, the vistas of infinity. I may walk in the shadows of the hills, shielded from the light of a glorious sun, and wait until it calls my name. Until then I am happy and grateful to be sustained by its presence and its stillness, knowing that every breath I take, moment by moment, is not my breath but the breath of its energy, and what I view around me are its infinite vistas. The End FurtherStudy – Meditation: Yogani: Spinal Breathing Pranayama – Journey to Inner Space Yogani: Deep Meditation – Pathway to Personal Freedom WilliamBodri, Lee Shu-Mei: Twenty-Five Doors to Meditation: A Handbook for Entering Samadhi Pema Chödrön: How to Meditate: A Practical Guide to Making Friends with Your Mind FurtherStudy – Out-of-Bodyexploration: WilliamBuhlman: Adventures Beyond the Body: How to Experience Out-of-Body Travel Frederick Aardema: Explorations in Consciousness: A New Approach to Out-Of-Body Experiences Frederick Aardema: Focus 10: Mind Awake / Body Asleep BobPeterson: Out-of-Body Experiences: How to Have Them and What to Expect D. Scott Rogo: Leaving the Body Free Downloads: Michael Raduga: The Phase, Lucid dreams and OBEs: http://obe4u.com/nature_of_obe_and_lucid_dreaming/free-ebook/ Ryan Tasker: www.unlimitedboundaries.ca FurtherStudy – LucidDreaming: RobertWaggoner: Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self RobertWaggonerandCaroline McCready: Lucid Dreaming, Plain And Simple: Tips and Techniques for Insight, Creativity, and Personal Growth Charlie Morley: Lucid Dreaming: A Beginner’s Guide to Becoming Conscious in Your Dreams Stephen LaBerge: Exploring the World of Lucid Dreams OtherBooks byJurgenZiewe Multidimensional Man (Out of Body Experiences -previous lives -after life and higher dimensions not covered in Vistas of Infinity) The Ten Minute Moment (Jounals of intensive meditation during a solitary retreat leading to an experience of oneness and continuous awakening) Formore information: www.multidimensionalman.com – www.vistasofinfinity.com www.lightandmagic.co.uk – www.thetenminutemoment.com