My rationale is based on the following premises which I've concluded for myself to be immutable truth:

1) Time is simultaneous, and I would venture to say that even the experience of time is not experienced the same after "death" as it is now (it certainly isn't in the dream state). Therefore, there is no such thing, in a true sense, as "in between."

2) Experience is never ending and there is purpose in all experience. Therefore, one can waste neither experience nor "time."

Could be true & actually I whole heartily agree that at the center of it all Time does not exist. It is man made & in reality there is only the here & now. As for whether or not it is experienced the same after death we will only know for sure when we experience it.

Then again we could say that man made time is just a tool to make it easier to express what we are trying to say.

Like the example you called this on....The Arhats waiting as little as possible in between incarnations. Otherwise how could they describe the shorter route?

Sure no time but even now we are not able to describe anything we experience without some degree of measure. Albeit just to be clearly understood.

PS: You spoke of the dream state.....That in itself is a very interesting subject isn't it? In the past when I kept records of dreams it occurred to me that many times what I wrote or thought I remembered was really just a simple interpretation.

I think it was the only way to describe as close as possible what had actually occurred.

Just a few comments:

For whatever reason we have come to believe that the environment we find ourselves in after death is barred to us as long as we are corporeal. I would say, not at all.

I believe our particular experience with time is due not merely to our conceptual idea of it but also because our physical structure (our body) is itself geared specifically for that type of experience. Which would explain why we would not be able to take our bodies with us if we wanted to experience alternate realities where other operative premises are "native."

Dreams are indeed interesting . . . and much more. I think that we know very little about the many states of consciousness which are available for us to experience in the here and now and in dreams we experience many altered states. I believe you are quite correct in your observation that our dream experiences are interpreted by our conscious waking selves out of necessity, since many of them, I believe, take place on levels that would be quite foreign to our waking consciousness. It's been said that from the perspective of our dreaming selves we are the dreamer!

Tippaporn, have you ever read any Carlos Castaneda? He is/was an anthropologist and spent alot of time with Yaqi Indian shaman learning the use of peyote and mesqualine to conduct astral travel.

It's interesting.

Tippaporn, have you ever read any Carlos Castaneda? He is/was an anthropologist and spent alot of time with Yaqi Indian shaman learning the use of peyote and mesqualine to conduct astral travel.

It's interesting.

Funny you should ask, Harcourt. A friend of mine handed me The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui way of Knowledge when I was 19. After that I've never looked back.

I've read quite a few of your posts and enjoy your inquisitiveness immensely. Reminds me of me. You do come across as being rather astute. Never stop questioning. And don't be afraid to be somewhat surprised at the answers that you may find. You will find yourself very far Outside Of The Box. Of course, I deem that to be a good thing.

BTW, in reference to Castaneda, properly that's "was." He moved on, shall we say, in 1998.

Just a few comments:

For whatever reason we have come to believe that the environment we find ourselves in after death is barred to us as long as we are corporeal. I would say, not at all.

I believe our particular experience with time is due not merely to our conceptual idea of it but also because our physical structure (our body) is itself geared specifically for that type of experience. Which would explain why we would not be able to take our bodies with us if we wanted to experience alternate realities where other operative premises are "native."

Dreams are indeed interesting . . . and much more. I think that we know very little about the many states of consciousness which are available for us to experience in the here and now and in dreams we experience many altered states. I believe you are quite correct in your observation that our dream experiences are interpreted by our conscious waking selves out of necessity, since many of them, I believe, take place on levels that would be quite foreign to our waking consciousness. It's been said that from the perspective of our dreaming selves we are the dreamer!

Agree again....I guess the sticking point is convincing yourself let alone other of that experience.

It is hard to explain but a good for instance is meditation.

What could be simpler than sitting still...then stilling your mind? Not easy at all to those who have attempted. Yet after awhile? Even when you reach a spot of no thought...When your done your not positive in your conscious self of what happened or how long ( I know no time ) you were in that state or did you just fall asleep

Anyway you probably know it is not a subject for words.

That aside I saw you & Harcourt mention the Yaki way of knowledge

I read all his books 30 or more years ago. But some of the best things I read back then were by folks like Madame Blavatsky & C.W Ledbetter also Annie Besant. So many good authors.

Tippaporn, have you ever read any Carlos Castaneda? He is/was an anthropologist and spent alot of time with Yaqi Indian shaman learning the use of peyote and mesqualine to conduct astral travel.

It's interesting.

Funny you should ask, Harcourt. A friend of mine handed me The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui way of Knowledge when I was 19. After that I've never looked back.

I've read quite a few of your posts and enjoy your inquisitiveness immensely. Reminds me of me. You do come across as being rather astute. Never stop questioning. And don't be afraid to be somewhat surprised at the answers that you may find. You will find yourself very far Outside Of The Box. Of course, I deem that to be a good thing.

BTW, in reference to Castaneda, properly that's "was." He moved on, shall we say, in 1998.

Harcourt has certainly been a constructive addition to the forum.

Agree again....I guess the sticking point is convincing yourself let alone others of that experience.

It is hard to explain but a good for instance is meditation.

What could be simpler than sitting still...then stilling your mind? Not easy at all to those who have attempted. Yet after awhile? Even when you reach a spot of no thought...When your done your not positive in your conscious self of what happened or how long ( I know no time ) you were in that state or did you just fall asleep

Anyway you probably know it is not a subject for words.

That aside I saw you & Harcourt mention the Yaki way of knowledge

I read all his books 30 or more years ago. But some of the best things I read back then were by folks like Madame Blavatsky & C.W Ledbetter also Annie Besant. So many good authors.

Morpheus: You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

The issue most will run across after delving into the less common realms of knowledge is that it's akin to taking the red pill. Once you do you can never go back. And the rabbit hole is deep! Convincing yourself isn't necessarily easy as we are all skeptics. There comes a point, though, at least for me, where the evidence becomes so overwhelming that there's little point in trying to deny it. And I would not recommend trying to convince others . . . at least not in a point blank fashion. Then again, there's no need to try to convince others.

I, too, read Castaneda over 30 years ago. As the material wasn't conducive to be self-instructional his works did intrigue me enough to search further. Shortly thereafter I came across the Seth works by Jane Roberts and her husband, Robert Butts. I consider those works to be the most definitive collection of alternate knowledge available thus far. The range of material and the depths to which Seth explains the subject matter is truly phenomenal. Certainly not for everyone, especially those who do not enjoy the foundations of their conventional world views to be rattled.

As far as related movies go I thought one which came closest to bringing up a key premise of how reality truly operates is The Sphere (1998). Here's a portion of the synopsis:

Eventually, only Harry, Norman, and Beth remain. At this point, they realize that they have all entered the sphere, which has given them the power to manifest their thoughts into reality.

As far as I am concerned manifesting our thoughts into reality is precisely what we do . . . all of the time. Whether we recognize it or not, accept it or not, doesn't change the reality of it. Unfortunately, as with most Hollywood movies that touch upon greater truths to whatever extent they always play it out on the dark side. Another portion of The Sphere synopsis:

As such, all of the disasters that had been plaguing them are the result of manifestations of the worst parts of their own minds.

I guess it's easier for the writers to imagine and write about scenarios in which the worst thoughts we humans can hold and entertain are played out. The world has many examples of these. It would be much more difficult to imagine and describe what manifestations would take place if only our most noble and beneficial thoughts were entertained. Not too many touchstones to reference there.

Harcourt has certainly been a constructive addition to the forum.

Overall, I think this forum has a good deal of excellent posters. After a two-year layoff from posting I was pleased to see the addition of this sub forum.

I wanted to add this thought at this time: We are not our ideas. Ideas are the tools we use to create. Who we are is something different. I just wanted to mention that because if the point is well understood then no one would ever feel the need to defend an idea to the death. The interchanges would become much more playful, which, IMHO is the way it was meant to be.

As far as I am concerned manifesting our thoughts into reality is precisely what we do . . . all of the time.

Tuu Tong

I must say I had to read some of the replies a few times as I had a bit of a hard time what was actually said or what it meant but that has all to do with me not being a native speaker and having to deal with other people that also do not have English as their first language, never mind I enjoy reading them.

Anyway I see some of you named a few books that mention the use of substances that alter the state of mind and I am curious if any of you have ever tried and what your experience was.

I have experimented a lot with various substances in the past and I must say I had some amazing experiences specially after consuming "The Flesh Of God's"

First of all when being in another state of mind, time does not exists. What exists is you or a "world" you are watching. It is a bit hard to explain in words but I can tell you that a friend of me and I had the same "Sight" on one occasion and we where not staying together just in the same place, we exchanged our experiences after and were surprised we did see, heard and experienced the same "World"

Our friend who was not under any mind altering influence at all assured us that what we described was not what he experienced. But then how could it be that two persons describe the same scene without talking to each other.

The next day a girl that was a friend of a friend of me asked me to hold one of her bracelets and asked me to tell what I felt or could see. I took the bracelet and after a while I saw images of her, parts of a movie that showed her life and I even experienced her giving birth to her first child which was rather painful.

She was shocked when I told and so was I when she confirmed that what I described did actually happened.

I just wonder when observing newborns where their character comes from. This is for humans as well as animals.

In Fiji, we often partook of kava which gives a very mellow feeling. Muscle relaxant and slightly psychotropic.

It takes a fair amount of drinking to get "drunk" but your lips will get a bit numb from the first cup, if it's strong enough.

Rebellious youths in Samoa mix it with dried crushed papaya root and get quite spaced out....I have not tried that.

What I did try though, in conjunction with kava was magic mushrooms....the "blue top" that always grow in old cow dung. I'd had a few bowls of kava, not enough to do anything, and a small bunch of mushrooms, again not enough to do anything....but the combination (or perhaps the shrooms WERE enough) gave me an experience that is as vivid in my memory today as it was experienced then.

Coconut trees in the plantation are planted about 10 or 15 metres apart. These trees are decades old and stand at least 20 metres tall. As real as I am sitting here now typing, I was walking through the plantation with an arm around each coconut tree on each side of me, peering over the tops of them at the sea. I was a 25 metre tall giant.

Kava is legal everywhere (I assume) and so I'm suprised that it's use hasn't spread to Asia and Africa. It became a problem with Australian Aborigines (I'm sure it was not a real problem but some politicians deemed it so) and so now it is not permitted to be imported and only carried over the border in amounts less than 1 kg unless you get a permit for special cultural reasons (A Tongan funeral, for example).

The price has skyrocketed since pharmaceutical companies started using an extrct from it for "natural" sleeping tablets.

I think it would thrive in Southern Thailand. It's of the pepper family, "piper xxxxoknljh somethingorother".

Piper methysticum.

Wiki's article on Kava is informative.

While growing up in the States during the late 60's and early 70's drug culture I certainly did my share of mind-altering drugs. While I was never a heavy user I consider myself to have been more of a lightweight experimenter. I was much less involved than many of my friends, some of whom would go off on weekend long binges. None among us ever experienced an OD, though. We did manage to keep our heads about us rather well throughout it all.

Of all the types of drugs I experienced (and there weren't too many of them) the two I enjoyed the most were natural. For a while we had access to mushrooms from the cow fields of northern Florida. Also, one of our acquaintances introduced me to peyote. I found both to be highly enjoyable yet I never experienced any mind-blowing event of the type which many described during those times. My only purpose in ever taking drugs was to have fun and I limited myself to just enough to get off and no more. And fun I did have.

What I've learned about purposeful mind altering since is that it needn't be drug induced at all. There are in fact drawbacks with drug induced methods. But this has much to do with an understanding of who we are and the awareness that the world, or reality, that we experience is merely one of, well, an infinite number. We obviously alter our consciousness every time we fall to sleep and experience realities other than our waking one each and every night; and appear to be disinterested in what is really happening there.

The Seth works I've mentioned previously go into great detail explaining not only who we are, our waking reality and describing some of the many others that exist but encourages the reader to experience alternate realities by the only means possible to us . . . altering the state of our consciousness. Many exercises are given to achieve quite natural altered states. The purpose given, though, is not merely for fun and games but as a meaningful exploration of ourselves. After all, there is much more to us than what is reflected in the mirror. And what might that be? That is for us to discover, if we so chose.

As this is related, my mother is currently on her "way out." She is here and not here, in a conscious sense. My brother and sister are quite concerned over the fact that she seems "delusional" at many times. They are scared that she may drift away permanently and continually attempt to "pull her back." What I know to be really happening to her is that she is merely changing the focus of her consciousness. She will "pop in" to be among us in our agreed upon reality and then she "pops out" to be elsewhere, all the while being awake in the here and now. What she sees and experiences when she drifts away is not delusional but in fact quite real. She is focusing less and less in this world and more so in another as she is ready to move on elsewhere. Actually, I'm quite happy for her. There is no such thing as "death" but merely a transition to something else. My turn will come as well, as it will for all of us, but to me death is not an ending but a new beginning on our continuing journey through eternity.

Just an after thought I had since I touched upon the topic of death but I wanted to offer another view about death and this life we are all so familiar with that I know will seem to be somewhat (huge understatement? ) of a foreign notion to many. As time is a physical construct and not a condition of all realities then our familiar lives are in a sense never-ending as well. That may be a concept that would be a bit difficult to grasp yet I would claim that our current lives are also eternal. The reality of our existence, any existence we may experience, is never extinguished. Call the above my personal beliefs but to me it is the way it is.

Just an after thought I had since I touched upon the topic of death but I wanted to offer another view about death and this life we are all so familiar with that I know will seem to be somewhat (huge understatement? ) of a foreign notion to many. As time is a physical construct and not a condition of all realities then our familiar lives are in a sense never-ending as well. That may be a concept that would be a bit difficult to grasp yet I would claim that our current lives are also eternal. The reality of our existence, any existence we may experience, is never extinguished. Call the above my personal beliefs but to me it is the way it is.

That's a concept verisimmilar to the eternal soul concept.

Where I have difficulty with it is with the numbers: 1000 years ago, when there was half as many corporeal bodies on earth as there is now, and assuming each one has an eternal "soul", where did the all the extra "souls" that exist today come from, and where will all the extra "souls" of the future bigger population come from? There either has to be a finite number of "souls", or an infinite number or "souls". There's logistical problems with either scenario.

Or if the population of "souls" was graphically displayed, would the graph look like a mobius strip? No begining and no end.......this implies a finite number.

What I've learned about purposeful mind altering since is that it needn't be drug induced at all.

I grew up in the same time period as you.

What you describe above was I think the biggest benefit to drugs of that era.

It opened a door & let you have a peek. After that it was apparent to many that you in fact have the ability to see whats on that other side without the drugs like you said.

Sadly many did not realize that & through the repeated use of drugs trying to *see* they literally broke the hinges off that door & their conscious mind.

There either has to be a finite number of "souls", or an infinite number or "souls". There's logistical problems with either scenario.

I believe an infinite number of "souls" would be correct. Perhaps a good analogy would be numbers themselves. They are infinite while existing in a "space" based reality. If "space" is limited where do they all fit? Well, they obviously don't take up any space whatsoever since numbers are not physical. Would it be any different for "souls?" Of course that would imply that for "souls" to not take up space they cannot be physical in nature. Would that be closer to the truth?

What I've learned about purposeful mind altering since is that it needn't be drug induced at all.

I grew up in the same time period as you.

What you describe above was I think the biggest benefit to drugs of that era.

It opened a door & let you have a peek. After that it was apparent to many that you in fact have the ability to see whats on that other side without the drugs like you said.

Sadly many did not realize that & through the repeated use of drugs trying to *see* they literally broke the hinges off that door & their conscious mind.

So true, flying. Drugs certainly gave me a peek . . . and made me very curious, too.

Makes me recall, now, what I considered to be one the best parts of some of the trips I took . . . for a certain period, usually just as you were getting off, there wasn't anything you could look at or think about that wasn't outrageously hilarious. We'd look at each other with shitty grins on our faces and start busting out laughing. Couldn't stop if you wanted to . . . which we didn't.

So true, flying. Drugs certainly gave me a peek . . . and made me very curious, too.

Makes me recall, now, what I considered to be one the best parts of some of the trips I took . . . for a certain period, usually just as you were getting off, there wasn't anything you could look at or think about that wasn't outrageously hilarious. We'd look at each other with shitty grins on our faces and start busting out laughing. Couldn't stop if you wanted to . . . which we didn't.

LOL..... Very true

Truth is the downhill side of it was always better. The uphill was almost always uncontrollable like the example you gave. But after the peak it was ....very interesting/useful if you were inclined to wonder/ponder about various things

flying, I'm sure you remember, too, while tripping of being very conscious of the fact that if you held a train of thought and it changed for whatever reason, perhaps just by moving your head in another direction, you could not recall what the hel_l you were thinking of before to save your life.

flying, I'm sure you remember, too, while tripping of being very conscious of the fact that if you held a train of thought and it changed for whatever reason, perhaps just by moving your head in another direction, you could not recall what the hel_l you were thinking of before to save your life.

hahahah yes true but....I will admit my main trips were usually with the same couple of pals. We were very into investigating,,,invariably it would start with someone saying ask me anything....LOL

But yes as soon as we were off on the next investigation/experiment/question none would recall the previous great realization.

Boy you have me recalling so many funny experiences now that I think back.

OK, you two guys, Flying and Tippaporn, I'm not trying to find fault or flaw, but I am curious to hear from you your reasons or evidence that tripping memories are not simply the memories of a brain affected by halucinagenic drugs and are thus are ONLY memories of halucinations.

My mushroom and kava "trip" where I was a 25 metre giant, was plainly an halucination......what makes your experiences "actual"?

OK, you two guys, Flying and Tippaporn, I'm not trying to find fault or flaw, but I am curious to hear from you your reasons or evidence that tripping memories are not simply the memories of a brain affected by halucinagenic drugs and are thus are ONLY memories of halucinations.

My mushroom and kava "trip" where I was a 25 metre giant, was plainly an halucination......what makes your experiences "actual"?

I'll venture an answer. With a question . . .

What is a hallucination?

And a comment . . .

Despite the fact that we know nothing of where we were before we came here, let alone where we will go once we depart (at least nothing we can "prove" to be true to the satisfaction of even one other), despite the fact that we spend a third of our lives with our waking consciousness "turned off," despite the fact that we are nearly completely clueless as to anything else that may exist outside of our cozy and familiar little world, despite the fact that we tend to have, for the most part, an overwhelmingly nagging suspicion that some "higher power/authority/father/what-have-you" exists, we still maintain a fondness ( ) for believing that any experience we may have which we are incapable of fitting into the context of our normal, waking reality is . . . rubbish.

A particular quote comes to mind (I can't remember the source of the quote, which I've tried to Google many times, but I am tempted to say Mark Twain): "The problem ain't so much what we don't know but what we think we know that just ain't so." I, for one, immensely appreciate the irony.

And a definition . . .

hal⋅lu⋅ci⋅na⋅tion  [huh-loo-suh-ney-shuhn]

–noun

1. a sensory experience of something that does not exist outside the mind, caused by various physical and mental disorders, or by reaction to certain toxic substances, and usually manifested as visual or auditory images.

2. the sensation caused by a hallucinatory condition or the object or scene visualized.

3. a false notion, belief, or impression; illusion; delusion.

4. a false perception that appears to be real, as when, for example, a man dying of thirst in a desert thinks that he sees a lake. (See also delusion.)

Origin:

1640–50; < L hallūcinātiōn- (s. of (h)allūcinātiō) a wandering of the mind.

And my answer (belief)?

The experiences are real and possess their own validity. Granted, the focus of your consciousness was altered at the time of your kava-induced "trip." As it is when you sleep. As it will be when you die. As flying remarked during our exchange of our drug-day remembrances, and I concurred, drugs gave us a peek into other states of consciousness which, once experienced, cannot be denied their existence. Well, I'll at least speak for myself here.

What if during an altered state of mind, the mind is altered to be able to receive different forms of energy/wave-patterns which are then translated by the brain into visuals and sometimes sound?

I am not talking of blurry visions but experiencing a different world.

If one assumes that a spirit/soul is a form of energy that exists in a place we do not really have discovered and proven yet (in the Western way of thinking).

Think of wireless data transfer for example, you can send pictures taken from your camera onto the HD of your computer that then needs some other program to make these pictures visible.

What if I could be able to see the actual pictures while they are transmitted through the air without the help of the receiving computer.

What if when someone dies the soul/energy leaving the body is transmitted to another place where that energy is stored in a frequency we have not discovered yet.

My experience (without using drugs) of the story I told about my father, to me indicates something like this happens when someones body cease to function.

(The part of the increasing souls/energy/population I have not figured out yet, ha ha).

Take care all!

Alex, there's alot of "what if's" in my mind too, lol.

What I will suggest is that altered states of mind, drug-induced or otherwise, give one a peek at reality, THIS reality, but from a different perspective.

The altered state of mind ALSO gives one fantasy. Figments of the imagination.

Whether or not the altered state of mind gives one a peek into ANOTHER reality.....my jury is still out.

The saving grace for this idea is, funnily enough, the Hadron Collider and the very reason it was built.

E=Mc2 does NOT work in the models for the smallest particle.

Science CAN NOT explain everything.

There's also the reality of experiences of precognition and deja vu that were mentioned in this thread.

Seeing a future situation, or a past that you have no obvious connection with, is inexplicable....unless you take a stance that it is somewhat like what the main character in Frank Herbert's (??) Dune series does.....there's nothing paranormal or ex-reality in his ability to "see" the future, the past, or the present at a different point in space; he has, with the assistance of a mind-altering substance, the ability to correlate and extrapolate all the real information in his head. IE, he is only using information that he already has, but is processing it much more effectively than a normal brain, functioning normally can.

Also, just like saying having sex with very fat women is OK, I have to say, "Don't knock it till you've tried it".....therefore I will not try to refute the ideas put forward here, just investigate further.

Makes you wonder doesn't it?

I mean even if you dont call it realities but say awareness is heightened that is surely plausible no?

After all it has been said many times but what percentage of our brain do we use/have access to in a normal state?

Why do some possess what I think Alex is saying....aka: Clairvoyance, Clairaudience, Clairalience , Claircognizance etc. & some do not?

Is it that the rest do not possess it or just do not have or know how to access it?

I think all children have these abilities initially..

Many times I think children raised in an environment where these things are considered common/normal tend to have continued access to those faculties ( folks usually assume because they are children of psychic parents etc ) Where as children raised in environments that teach only common reason & logic loose that access. Perhaps due to lack of use?

Does make me wonder & like Tip mentioned once you have a peek it is hard to deny. Of course if the peek is through drug use you will have that question in the back of your mind later as to whether it was valid or not. But if you took that peek & studied it after then perhaps you have come to other conclusions & feel it is all very valid.

The fact that Harcourt had a OOBE while on Kava & now questions if it was a hallucination.

Well from my perspective of course to your waking mind logic tell you you were never 25m tall & physically I would agree.

But I know for a fact your awareness could have temporarily been from a 25m tall perspective.

I know folks who have done experiments with OOBE's & while sleeping go to another room & see & remember a target. So I know awareness can move outside the confines of your body.

One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Here's a passage out of "The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events," one of the books by Seth/Jane Roberts, a chapter entitled "The Mechanics of Experience," which somewhat succinctly epitomizes the directions that my mind has stretched to:

Your world and everything in it exists first in the imagination. You have been taught to focus all of your attention upon physical events, so that they carry the authenticity of reality for you. Thoughts, feelings, or beliefs appear to be secondary, subjective - or somehow not real - and they seem to rise in response to an already established field of physical data.

You usually think, for example, that your feelings about a given event are primarily reactions to the event itself. It seldom occurs to you that the feelings themselves might be primary, and that the particular event was somehow a response to your emotions, rather than the other way around. The all-important matter of your focus is largely responsible for your interpretation of any event.

For an exercise, then, imagine for a while that the subjective world of your thoughts, feelings, inner images and fantasies represent the "rockbed reality" from which individual physical events emerge. Look at the world for a change from the inside out, so to speak. Imagine that physical experience is somehow the materialization of your own subjective reality. Forget what you have learned about reactions and stimuli. Ignore for a time everything you have believed and see your thoughts as the real events. Try to view normal physical occurrences as the concrete physical reactions in space and time to your own feelings and beliefs. For indeed your subjective world causes your physical experience.

In titling this chapter I used the word "mechanics," because mechanisms suggest smooth technological workings. While the world is not a machine - it's inner workings are such that no technology could ever copy them - this involves a natural mechanics in which the inner dimensions of consciousness everywhere emerge to form a materialized, cohesive, physical existence. Again, your interpretations of identity teach you to focus awareness in such a way that you cannot follow the strands of consciousness that connect you with all portions of nature. In a way, the wolrd is like a multidimensional, exotic plant growing in space and time. Each thought, dream, imaginative encounter, hope or fear, growing naturally into it's own bloom - a plant of incredible variety, never for a moment the same, in which each smallest root, leaf, stem, or flower has a part to play and is connected to the whole.

Even those of you who intellectually agree that you form your own reality find it difficult to accept emotionally in certain areas. You are, of course, literally hypnotized into believing that your feelings arise in response to events. Your feelings, however, cause the events you perceive. Secondarily, you do of course then react to those events.

You have been taught that your feelings must necessarily be tied to specific physical happenings. You may be sad because a relative has died, for example, or because you have lost a job, or because you have been rebuffed by a lover, or for any number of other accepted reasons. You are told that your feelings must be in response to events that are happening, or have happened. Often, of course, your feelings "happen ahead of time," because those feelings are the initial realities from which events flow.

It is somewhat of a psychological trick, in your day and age, to come to the realization that you do in fact form your experience and your world, simply because the weight of evidence seems (underlined twice) to be so loaded at the other end, because of your habits of perception. The realization is like one that comes at one time or another to many people in the dream state, when suddenly they "awaken" while still in the dream, realizing first of all that they are dreaming, and secondarily that they are themselves creating the experienced drama.

To understand that you create your own reality requires that same kind of "awakening" from the normal awake state - at least for many people. Some of course have this knack more than others. The realization itself does indeed change "the rules of the game" as far as you are concerned to a considerable degree. There are reasons why I am mentioning this now rather than in earlier books. Indeed, our books follow their own rythyms, and this one is in a way a further elaboration upon the "Nature of Personal Reality."

As long as you believe that either good events or bad ones are meted out by a personified God as the reward or punishment for your actions, or on the other hand that events are largely meaningless, chaotic, subjective knots in the tangled web of an accidental Darwinian world, then you cannot consciously understand your own creativity, or play the role in the universe that you are capable of playing as individuals or as a species. You will instead live in a world where events happen to you, in which you must do sacrifice to the gods of one kind or another, or see yourselves as victims of an uncaring nature.

While still preserving the integrity of physical events as you understand them, each of you must alter the focus of your attention to some extent, so that you begin to perceive the connections between your subjective reality at any given time, and those events that you perceive at any given time. You are the initiator of those events.

This recognition does indeed invlove a new performance on the part of your own consciousness, a mental and imaginative leap that gives you control and direction over achievements that you have always performed, though without your conscious awareness.

As mentioned before, early man had such an identification of subjective and objective realities. As a species, however, you have developed what can almost be called a secondary nature - a world of technology in which you also now have your existence, and complicated social structures have emerged from it. To develop that kind of structure necessitated a division between subjective and objective worlds. Now, however, it is highly important that you realize your position, and accomplish the manipulation of consciousness that will allow you to take true conscious responsibility for your actions and experience.

You can "come awake" from your normal waking state, and that is the natural next step for consciousness to follow - one for which your biology has already equipped you. Indeed, each person does attain that recognition now and then. It brings triumphs and challenges as well. In those areas of life where you are satisfied, give yourselves credit, and in those areas where you are not, remind yourselves that you are involved in a learning process; you are daring enough to accept responsibility for your actions.

Let us look more clearly, however, at the ways in which your private world cause your daily experience, and how it merges with the experience of others . . . .

Food for thought . . .

Makes you wonder doesn't it?

I mean even if you dont call it realities but say awareness is heightened that is surely plausible no?

After all it has been said many times but what percentage of our brain do we use/have access to in a normal state?

Why do some possess what I think Alex is saying....aka: Clairvoyance, Clairaudience, Clairalience , Claircognizance etc. & some do not?

Is it that the rest do not possess it or just do not have or know how to access it?

I think all children have these abilities initially..

Many times I think children raised in an environment where these things are considered common/normal tend to have continued access to those faculties ( folks usually assume because they are children of psychic parents etc ) Where as children raised in environments that teach only common reason & logic loose that access. Perhaps due to lack of use?

Does make me wonder & like Tip mentioned once you have a peek it is hard to deny. Of course if the peek is through drug use you will have that question in the back of your mind later as to whether it was valid or not. But if you took that peek & studied it after then perhaps you have come to other conclusions & feel it is all very valid.

The fact that Harcourt had a OOBE while on Kava & now questions if it was a hallucination.

Well from my perspective of course to your waking mind logic tell you you were never 25m tall & physically I would agree.

But I know for a fact your awareness could have temporarily been from a 25m tall perspective.

I know folks who have done experiments with OOBE's & while sleeping go to another room & see & remember a target. So I know awareness can move outside the confines of your body.

Yep, I think that's all reasonable.

One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Here's a passage out of "The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events," one of the books by Seth/Jane Roberts, a chapter entitled "The Mechanics of Experience," which somewhat succinctly epitomizes the directions that my mind has stretched to:

Your world and everything in it exists first in the imagination. You have been taught to focus all of your attention upon physical events, so that they carry the authenticity of reality for you. Thoughts, feelings, or beliefs appear to be secondary, subjective - or somehow not real - and they seem to rise in response to an already established field of physical data.

You usually think, for example, that your feelings about a given event are primarily reactions to the event itself. It seldom occurs to you that the feelings themselves might be primary, and that the particular event was somehow a response to your emotions, rather than the other way around. The all-important matter of your focus is largely responsible for your interpretation of any event.

For an exercise, then, imagine for a while that the subjective world of your thoughts, feelings, inner images and fantasies represent the "rockbed reality" from which individual physical events emerge. Look at the world for a change from the inside out, so to speak. Imagine that physical experience is somehow the materialization of your own subjective reality. Forget what you have learned about reactions and stimuli. Ignore for a time everything you have believed and see your thoughts as the real events. Try to view normal physical occurrences as the concrete physical reactions in space and time to your own feelings and beliefs. For indeed your subjective world causes your physical experience.

In titling this chapter I used the word "mechanics," because mechanisms suggest smooth technological workings. While the world is not a machine - it's inner workings are such that no technology could ever copy them - this involves a natural mechanics in which the inner dimensions of consciousness everywhere emerge to form a materialized, cohesive, physical existence. Again, your interpretations of identity teach you to focus awareness in such a way that you cannot follow the strands of consciousness that connect you with all portions of nature. In a way, the wolrd is like a multidimensional, exotic plant growing in space and time. Each thought, dream, imaginative encounter, hope or fear, growing naturally into it's own bloom - a plant of incredible variety, never for a moment the same, in which each smallest root, leaf, stem, or flower has a part to play and is connected to the whole.

Even those of you who intellectually agree that you form your own reality find it difficult to accept emotionally in certain areas. You are, of course, literally hypnotized into believing that your feelings arise in response to events. Your feelings, however, cause the events you perceive. Secondarily, you do of course then react to those events.

You have been taught that your feelings must necessarily be tied to specific physical happenings. You may be sad because a relative has died, for example, or because you have lost a job, or because you have been rebuffed by a lover, or for any number of other accepted reasons. You are told that your feelings must be in response to events that are happening, or have happened. Often, of course, your feelings "happen ahead of time," because those feelings are the initial realities from which events flow.

It is somewhat of a psychological trick, in your day and age, to come to the realization that you do in fact form your experience and your world, simply because the weight of evidence seems (underlined twice) to be so loaded at the other end, because of your habits of perception. The realization is like one that comes at one time or another to many people in the dream state, when suddenly they "awaken" while still in the dream, realizing first of all that they are dreaming, and secondarily that they are themselves creating the experienced drama.

To understand that you create your own reality requires that same kind of "awakening" from the normal awake state - at least for many people. Some of course have this knack more than others. The realization itself does indeed change "the rules of the game" as far as you are concerned to a considerable degree. There are reasons why I am mentioning this now rather than in earlier books. Indeed, our books follow their own rythyms, and this one is in a way a further elaboration upon the "Nature of Personal Reality."

As long as you believe that either good events or bad ones are meted out by a personified God as the reward or punishment for your actions, or on the other hand that events are largely meaningless, chaotic, subjective knots in the tangled web of an accidental Darwinian world, then you cannot consciously understand your own creativity, or play the role in the universe that you are capable of playing as individuals or as a species. You will instead live in a world where events happen to you, in which you must do sacrifice to the gods of one kind or another, or see yourselves as victims of an uncaring nature.

While still preserving the integrity of physical events as you understand them, each of you must alter the focus of your attention to some extent, so that you begin to perceive the connections between your subjective reality at any given time, and those events that you perceive at any given time. You are the initiator of those events.

This recognition does indeed invlove a new performance on the part of your own consciousness, a mental and imaginative leap that gives you control and direction over achievements that you have always performed, though without your conscious awareness.

As mentioned before, early man had such an identification of subjective and objective realities. As a species, however, you have developed what can almost be called a secondary nature - a world of technology in which you also now have your existence, and complicated social structures have emerged from it. To develop that kind of structure necessitated a division between subjective and objective worlds. Now, however, it is highly important that you realize your position, and accomplish the manipulation of consciousness that will allow you to take true conscious responsibility for your actions and experience.

You can "come awake" from your normal waking state, and that is the natural next step for consciousness to follow - one for which your biology has already equipped you. Indeed, each person does attain that recognition now and then. It brings triumphs and challenges as well. In those areas of life where you are satisfied, give yourselves credit, and in those areas where you are not, remind yourselves that you are involved in a learning process; you are daring enough to accept responsibility for your actions.

Let us look more clearly, however, at the ways in which your private world cause your daily experience, and how it merges with the experience of others . . . .

Food for thought . . .

I'm replying off the cuff and will have to ponder this some more.....but my first reaction is one of unease....there seems to be a flaw in the ultimate logic.....something to do with if we are creating our own realities, why am I not reclining on a couch with 7 Thai virgins feeding me grapes and wine....and why are the proponants of this concept not reclining on a couch with 7 once-virgins complying with their every need?.....I want to re-read and ponder before I reply properly.

I've been having a bit of a think, with a bourbon or three and a smoke.

Cogito ergo sum came to mind. I think, therefore I am.

So why a purpose to every experience? If my "life", shall I say, "my being", is eternal, and my being occupies no space, why would I even bother to carry on?

It all sounds very self-fullfulling and self-serving.

Ironically, that doesn't matter....it's self-serving and self-fullfilling to follow or practice a self-serving and self fullfilling ideal or way of life or way of looking at life.

I'm not going to take the red pill yet. Need to cogitate.

Meh, meh, meh, I am not sure I can buy into that stuff by Oliver but I did manage to find something that could help in achieving your desires just by thinking of it. Have a look:

(I am thinking of having a sex robot in the future, ha ha ).

So with current technology we are able to capture activity/thoughts (of energy) in the human brain/mind that can successfully be translated into an equal action performed by some type of machinery through wireless transmission.

Harcourt was telling he had some kind of experience of being 25 foot tall and that is the same or similar experience I had when on my first mushroom experience. In short, a female friend of me administered a handful of pretzels (what I thought first) whilst being in a club. Being in places with a lot of people, there is a lot of noise and you really cannot distinguish the different conversations going on. But, after a while surprisingly I was able to filter this noise and separate it into different streams which I could listen to simultaneously, really weird. I asked my friend what she gave me as I could clearly feel a different sense of perception. So she told me she gave me some mushrooms and I decided It would be better to go home as I did know nothing about the effects it would cause. So while walking back I had to cross a big place in Haarlem called: De grote markt which is basically a big market square. The place is perhaps a hundred meter wide and I saw a couple sitting on some stairs. After that my vision changed and I looked at the place as if I was some giant. I realized this so I bended over to hear the conversation, once I heard the conversation I shrank to normal dimension and walked up to them asking if what I heard they talked about was true and they confirmed.

Very interesting I thought, so I went back home, went to bed and thought of my dreams when having fever. When I have fever dreams I always see lines moving across, some go left some go to the right but always the lines get smaller until they snap and I wake up.

Anyway a good explanation on different world can be seen here: