Lucid and Silly and a Blue House

[Beekeeper]

“Massage”
I wake at 4.13am because G is snoring. I’ve been dreaming that I’m out with a group of friends (recurring lately) and we have to separate. A woman (very like my friend Ruth from my former work) asks which of us wants to go with her for a massage. I volunteer enthusiastically and the rest of my friends go off where they were going – school, I think. Ruth and I walk up a few steps and into what feels like a hair saloon. She begins the massage, which is nice. When the snoring wakes me and I decide that, since I'm awake anyway, I’ll try the wake-back-to-bed method of lucid dreaming. I read for about an hour and then fell asleep on the lounge.

“Silliness and the Blue House.”
I have a false awakening type experience where my family seems to have woken up for the day. I’m pretty sure my niece, M, is present and maybe my sister J. They emerge from the bedroom areas of the house into the room where I’m sleeping.

My youngest son and I seem to be downstairs in the yoga room for a while and I explain that I’m lucid inside a dream. I don’t recall a lot about this part.

Then F and I sit outside on the front porch, still downstairs. A car pulls in next-door and two men hop out. I notice one is about 40, thin and bald. He looks at me oddly. F says hi to them, addressing them by name. In a moment of less lucidity, I’m slightly puzzled by how he knows their names, as I’ve never seen them before. Then I become clear again.

Now I find myself upstairs back on the lounge and again think I’m awake. Bella (my dog) comes into my room carrying one of the old barstools from the breaky-bar. I’m stunned to see her doing this and know again that I’m still dreaming. She climbs up on it and somehow falls asleep on it, although she’s much too big for that. I notice with curiosity that her rump seems to have lost its hair.

Now I’m in another scenario as the room fills up with neatly dressed, middle-class women, all about my age, as if for some sort of social gathering. I’m not at all confused about the fact I’m dreaming and I even wonder if it will be some sort of simulation. I decide to have some fun with it anyway. I run around pulling each woman by her feet onto the floor. None of them resists or protests. I sit on the floor with them and I’m still feeling somewhat mischievous so I try to get them to play pat a cake. They comply but, like children, they don’t know what rhyme they should use. I try to get them to use something rude and silly but it goes over their heads, as does my attempt to get them to use a more complicated type of hand pattern for the game, so we stick to basics. Even then I have trouble co-ordinating with the women either side of me.

It switches again and I’m by my computer now. There’s a complex document on my screen I haven’t seen before. I suspect the sound should be working but it’s not turned up. There’s the image of a man who appears to be an authority in the top right hand corner.

The scene alters again. I’m walking on a suburban road now. I feel briefly guilty for having so much fun, being silly in my lucid dreams which, to be honest, is a nice antidote for being serious and responsible so much of the time! Nonetheless, when I went to sleep there was a hurricane warning for North Queensland and poor Queensland really has had enough with the recent flooding. Subsequently, I found myself wondering if they were all right. While I’m in this thought, a person inside a blue house calls to me from the balcony. He invites me up and I’m delighted at the opportunity to fly.

I take off, totally exhilarated; really making sure I enjoy the sensation. I fly through their doorway. I’m going pretty fast and I know I should slow down if I want to appreciate what the interior of the house looks like but I’m just enjoying the freedom so much that I don’t. The interior is essentially a single, spiralling hallway of a deep cobalt blue. I zoom past occasional pieces of furniture placed against the walls and it’s quite dizzying. I start to realise how many components this dream has had and how, if I don’t wake up now, I’ll forget it. As it happens, G comes into the lounge room anyway and wakes me.

[eyeoneblack]

Hi, Beekeeper :). I'm curious about the guy in the blue house. Do you suppose he knew you were a 'dreamer' and that maybe he was too. It seems he may have EXPECTED you to fly to the balcony. And what a crazy spiralling house - like a fun house if you're a dreamer. The more the dream sequences advance it seems the more lucidly OBE you became.

Really cool.

[Beekeeper]

You're right. In the early sequences I was most likely aligning the astral and mental elementals, I feel (as represented by my sons and, often, my dog).

In recent dreams I've been working with my throat chakra. By doing so, I become able to communicate with dream facilitators/ guides at whatever level I'm working with (mental, I think). I have achieved such communication with dream guides but it's usually very brief, I'll post one below I haven't posted in the forums to show what I mean. Trying to co-ordinate the pat a cake game and the reference to the computer with the volume down were signs that I would still be working with the throat chakra in this dream. Being invited up into the blue house (throat chakra colour) and being capable of understanding and responding to the call was an indicator that things went well. :D


Thursday 10th June, 2010

I awake with pain, take some pain relief, return to bed sure that I’ll have a lucid dream. It begins in bed with G. I’m not sure what triggers my recognition that I’m dreaming but I do realise it and I think I try to tell G about it. I might waste a bit of time here, moving in and out of awareness. I do forget much of this part.

Next I remember that I’m in my eldest son F’s room. He’s awake and his bed is in the wrong place so that he’s able to sit opposite me and watch while I try to pass through his wall. I can’t but I know it’s just a mental block stopping me, so I ask F, “What do I do?” He seems to be doing math, so I say, “What’s the equation for passing through your wall?” He seems like he’s going to help me but he ultimately can’t remember or can’t express it.

I feel a sense of urgency because I don’t know how long I’ll be out so I decide to use a door and get free of the house. This I do and I’m immediately flying over the landscape. I fly for a while, appreciating the graphic imagery, when I decide I want to move away from Real Time Zone imagery (retrospectively, I’m not sure it was that realistic – I’m in a lucid dream but treating it like an out of body projection, which isn’t entirely the same). I declare my intention to go to the astral plane and begin flying upward at a 45 degree angle. Then I clarify that I go to a safe zone and with protection.

I’m not exactly sure at what junctions but at least 3 times I find myself losing clarity. Each time I look at my hands, which doesn’t do much, and spin, which helps a lot. The first time I spin I do it as you’d do it in real life with your feet but I quickly learn just to spin rapidly without sense of physical effort.

I find myself in an unfamiliar place where there is “staff”- a man and a woman. This time I’ve had no trouble entering through a wall. I pick up a small book, which I believe to be a guidebook but I can’t read it. As soon as I make out words that I can pronounce, like “Moir,” (but that make no sense so that I’m about to ask what they mean) they transmute into other words. I talk to the staff who are at the other end of a somewhat narrow room. The man stands at some type of counter that juts out of the wall and the woman seems to be in a supply room. I ask them if they’re guides. Initially they won’t answer me but eventually the male admits that their job is to guide. I’m uncertain if we talk much after this. Even though I typed the dream immediately upon waking, it was hard to recall all the detail. It seemed to go on for some time. I do remember they had a very small dog in their narrow offices (possibly on the counter) and I think I patted it just to experience the tactile impression, which, on this occasion, wasn’t very strong.

I decide to ascend again. So, I fly through a wall and there is a sense of ascending level after level, stopping in occasionally and then ascending again. I don’t remember all the details of whom I met, what I thought and what our encounters entailed.

I enter a more spacious area and just enjoy flying around for a bit. I meet a lot of former students who seem to be hotel staff. They tend to be humble, unassuming types. I fly past them and occasionally hover to engage in unremembered conversations. As has been a theme in most of my dreams lately, the last level I reach, which seems to be at the top of the large open space, involves a bed. I think I climb into a top bunk and there are staff in the room with me. I feel pretty sure I’m at the end of the dream now and will wake up shortly, which is in fact the case.


Looking back at this dream, it might in fact be the astral body that needs throat chakra development (though I do tend to associate my eldest son with mental body adventures). I don't seem to be very "far" from home.

[Beekeeper]

Just adding there was a precognitive component to this dream sequence. I just broke my speakers, having twiddled with them because they weren't working properly and leaving a small end bit in the sound jack (? sorry, I'm not technical at all when it comes to computers). Therefore, I cannot currently hear any sound on my computer. :(

[eyeoneblack]

I have thoughts on this, but for now...
___

That’s interesting about the computer without sound, dreaming it only to later experience it :lol:. I recently read an article in nature magazine that experimentally proves the brain of mice anticipates and records what it hasn’t encountered yet. The researchers call it PREPLAY as opposed to the brain remembering or replay. I’ll try to make some sense of it and post it to one of these boards.

Why didn’t you post this extraordinary experience (10.06.10) to the OBE forum? It’s really worth it and you’d get some serious feedback - better than what I can do. :( I have little different angle than what is generally accepted here, but I won’t let that stop me. :)


In the early sequences I was most likely aligning the astral and mental elementals, I feel (as represented by my sons and, often, my dog).

Hmm, I can’t make any sense of this at all. What is your understanding of elementals? Aren’t they basically nature spirits? I think that’s not what you mean. I’m just not familiar with your lingo.

[Beekeeper]

I was using a term Kurt Leland uses because I was attempting to apply his method of understanding to the experience. I'm referencing Charles, the entity Kurt channels. Used this way, the term means the body consciousness of each of your energy bodies. There's the physical elemental, made up of the physical cells of your body, the astral elemental, affecting your emotional development, the mental elemental, that is your intellect and your soul elemental that supports development from the highest. Each elemental is a separate consciousness and they need to be working together harmoniously. Sorry about that, I copied without reading beyond the bits I was looking to underline.


Why didn’t you post this extraordinary experience (10.06.10) to the OBE forum? It’s really worth it and you’d get some serious feedback - better than what I can do. I have little different angle than what is generally accepted here, but I won’t let that stop me.

I shared it with a few people here I know more intimately (and Oliver did give me an awesome analysis :lol:). I don't always post things to the forums, sometimes because they're too private but at other times because I get an apprehensive feeling that I've come to attend and respect. I tend to be very instinctive in some things, as I know you are too. :wink:

Your thoughts are welcome. :D

[eyeoneblack]

There's the physical elemental, made up of the physical cells of your body, the astral elemental, affecting your emotional development, the mental elemental, that is your intellect and your soul elemental that supports development from the highest. Each elemental is a separate consciousness and they need to be working together harmoniously.

I see :). That helps me understand a response Oliver gave me some time ago re a dream. I couldn’t respond to him when he suggested I had ventured into the 'mental' or something like that because I have too much respect for him to think he's bonkers :? . Only now can I make some sense of that. Leland and I think other genre writers are creating a new vernacular that is sometimes at odds with old school concepts. Really, I should be more current in my reading.

The traditional Eastern divisions of manifest reality are physical, etheric (sub), astral, mental, causal and Nirvana or Buddhic. These are distinct and separate realities and correspond well to the bardos of Tibetan afterlife. Being as this is prob more philosophy than science, nothing can’t be argued, but practically speaking one will not encounter the mental plane in the dream state. My foundation concerning OB is basically in Eastern thought and so I think you can understand how I got a kink in my brain ‘hearing’ you guys throw around mental as you do.

That said, I think Leland’s Charles presents a very useful idea once understood and I’m glad now to be able to better conceptualize your thoughts and responses on these threads. :)

[Korpo]

Hello, E1B.

The divisions Kurt makes in his new book are physical/etheric, astral, mental/causal, buddhic, nirvanic (atmic), monadic and divine planes, based on some variants of the theosophic model. Similarly there exist physical, etheric, astral, mental, causal, buddhic, nirvanic, monadic and divine bodies. Spiritual evolution makes more of the these vehicles available.

There's more to these levels than the afterlife, also we as living beings interact with them in various ways, especially if we have the intent to learn more about them, to grow spiritually, or even to share knowledge about these states with others. Kurt for example writes in his new book that he thinks that Monroe explored the mental body and the mental plane in "Far Journeys."

"Dream" is also a term we know very little about. We often qualify anything that doesn't involve a conscious exit as dream, and somehow think of it as lower experience. I do think that our consciousness will attain many states within its reach during the night and yet we may simply not know what is going on for lack of explanatory framework. There are few people who can render their adventures so clearly and with such a clear framework as Robert Monroe did.

Cheers,
Oliver

[eyeoneblack]

Right, it was 'atmic' I was trying to think of, I just didn't want to try to locate the book I was trying to remember this from :). But really, the mental is not to the causal as etheric is to the physical. Mental and Causal are quite distinct from each other and each constitutes a major division (according to my sources and my understanding).


Kurt for example writes in his new book that he thinks that Monroe explored the mental body and the mental plane in "Far Journeys."

Therein lies the rub. I can buy that but only under terms of a major concession. The Universe really is like Russian dolls, one inside another and another and another. Which is to say we must allow that the Astral contains within it all the divisions we've described. There must therefore be an astral physical, an astral astral, an astral mental, an astral causal etc etc. So to say Mr. Leland or any of us has explored the Mental, we should understand that to mean the Astral Mental.

This to my understanding is an inviolable truth plainly stated; if there are images, then it's the astral. It is in the astral that forms such as we can recognize are first conceived from the Light that is the source of all. Therefore to bring back a narrative of one's experience it should be presumed the experience pertained to the astral.

I began to wonder and be a little bothered about this stuff after I had made the grade of Adept in Kriya Yoga. It came about quite organically in that my particular school of Kriya flatly refused to investigate the level of the astral. We were cautioned to stay away from that at all costs. Of course you can guess what I thought about that bull :lol:. And as we pushed on to ever higher and more refined states of awareness (Buddha, Godhead, Black Buddha, White Island etc.) it occurred to me that ALL of our meditations really never left the Astral.

Then my Guide directed me (that's an important part of this) to a book I hadn't thought of in many years - Dante's The Divine Comedy. I realized then that even his 10 levels of Paradise (Paradiso) were merely the highest, loftiest regions of the astral and correlated fairly well to the states of awareness we sought in meditation.

Finally, a lot of things started falling into place for me. There's an old story, I can't remember where I first came across it, of a student meditating and then running to his Master and exclaiming that he had seen the Buddha. And the Master replied to the effect, "Just keep up your practice, son, and it will go away".

Aha, I finally got it! The vision of the Buddha was an image and therefore a product of the Astral which is just another realm of Illusion (Maya) which stands in the way of any aspirations to Union and Nirvana.

I'm really not trying to convince you of anything, Oliver, except that for me to be on the same page as you and others here I have to interpret some things somewhat differently than you and Leland and others.

That all said, we probably ought to return this thread to Beekeeper :lol:.

[CFTraveler]

There must therefore be an astral physical, an astral astral, an astral mental, an astral causal etc etc. There is something similar in Kurt's teachings about the planes, in the sense that every vehicle has all the characteristics of the plane according to where you are. He just refers to them as chakras in the body- just as chakras have the characteristics of each plane (first chakra being physical, second being astral, etc.) you can have active first and second chakras in the astral, then it being astral physical, astral astral, etc. depending on what you've developed.
But I agree, this needs to go back to BeeK.

[Korpo]

Hello, E1B.

You must have reasons why you think the an image is identical to having been in the astral. But it's like this: Even in my experiences sometimes there's the notion of myself creating the images so I can understand what happened to me and my consciousness. It's a process of translation.

Why would you think we can't go beyond the astral? Where's that from? Is it because Blavatsky used the term "astral" no matter what nonphysical state she described?

Cheers,
Oliver

[eyeoneblack]

I must confess I may be overly dogmatic about this astral/mental stuff. These beliefs formed so long ago it's hard to think just who I was reading and when but much of it must have come from Leadbeater - didn't he write Man and his Bodies or something like that? His book The Inner Life was very influential.

You've read some of his stuff, can you recall his take on astral and mental? Actually, I welcome a distinction within the astral such as an astral-mental to help us better talk about nuances in our experiences but the notion that to venture into the Mental Plane would preclude any experience with 'things' is pretty hard-wired in me.

Wasn't it Socrates who held that there is only one tree, for example; the ideal tree as a pattern for all observable trees which are merely copies and variations of the one tree as an idea? Whether it was Socrates or Plato (I'm in the process of moving and my books are in boxes) this may be an apt metaphor for the Mental and Astral planes. The way I see it, if one were to venture into the world of ideas, the Socratic World, there would be nothing observable as nothing has been created yet and to me, that is what I expect of the Mental Plane. I can't imagine what the IDEA of a tree would look like. Maybe it would 'look' like some humongous formula :lol:. We can't actually say it would LOOK like anything because once it looks like anything at all it has been created from the idea.

Another area of study that has been tremendously influential on my 'world view' is the Cabala (as you are aware). We have a sephira which is recognized as the sphere of the Astral and that is Yesod which is positioned directly above the sphere of the Earth or Malkuth (see my avatar). Notice that Malkuth is sitting there pretty much by itself, it is not in direct and dynamic interplay with any other sephiroth - not a member of a triad or trinity. That is because it is merely the receptacle for what's going on in Yesod or the Astral. I like to say that the Physical world precipitates out of the Astral world like rain from a cloud.

Up and to the left of Yesod is Hod. This is the sphere of Mercury and it is said the practical sephira of the magician - where he does his work. This aligns well with the Socratic world of ideas, perhaps. Odd, I've never attempted until now to map the mental and higher metaphysical worlds onto the Tree, but Hod may be representative of the Mental plane on a microphysical basis. We have entirely separate Trees for the Material, Formative, Creative and Archetypal manifestations of Reality which align nicely with the Physical, Astral, Mental and Causal planes but on a macro basis.
Oh, I'm testing your patience I'm sure so I'll call it quits here. But I hope you get a feeling for my perspective on the metaphysical worlds and especially my take on the Mental plane.

[Korpo]

Hello, E1B.

A.E. Powell has summarised many books from early theosophists, and produced separate compendiums for the etheric, astral, mental and causal body. You can read them online:

http://www.austheos.org.au/clibrary/bindex-0.html

The system is rather clear, let's limit it to the lower three planes, the physical, the astral and the mental plane. In this system the physical and etheric bodies derive from the physical plane, the astral body from the astral plane, and the mental and causal bodies from the mental plane.

The distinction you mention is between form and formlessness, which is at the "boundary" between lower and upper mental plane. The lower mental plane is a plane related to concrete thought and form. The upper mental plane is the domain of the causal body and is related to formlessness. This upper mental plane would be the place where the ideas reside, the causes or templates for the many concrete objects on the planes below.

There are very interesting examples there of how a clairvoyant would perceive the energy of an idea from the upper mental plane touching the boundary and instantly coming into thousands of different forms. This is but one aspect of it, and not all there is to it.

Human beings, however, have a need of translation for such experiences. So, any experience of coming into touch with the upper mental plane would be rendered into an understandable experience, and for example represented as a story with start, middle and end, even though this is merely a way to represent what is not describable in language.

I do believe that access to all these places is possible. This is all part of human evolution, in service of the soul.

Cheers,
Oliver

[eyeoneblack]

Thank you for your time and effort with this, Oliver :).


Human beings, however, have a need of translation for such experiences. So, any experience of coming into touch with the upper mental plane would be rendered into an understandable experience, and for example represented as a story with start, middle and end, even though this is merely a way to represent what is not describable in language.

I couldn't agree more.

Bottom line, I've discovered just how old-school I am :shock: :roll: :lol: . I'll be taking measures to correct that. I wonder if Leland's Multidimension Man is availabe yet. :wink:

Blessings,

Richard

[Korpo]

Yes, it is. (http://www.kurtleland.com) :)

Cheers,
Oliver

[eyeoneblack]

bought the book