The Strange Reincarnation Account of Arthur Yensen

While searching for some more other-dimensional accounts while in the astral plane I stumbled across the NDE experience of an Arthur Yensen. It is actually quite an interesting story. Seems that while attempting to live the hobo experience during the Depression, he had hitched a ride with someone, subsequently had a car accident and was injured. During that time he experienced a spectacular vision of a spiritual dimension.

One part that really caught my eye was this quote from him:

"Reincarnation certainly explains a lot of things that would be hard to account for otherwise. From my experience I'm convinced we have all lived and died many times. The reason we don't remember our former lives is because our vast soul memories are not transferred to our baby brains at birth. All we know in this life is what we learned in past lifetimes. That would be the reason why some things are so much easier for us to learn than others. For example, Mozart didn't have to learn music because he already knew it.

 One of the good things about reincarnation is that at the beginning of each lifetime we are cleared of all past prejudices, learning blocks and wrong teachings, and are ready for a fresh start - just like a new term at school - and, like school, when we have learned enough of life's lessons, we graduate and don't have to come back to this Earth anymore, except as volunteers to teach stragglers."

Be sure to read his entire account!

Using a Candle Flame for Astral Projection

Irina Patrascu - Creative Commons

I thought this was an interesting find by Steve Jones on using a candle to assist with astral projection. I had never really thought about it much but in my quest to look deeper at both Kabbalistic and magick traditions candles do come up quite often as the means to a deeper trance-like state. Also, the candle symbolizes other things as known to ritualistic activities.

Take a look at this quote from the astral pulse site (which I think Steve Jones was referring to):

"When you have rejoined the flame and your two energies are one, you are ready to move your consciousness, your mind and all that is within you into the flame. Gaze into the flame now for a few moments and close your eyes. Do you still see the flame burned into your vision? Keep this picture with you and move the light within you into the flame. See it growing as it fills with your essence. Allow it to grow into a light large enough for you to step through. When your spirit light has filled the flame, your subconscious mind will follow. All that remains is for you to convince your conscious mind to join the walk through the doorway and you are well on your way to a successful astral projection!"

Steve notes in his blog that the candle flame meditation acts as the lure to pull your astral body out. Here's another tutorial (quite psychedelic!!) on YouTube that has some interesting candle techniques.

Astral Projection and the Power of Words

pshutterbug - creative commons

How strange it was to come back to this blog after five years and discover a very unusual article on astral projection that really had no bearing on what I had been searching for. Seems that something is pushing me on this revival journey to the astral plane. But, I have to give a bit of a backlog on this first.

I have always been very interested in philosophy in my life and even spent some months in graduate school at a major university in their Philosophy of Science program. Unfortunately, I had to drop out of the program due to lack of funding (and other considerations). But, one thing that I found myself very interested from that program was the philosophy of language - especially Wittgenstein. The deeper  philosophic part of this path is irrelevant except for the fact that Wittgenstein led me to how language shapes our reality.

Jump ahead 30 years and add to that so of the more Sethian beliefs that we create our own realities. But, the real question behind that is how? As I have read through some works by shamans, Jewish mystics, and eastern philosophies it has been starting to dawn on me that our reality is shaped by language - and, more importantly, words themselves. Long story short -- this eventually led me to Kabbalistic beliefs about how words create reality -- now imagine how surprised I was this weekend when I stumbled into the article titled A Kabbalistic Guide to Lucid Dreaming and Astral Projection -- take a look at this particular quote!!

"The projection of consciousness has been an integral part of kabbalistic teachings, from the Merkavah (Chariot) Riders and their journeys to the starry Palaces (Hekelot) of the invisible world, to Traveling in Spirit Visions with the early adepts of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the 19th can early 20th centuries. While a wide variety of approaches has been formulated to assist the disciples of these diverse schools, much of their techniques require an extensive amount of preparatory teachings and/or ritual assistance. For those who have little or no knowledge of traditional 10-12th century Merkavah doctrines, or no interest in learning the necessary signs, symbols, and invocations for Golden Dawn style techniques and their ‘spin offs’, yet want a Hermetic approach to their inner world, there is a solution. It is also simple, direct, and does not require an extensive amount of visualization or creative imaging."

What? How did my research into kabbalistic beliefs on the power of words lead to astral projection? What really shocked me in this article was the focus on projecting from the neck rather than from the body or the top of the head as taught by many others. Take a look at this quote:

"When going to sleep, or even just relaxing a few minutes, turn your attention to the area of your ‘Adam’s Apple’ and imagine a brilliant blue-black (or indigo/ultra-violet) sphere there, about the size of a tennis ball. Make it brilliant an translucent, as though it were illuminated from the inside, with its center point around the thyroid gland. It should be large enough to also touch the back of the nape of the neck, and if done very large (as Regardie suggests)[xvii], it may even have its farthest edges at the bridge of the nose and brushing the thymus gland, or heart. What is important here, is that the image is three-dimensional, and not just as a flat plate in front of you. Thus, the sphere, or ball, will encompass your neck, and parts of your head."

I hope that is enough to get you to read the article. If you don't understand Kabbalistic thinking, that's ok. The key to the article is the section on how to project in a way which was really quite novel to me!