Lesson 13: Philosophy and OOBE: What Theology says.

I'd like to open this lesson with this disclaimer:

I know of the basic philosophy of Christian sects, the in-depth philosophy of the Mormons, and some of the philosophy of Paganism in general. I AM NOT AN EXPERT. I cannot stress this enough. If there is something in this that strikes you as being wrong or false, look it up and see if I'm full of it, or if I'm correct in my thoughts. Some of this is not published anyplace, other than in my head. I leave it up to you to discover the truth of this matter. Caveat Emptor.

With that being said, let's get into the lesson.

As you go through the exercises and gain an understanding and skill in OOBE, you will discover something that is faith-shaking. That you are in no way special. This is a skill and an ability that is possessed by everyone, whether or not they understand it or acknowledge it. It is also one of the skills that make the Gods as "powerful" as they are.

Let me explain that last clause before I get slaughtered for heresy.

It is often taught in many religions that God (however you choose to name him/her) has the ability to be anyplace instantly. That they can see into wo/men's souls and know what they are thinking. With AP, you can do the same.

Being anyplace is exactly like being able to project in the Etheric Plane (locale 1 to those of Monroe's mindset). You can go anyplace and see anything, you can feel and be and experience what many may think is impossible. You can "become" (astrally) an ameba, a plant, a deva, a spirit, a ghost, another person, a dog or whatever you decide to be.

It has been said that "God notes the fall of every sparrow". To which I say that God cannot help but note the fall of the sparrow simply because if you are there and experiencing their existence at the time, you will be experiencing the sparrow's fall first hand.

Basically, with this skill, fully honed and with an understanding of the universe and how it is REALLY put together, you will become God, or something similar. You will have the ability to directly manipulate the universe, travel from one universe to another, know what people are thinking, be everywhere at one time, and be anyplace you choose instantly.

Sounds like a God/dess to me.

So what happens to those beings that we think of as Gods now? What happens to God when you are a God?

They become partners and teachers, as they should be now. In basic Pagan philosophy, the Gods have good moods, and bad moods, they are angry, they hate, they love, they chastise, they have sex, they have children, they raise those children, they love and care for us. When we mature to their level, we no longer need a being to worship as greater than us, because we are just as great as them. They truly become partners and friends.

Many people talk about having a "Personal relationship with God" without knowing what that entails. I can tell you from personal experience that it means you will be drawn into feuds and arguments, you will be asked to act as the (sexual) partner for whomever you choose, you will have to defend them before other Gods, you will talk to them and teach them, and you will learn from them as well.

The Gods, as we understand them, from YHVH to Joshua (Jesus) to Zeus to Apollo will become people, rather than faceless entities that have no relation to the real world.

I will tell you a couple of stories to illustrate my point to you.

The first is the story of how my wife escaped a concussion that would have put her in the hospital at a period in our life when we had no insurance, no money and were desperately trying to move someplace else.

All of our possessions had to be put into storage. Among those possessions was a wooden lazy susan that my father had made for me as a present one year. It was made out of oak or hickory or one of those other incredibly hard woods. It also weighed about 8 lbs or so. I had placed it on a top shelf, on it's edge because that is where it would fit. In due course, it rolled (round) and fell, right onto my wife's head. It landed flat, on top of her skull and there was a resounding "smack" as it landed. It had fallen from the height of about 15 feet or so. My wife is 5' 4" so it had almost 10 feet in which to gather kinetic energy.

She came damned close to passing out, but there was no fracture of her skull, not even a goosegg.

By all accounts that I knew, and have read since, she should have had a break in her skull, a fracture, possibly a subdural hematoma (bleeding in the skull) or possibly (and I was chilled when I read this) a depressed skull fracture. But about 3 hours later she was fine, a little sore, but fine.

That night, I started talking to some of the splinters of her about what happened. Come to find out that the damage was severe inside her head. One person suicided to save the existences of several other "children" splinters, and three were fatally injured. Out of about 20 people I had grown to care for, three died outright, and one was thrown back to the point of her genesis (meaning all the work I had done previously with her over a period of 3 years was erased).

I decided to explore a might-have-been and found out that my wife would have been in the hospital for upwards to three weeks and everyone inside would have died had not one thing happened. The Lady Rhiannon stepped in and Intervened.

She saw what was coming, so in the 1/2 second She had to act in before the lazy susan hit my wife, she mobilized certain splinters to save the others. They shielded the rest and took all the damage themselves. Rhiannon then mitigated the physical damage to Mary so that it was only sore.

The reason she did this? Because Rhiannon knew that we had no funds, time, energy or ability to deal with a life-threatening injury for as long as we would have had to, and it would have ruined us emotionally and financially.

Many would call that a miracle. I call it the act of a friend.

That's not the whole story. About 5 months passed, and Rhiannon was called upon to attend a Counsel of Gods to punish her for intervening like that. Apparently, at some time in the past, many of the Gods and Goddesses took an oath to not interfere in the affairs of Mankind any longer. So, Rhiannon was being called upon to face charges of Oathbreaking. She tapped me to defend her, since I was the direct benefitter of that incident.

I argued and acted as her lawyer. The charge was obvious and she was guilty. I managed to get her out of trouble because I pointed out that all the Gods who were sitting in judgment over her had violated that same oath multiple times (the judges were Odin, Thor, the Morrigon, and three others I can't remember) and no one had called them up on charges. Her penalty was to be banished from this reality forever. I didn't want that.

So, this is an example of something that may happen. It's on that night that I realized that I was on the level with the Gods, with the same abilities, rights, knowledge and powers. The trick was that I just didn't have the experience that they have.

The other story is one my wife told me. It is our belief that on the Spring Equinox, or Goddess, Rhiannon, wakes from a winter's sleep getting ready to go to work on Beltane. My wife was depressed and restless and upset about something small, and she was out of sorts.

I discussed it with Herne, the God, and he suggested that my wife stand in for Rhiannon on this night.

I watched it all. My wife was lying in the glade where I had last seen Rhiannon. Herne approached her, sunlight shining on him, and gently started awakening her. My wife woke, and was groggy, and like a little boy just discovering the world, started showing his Goddess (my wife) all the new life in the world. They traveled all over, and I saw things that were so special to me that I still can't describe them. Newly hatched chicks, new plants pushing out of the ground, the snow and ice making new rivers, the pulse of the Earth as it awoke from it's slumber.

Through it all, my darling was still restless and groggy, out of sorts. Then Herne approached her, and said some things to her (basically along the lines of "Look at this new life, let us renew their energies with our own") and then he made love to her.

I can't describe it to this day. Take my work for it, it was transcendingly the single most beautiful experience I ever witnessed. And the Earth was renewed.

I SAW the energies from their love making flowing into the Earth, renewing the fertility, making the broken land whole, I felt the unhatched chicks break out of the shell, I felt the snow slide off the peaks, I was part of all of it.

I came back to myself, and I noticed that my wife was weeping in her trance, and I felt so much joy I can't describe it. She woke later and the first thing she did was hug me and hold me, and she was happy and content for a long time, without the worries that she had before this.

These are just two of the many different things that can happen when you become a God/dess. All of these are true experiences (some slight details like names and personages were changed) and I swear this upon all the Gods, living and dead.

I share these with you so you can see some of what it means to be a God. You can't run at that point and you can't hide. Knowing what I'm teaching you will result in a fundamental change in yourself. And it's not one that I think you will give up readily. It is incredibly peace-making and wonderful, but when you mix your affairs with the Gods, on an equal level, you will be expected to help Them too, if necessary.

Please understand, I'm not trying to put myself up, or bring anyone else down. I'm not forcing anything on anyone. These are just some end states that will come from this.

I have mentioned in the past something about "Spirit Sight". Here is where I go more in depth with that.

Spirit Sight is a psychic ability in which you OOBE without leaving your body. Some have called it clairvoyance, astral sight, "the Sight", "Second Sight", aura reading and many other things, but the point is that you will be able to see, with mental eyes, things that don't exist physically around you. This is another thing that happens to you as you grow in ability.

Spirit sight and OOBE are two sides of the same coin. The soul can see and you can interact with others and other places. Seeing is nothing big, you do it all the time. Using your soul to see as opposed to using your physical eyes is a little difficult. Some can do it without thinking twice, but most times it requires that someone be in the trance state that will allow an AP experience without leaving the body, to remain in their body despite the impulse to leave. Some can carry it over to the point where they do not require a trance at all, and it is something that I cannot do yet. Most, however, sense the otherworlds with things like "feelings" and other descriptions, but the point is that they know what is not visible.

While this is not something you will be working on with these lessons and with these exercises, it is something that will develop from the use of OOBE and from the exercises themselves. It's like going to karate and learning Martial Arts, and the discipline and self confidence gained from the Martial Arts allow better grades in the schoolroom.

Another side benefit of OOBE practice and exercise is this; Magickal skill = OOBE = Magickal skill. Increase one, and you increase the other. This is due to the discipline needed being absolutely the same. You need control of your thoughts while on the Astral Plane to enable you to see the differences between what is there and what you think is there, just as you need control of your mind to be able to keep focused on the spell when other distractions are occurring.

I want to show you an illustration that I came up with that I think shows how the Gods generated. This is relevant, I promise you.

Daven's View of the "ranks" of the Gods

With this graphic, I hope you can see how I have come to the conclusion that All gods are one god. However, since the IS portion of this pyramid is inhuman enough that we don't truly understand it, and can't relate to it, it is more comforting to us to relate to deities that we can understand.

I mention this because there are times when you will meet one or more of these gods on the Astral Plane. By practicing and understanding the overlying structure of the realities, you will come into partnership with these gods, and you should understand where they "rate" in the scheme of things. Let me state that this is a personal theory, proven in discussions with Herne and Rhiannon, my patrons, but this is not saying that all Pagans or even all Wiccans feel this way.

It is my belief that through our training here, our knowledge and our skill, that we can ascend to the level of the "name" deities. That we can become equal to them and be able to do everything they do once we leave this realm of Earth for good.

Now, if we understand that, can we be Gods incarnate? Yes, it is possible, but relatively hard.

When we were born, we accepted certain "rules" to our existence here to keep ourselves from contaminating our experience here too much. Like, we accepted that we would have limited bodies to teach us that effort put out brings reward. We accepted that we could not remember our past incarnations so that we could learn things fresh, with the advances that have occurred. We accepted that time was an obstacle to be overcome, not a wall that is impassible, so that we could understand that the simplest mode of planning is sometimes the best. We also accepted the "rule" of the majority.

I have spoken about the collective unconscious before, and I will elaborate a bit on it here. Part of the collective unconscious is the beliefs that we hold in common with most of the peoples that are alive here. I may believe thing X, but most Americans don't believe it, however people in other nations believe the same thing. If a majority of the people alive here believe this, it is a common belief held by the planet. Irregardless of the region that it is being believed in.

This common held belief is what is being overcome every time you cast magick or use your abilities to change your world. It is a safeguard to ensure that those of us who know what exists beyond the veil of death don't become all-powerful and take over by virtue of being able to believe something out of existence.

Do you all understand that, or did I just confuse you all too much? ;-)

If I know by my will, I can make whatever I want appear before me on the Astral Plane, and it is done, that's good. However, the Astral Plane also touches this plane, and the Earth is part of the Astral Plane, right? So, logically, I should be able to make whatever I want appear in front of me.

Without this safeguard of the collective unconscious, you would be able to do just that. However, because the CU is there, and the majority of the people on this plane believe that you can't do that, I will not be able to. So, anything I do that uses my will to make a change to this reality will be harder, unless my will is stronger than the collected wills of 5 billion other people, or unless I can convince 2.5 billion people that I can.

Did you ever wonder how many of the legendary actions of the Bible and mythology were able to happen then and they can't now? Here's why. Somewhere along the way, a few people convinced themselves that magick didn't exist. That OOBE was a myth, that the Shilde were fantasies and that only God had power to change things here. Slowly over time, they managed to convince more and more people that they were right, until they had a majority of the CU convinced that magick didn't exist. At which point, it stopped existing.

So why have I just told you that you are a God, with the abilities of a God if you can't do anything about it here? Because you can. By understanding this, you can make your life easier in the long run. Death becomes something to be laughed at, your magickal workings become more powerful, and you can bring more and more into your life simply by wishing it there. The more people it affects, the more you will have to fight their collective unbelief to make something come into your life.

Telling your co-workers that you are casting a spell to get a better job, may result in their belief making it so that you won't get it, no matter how much work you do. However, believing that you are getting a new job, one that exactly meets your requirements, and simply refusing to be deterred when it doesn't immediately manifest will usually result in you getting that job you wanted.

This is the source of one of the Wiccan rules about magick, "To keep silent".

Are all these abilities and powers that I am talking about evil? No they are not. There are many churches that will tell you that they are the powers of Satan, sent to lure you away from God and that you are in danger of your soul, but you can dismiss this. This power is coming from inside you, it is through your will and your desire that you get what you want, and can do what you want. All it takes is some belief. It is an ability inherent in ALL of us, from a newborn baby on up to the oldest elder on the planet.

This is no different from being able to paint well, or sing beautifully, or being able to walk a tight-rope. There is a natural ability, or knack, and then there is a skill. The worst painter in the world can still paint. The most hopeless person when it comes to singing still has the ability to sing. They may not have learned the skill to singing, but if they do, they will still be able to sing, perhaps not as well as a professional musician, but they will be able to sing. The knack is not all there is to AP, nor is the skill all there is. You can project with only the skill, and it may take longer, and you may not do it with as much finesse as one who has the knack and no skill. You may be able to project, but have no learning in how to do it, no theory or understanding. Both the knack and skill helps, but you can have one without the other.

Whether or not this ability is evil or not depends entirely upon the person using it, and who it's used against.

A healer can kill, but they can also save lives. A gun can maim, but it also protects the innocent. AP is no different from either of these.

Are there classical references to AP? Yes, they abound. A few off the top of my head: Jacob's ladder, Ezekiel, the Armageddon vision, Pwyll's descent into Anwyn, Freya's trip to Hades and many others could all be seen as AP in action. In each case, there is a change in status, either through a dream (lucid dreaming) or traveling someplace (projection).

In many cases where the classics refer to a person going to another world I think could be seen as an AP experience completely. In several cases, but not all, the person goes to sleep or passes out in one place, wakes in another, and then returns to the original place they started from.

Makes me think that the Wizard of Oz is a textbook for AP. But we all know that is fiction. (Wait, can't we get to a fiction with AP? Maybe it was a true experience after all....)

Some of the examples I stated were for visions. Well, there is one more reference that I can think of for AP in a classical source: Cassandra. Here was a prophet who was granted true visions of what would happen, but whom was never believed when she told of them. If you look at it as though she were projecting until she could see the time stream itself, the branches of the tree I showed you at one point, and knowing what she had to do to get to the branch she wanted to get to, you can see how her visions would be true. If she was looking at what was most likely to happen in the same context, this is one explanation of her ability.

Okay, I have given you a lot to think about, and a lot to consider. I'll leave you alone for now.

If you have questions or comments, post them as always.

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Assignment:

To post: Tell me YOUR theories based on your experiences to date. First you are going to have to define them, and I want you to write them in your AP journal. Do you think anything I am saying is correct or of use to you? Things like this are what I am looking for. Also, if you disagree substantially with what I am saying, tell me what you think is correct.

To read: Your AP journal. I want you to go back through the entries and start looking for patterns. Think about what some of these patterns are trying to tell you and act on some of the things that you are being prompted to do.

To keep: Keep this philosophy of AP and the Astral Plane. Look at it occasionally and make corrections and addenda to it. See how your theories change as you get more practiced.

Daven

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