Well. A couple weeks off, but I suppose that's better than The Doctor's track record.
Evander wrote:I can't believe you haven't seen that coming!
Oh, but I'm not omniscient. Still, it has been useful on the occasions when I have been warned of such inconveniences. And would you believe it, as soon as I started typing this (Friday), my internet went down? And stayed down. All weekend.
It's a good thing for you that I'm so stubborn. [gz]
Now, let us try this again.
Evander wrote:To elaborate - I think it's nothing really "magical" in vulgar meaning of this word - no fairies etc. Just conciousness shift.
But faeries
do exist! :O
Evander wrote:Movies do not concern me.
Nor me. I was not describing anything from a movie, I was describing classical metaphysical principles as symbolically recorded in classical cosmology. I agree with such cosmology, the Norns and Orlog in particular, because that is how I also See Time and what some call Fate: every person is a thread, every action is marked on the thread and sends vibrations to every other thread connected to it, and every meeting or parting a cross, and entwining, or an untwining of threads. And as all the threads come together in the bigger picture, it forms a Web (or a "cloth," if you go by the Weaving of the Moirai or Norns).
This I feel is important imagary, because the "past" is a "solid" web, unchanging as it has been done. "Present" is constantly in motion as it weaves new things into the Web, and "future" simply doesn't exist. It can be guessed at, because there are patterns rooted in what "was" and what "is," but everything "future" is probability as such. It hasn't been "written" yet, just "suggested" based on "history." Kind of like statiticians do it sometimes, but Seers don't do the numbers, they just See what's there. Or, like how you can guess what a quilt will look like when it's half way done, but because it's halfway done the second half could indeed become something entirely different from what was originally most "probable."
This is of course be largely symbolic (and The Language of Symbolism is another topic entirely), as many different Seers observe slightly different things. And yet, core principle often pop up as common themes. Taking into account that
everyone may be experiencing Analytical Overlay, these common themes, such as the similarity of Norse Norns and Greek Moirai, are important to the investigator of these phenomena. Very important.
Evander wrote:As for my death - yes, by all means. I do not wish to expire; therefore I am on the path of necromancy.
Everyone expires. Part of my tradition may be called necromancy, since I'm quite comfortable with the dead, with ghosts, and with "the underworld." I assure you that nothing in the art of necromancy will provide you with immortality. If the dead knew how to be immortal, most of them probably wouldn't be dead.
Evander wrote:I would never assume that it is possible for a single human entity to obtain detailed knowledge about future of the entire universe; I however find "limitations" to be a poor excuse.
One has to set realistic goals for himself; or just try harder.
You may find it to be a poor excuse, but the universe doesn't. Some people in the distant past found "humans don't have wings!" to be a poor excuse for "humans can't fly!" So some people straped wings onto themselves and jumped off of buildings flapping their arms like birds, trying harder and harder to fly. A number of those people didn't live to tell the tale.
Assuming whether or not a single human can See the future of the whole universe is irrelevant, but "limitation" in general is not a poor excuse for anything. It's a reality.
Work smarter, not harder -- the Wright Brothers succeeded where others failed because they were thinking outside of the box. They knew that humans didn't have wings, so they built wings that humans could ride. Nobody imagined that, and now a global civilization wouldn't exist without it.
Don't be trapped by the arrogant perspective that limitations have to be "broken." Sometimes it's much easier to work around them, and sometimes it's even better to just work
with them.
Evander wrote:Perhaps you have a natural talent or more developed skill in this area. I can only speak for my own experience and that of people who worked alongside me;
We have found that disrupting natural flow might be beneficial in some circumstances, if one is careful not to cause any serious damage. I also don't think that it is that unhealthy.
But again - you might not even be aware of such disturbances when they occur or the cause of conciousness shift might be different for you - I would not mind if you could discover what is the actual reason and craft some exercises from that discovery.
I have no more talent than anyone else. I've simply been working for a very long time.
There are many ways to shift awareness and consciousness (which are not the same things). What you're suggesting may indeed work. Drugs also work. Fasting works. Pain works. There are many "trance induction" methods, and what I point out is not just a matter of health, but a matter of effectiveness or perhaps simply efficiency.
Intentionally disrupting the flow of energy in the body is damaging (and I speak this as a practitioner of Internal Martial Arts, where disruption of the opponents mind and energy body is a legitimate method of harming them). It may be a means to an end for you, but it is a damaging means to an end. It won't be apparent right away, and if the parties involved are not particularly sensitive or are imbalanced to begin with, it may never be fully apparent. But I must retain the statement that it is
not a good idea.
Such things can be done in much safer and much healthier ways. My personal preference is simple mental training. It can take longer to "get" there in the beginning, for some, but I don't do anything or "use" anything to shift my state of consciousness or control my awareness. I just do it as a matter of focus, because I've actively learned how to. Like martial arts, metaphysics is a collection of learned and learnable skills.
Evander wrote:But you have a *very* good point with scanning. Thank you for adding another dot for me to connect. Wonder if I could actually scan the future me? How would I achieve that without going into projection state?
You can connect to the future you. I and one other person I know of have done so, each in different ways and each with interesting results. It was an interesting experience for me, but I honestly don't suggest it as an active practice. Life is dynamic. Your future you is not necessarily a "better" you all the time, he will have ups and downs just like you always have. I learned a lot by connecting to my future self. I learned about magic, I learned about what to do with my life. I also learned the pain of things I haven't had to live through yet, which will now hurt even more when I do.
Trust me. It is worth it to cherish the moments of your life as they come. Some things are best left unknown until they happen.
But regarding scanning of the future in general, you have to develop a more refined state of awareness, a "sensitivity" with scanning that allows you to focus on more subtle things. A very blunt and common exercise with scanning is using a deck of cards -- read the card and see if you got it right. Scanning the future is more subtle.
With the cards you don't really project anywhere because your consciousness never leaves the "seat" of your body, it just expands to your your RV style "Target" which is right there in front of you or is otherwise easy to "think" about and connect your Awareness to. With "the future," your "target" doesn't exist in the first place -- you're simply looking at probabilities. It's a difficult thing to describe presently, and the best words I can offer as suggestion here is that it is a simple matter of trained Awareness.
Evander wrote:Oh, by the way - I can hint that balance of the body and energy bodies is compromised during Death. Permanently. As a student of necromancy I find this moment a *very* interesting area of study.
Perhaps there might be a way to stabilize the soul...
I know what happens when the body dies. Yes, it is possible to "stabilize" the soul, but this is something typically done before death. It's also something that's not always desirable, nor does it necessarily mean that you will be properly immortal for doing so.
Evander wrote:You are contradicting yourself a bit. But let's forget this for a moment and focus on this:
"this means simply scanning" - I am an active psi for the most of my life. I scanned a lot of people and other... stuff.
My major problem is with this "accessing the future".
How exactly are you achieving this?
I'm not sure where I contradicted myself, unless there was just a misunderstanding of words.
I described the essence of how I scan the future above -- it's a more subtle thing, something which involves a more refined state of Awareness. I don't "project" because I never leave the "seat" of my body, I simply "expand" from that seat. Simply put, "scanning." The issue that most people have is "target." When you scan a person, or scan a spirit, or scan an object, you have a very clearly defined "target" upon which to focus -- a solid "signature."
With the future, you have no such solidity. You have to "spread out," as it were, and look at the bigger picture, look for
patterns. The more chaotic a particular pattern is, the harder it is to get a solid "reading" on it. Like with lottery numbers, the "probability" is so chaotic, things are changing so much and so rapidly, that it's
extremely difficult to "scan" or "precog" or "see" those numbers. The numbers themselves don't know what they are until the balls roll out of the machine.
Other things are easier to see. As a hypothetical example, let's say I have friends who are a couple, and I wonder if they are going to get married. That "wonder" and the "friends" themselves then becomes my "target," and I can look forward to see the patterns and probabilities. I might "scan" that they will get married, have two kids, and live happily for several years until they get divorced one day, but that both will move on and find happier lives after it. They'll simply be together until their time is up, then move on.
I might not see the exact date of the wedding, or the names of the kids, or the exact date or precise reason for the divorce, but it's not too hard to see the "pattern" of the relationship. To return to my "web" symbolism from earlier, I could "read" what is currently the most active "thread" of the relationship. But things change all the time, and that thread may change too over the course of the following years.
Evander wrote:No, not really. If anything, You are referring to OOBE.
Mental projection is a projection to your immediate present surroundings.
Astral projection is a projection into astral planes, way beyond what is near you.
Separation of the soul from the body is called death; some people also call it OOBE, but I believe it is just tricky name for Astral Projection.
Again, this is naming problem. I would rather stand by Ophiel works and name these according to his writings.
The problem here is that you are following the new age standards of
where you project, and I am following the traditional standards of
what you project. This is an important distinction.
From personal experience and traditional knowledge, there are three primary ways of "projecting." Some, like the Rosicrusians, install a fourth which involves certain parts of what they call the "etheric body" and which I do not think is particularly important or relevant to general magic or psychic practice, nor does it serve any great purposes for spiritual evolution.
The first and most common is not really a "projection" at all (in the sense of what "projection" means literally), but is rather an "expansion." The most common example of this is Scanning, perhaps most researched in its form as Remote Viewing. Your consciousness in this practice doesn't fully leave the body. "You" remain completely attached to the physical body, where your consciousness is "seated." Rather, the Mind, via Awareness,
expands beyond the body. Through this direction of expanded Awareness, information is transmitted back into the "mind" -- just as if you focused your Awareness on your immediate surroundings, and suddenly noticed more therein -- and you thus successfully retrieve information from a distant place.
The second and most commonly practiced as "astral projection" is the projection of the Mind. Here, the consciousness separates (though never "completely") from the physical body, and it does so by using the mind as a vehicle of travel. The common "body of light" method, where you imagine a body and transfer yourself into it, is the best example of this practice.
The third is also traditionally the most dangerous. It is indeed the separation of the soul from the physical body (though never "completely," until death), because this is what classical and modern occult literature, particularly Theosophy and Rosicrusian doctrines which made popular the term "astral body," refer to. It is the "body" that exists between physical "body" and mental "mind," and is what I thus term "soul." This experience is marked as different from "mental" projection by the fact that what is experienced is more "real" -- you are more "there," with your senses and faculties more open and awake, your feelings more active. As if you are physically "present" at the projected location, your body is left behind and you are simply "away." The physical body, to those who examine it, may even appear to be dead or in deep coma, because "you"
and your "soul" are not there.
This third method is also considered a more dangerous practice because, while the travel of the Mind is generally safe (since the mind generally remains "attached" to the body easily), the separation of the Soul leaves a "void" in the body, into which other entities may enter. Possession does indeed exist, though for trained practitioners it's easily enough protected against. There are also many stories of Shamans and others who, projecting in this way to Journey, received injury while away which then became a physical wound or a physical death upon returning to the body. These risks do not exist with the "safer" mental expansion or projection listed previously. This is why there are almost no horror stories in the new age practice (where most people are either mentally projecting or actively imagining things), but there are plenty of horror stories in old school practice and among serious occultists. Different things are being done, some more dangerous than others.
All of these traditional practices are marked and named according to
what is being projected, not
where. Regardless of which method is exercised, you can Journey to anywhere you like. Whether you Scan a place, project your Mind there, or project your Soul there, you are going to the same place you chose -- you are simply going there in different vehicles, as it were (or in the case of Scanning, bypassing the need for a vehicle altogether). A number of practitioners I know intentionally don't even engage in the third practice, because they find the first two perfectly sufficient for general metaphysical work.
This distinction is important though. Regardless of what you believe about metaphysical anatomy and what can or cannot be projected, the distinction between
what and
where is vital to understanding projection in general. You can go almost anywhere once you have correctly projected, and thus the far more important question is: what
is projected?
Oh, and as for "OOBE," that's just a modern parapsychology term for any experience where you find yourself perceiving the world from a location that is not your body. As such, "OOBE" can be recorded as any of the three experiences I listed above, but depending on circumstance it usually refers to the second or the third (where you experience yourself in a "body" that is not your physical body). Remote Viewing, Precognition, and other "Scanning" phenomena are
usually not considered OOBE.
Evander wrote:They are. Otherwise it is divination.
Precognition refers specifically to "visions". Sensing the future with help of accessories like tarot symbols is divination.
Hopefully, the above descriptions made my point there a little more clear. Precognition can be experienced as Scanning, which is not a full projection experience -- it is an
expansion experience.
The difference between Diviner and Seer is thus as you described: Diviners are told things by The Oracle, Seers simply
look. But!
Neither situation is completely random, which is a big part of my point.
And with that, this massive post is done. For the second time.
Phew.
~:Shin:~
There are a couple of things I'd like to add.