Intermediate Magic
Intermediate Magic |
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If you have read through the majority of this site, you may have deduced my
basis of magic. All magic is based in telekinesis, with the only exception of psionics. The techniques
listed on this page will all be a part of that exception. Psionics is the magical art and science of the
mind. In essence, it would not be incorrect to say that all magic is based on the abilities of one's mind
to influence the world around them. The three techniques presented here are fundamental to the advanced
magician, but are confounding to the beginner. In order to attempt any one of these techniques, I
highly recommend that you first master the five techniques outlined on the
Beginner's Magic page. There is quite a bit of explanation involved in all parts of the techniques,
including the beginner's practice recommendation for each one. So, settle in for a read and good deal of
information.
The first thing to realize is that a dream is nothing but a mental construct. It technically does not exist on any level. It is literally all in your head. Thus, the rules in said construct are of your own making. You are your only limitation. The only thing that is necessary to become lucid is a psychological trigger. For example, a subconscious (unintentional) trigger for me is the ability to levitate and jump for great distances. I have no idea why, but that seems to be a recurring trait in my dreams. In dreamwork (the psychiatric community's blanket term for dream therapy) subjects are taught to induce lucidity while in dream states through the use of psychological triggers. The only difference between ourselves, as magicians, and those subjects is the fact that they are usually suffering from recurring nightmares and thus will have a strategic advantage for selection of a trigger. Actually, often enough, the anxiety of the nightmare is enough to induce lucidity on its own. But, luckily, the principles are simple enough and multiple triggers can be used. The best way for a beginner to establish a trigger is to remember a dream you have recently experience, or preferably several. Many people keep dream journals and the like, so for you guys that do, the next step should be über-easy. The next step is to analyze your dreams and pick out the similarities. Once the similarities have been found, then decide what you want to use as your first trigger. The idea is that once you experience this trigger while on the dreamscape, your mind will have been trained to react in a specific, desired manner; in this case, lucidity. So now that you have your desired trigger picked out, it is time to implement the process. The process itself is very similar to meditation. You do not want to go into an all out trance, but you want a calmed mind with a single focus. You want to focus on that trigger. You want to see it, hear it, smell it, taste it, and touch it at once. You want to experience this in meditation as vividly as you would in dream; more so, if possible. This is the tricky part. You must then force yourself to see this trigger, be it an object, an act, a sound, or something as simple as a color, as something almost shocking. You must see it as something that will suddenly seem out of place when you experience it on the dreamscape. Once you experience that "out of place" feeling, you will more than likely realize that you are dreaming. You must do this meditative technique many times if you wish to be successful. Repetition is the key to psychological programming. Here is another important point. While you are on the dreamscape, things will seem completely normal and stable until you try to change something. I, personally, never had this problem until I began advancing on the theory side of what lucid dreaming is. Once I realized what lucid dreaming was while on the dreamscape, I would try to change something and then the entire construct would fall apart in a massive cascade frenzy which usually resulted in my physical awakening. Such an experience can become rather irritating. If you experience a similar problem, I would suggest leaving the dream be for a moment to get your bearings. Then focus on a single aspect of the dream, such as the ground beneath your feet. Kneel down, touch it, and focus on it. Let the rest of the construct fall, if it will. After that, you can multi focus and recreate it or create whatever world you wish. Once sufficiently experienced, you may be able to hold the construct firm without need of losing control of anything. I contribute this effect to the separation between the conscious and subconscious mind. While dreaming, your subconscious mind governs your experience. However, once you consciously take the reigns, your subconscious will naturally fall into the background. Thus, if you are not consciously maintaining the construct when that happens, it will fall apart. Lucid dreaming can be a very useful tool in this way. It can be a very good way to first meet your subconscious mind. You can sit down and have a little conversation with yourself, play tennis with yourself (which is NOT a sport, by the way), or you could become more intimately knowledgeable of yourself. You could use this, or a similar, technique to lessen the barrier between your conscious and subconscious minds. Such an event would yield amazing benefits to an accomplished magician. If nothing else, it suffices to function as a goal to keep in mind. Etheric projection radically differs from astral projection. Firstly, the etheric realm is in such close proximity to the physical that they can, at times, be veritable mirror images. The astral is not. Thus etheric projection is normally done while physically conscious. It is possible while tranced, but there is no need for a trance. Etheric projection is rather similar to what is called "remote viewing." The only main difference is that remote viewing is just that: viewing. It is input only. Etheric projection is input and output on an etheric level. For a bit more of the physics behind this, see the Gallian Conical Model of Quantum Reality. Projection is, by definition, the shifting of one's conscious focus from one's self to an external object or phenomenon. Currently, I am not projecting while writing this for only one reason. Although my conscious focus is on my monitor and what I am writing, I am still focusing on them from my physical body. For the sake of simplicity, we will treat the physical body as the default for our exercises and procedures. Although it is important to realize that we, as humans, are not purely physical creatures. We are spiritual creatures (for a lack of a better term) that are native to a much higher realm of existence. We "incarnate" into homo sapien bodies for reasons that no one can agree on. This yields, what I call, the "periscope effect." We are present on many planes at once, but are conditioned to only perceive one at a time, and thus while we are physically conscious, we do not know we is going on in the astral. We natively possess a single input/output sensory mechanism, however in our melding with our mammal counterparts, we have divided it into five basic senses. Anything beyond that is referred to as Extra Sensory Perception, of which we are all capable because it is merely a shadow of our true sensory mechanism. Unfortunately, I can only support what I have said here through empiricism. If you wish to refute it, I cannot stop you. All that I can tell you here is that this mental construct that is my view of the world is the fruit of my experience in these matters. Choosing to question it is not only natural, but is recommended. However, choosing to disregard it begs to question why you are at this site in the first place. From the few people I have trained and the many that I have instructed, I find that this type of perception is almost an innate human ability. The "aura" is simply the placement of the body on higher, less "compressed" (again, for lack of a better term) levels of existence. When you see an aura, you are not viewing a single, mysterious "light field," as I have far too often heard it referred. You are experiencing etheric sight. The illusion of a "field of light" is caused by the etheric sight itself, being less "tangible" than physical site when over laid, and the fact that you are viewing many levels of existence at the same time. The "etheric realm" is not a single place or plane of existence. The "etheric realm" is a myriad of sub levels of existence that have to banded together in the label "etheric." These overlapping levels meld together when viewed at once, over laid on physical sight. Very active creatures have very pronounced auras. Humans, which I feel are of a divine origin, have extremely pronounced auras. Auras can even be seen about inanimate objects (they exist too, you know). Prior to projecting etherically, I would suggest first attaining the ability to view an aura. This will aid in giving you some kind of idea what you are doing. First, practice control of your eyes. The ability to focus and lose focus of your eyes at will is pivotal in learning this ability. After you have gained it, there is little need for that control, but it can be applicable elsewhere. Firstly, look at a person's head and focus your eyes on a point in mid-air approximately half of the distance to your subject. Ideally, you will want a solid color background. A busy background can disrupt the focus of your eyes or distort your view of the aura. Focus your attention, not your eyes, on the space immediately around the subject's head, extending to anywhere from three inches (7 centimetres) to six inches (15 centimetres) from the subject's head. Do not expect to see bright, flashy, pronounced colors. All you will most likely see is a "presence;" a simple impression around the body or, in this case, head. In order to project etherically, you must learn to separate your focus from your physical body while remaining physically conscious. The easiest way for a beginner to learn this is through temporary sensory deprivation. This part is very easy. The control of it over a distance is the difficult part. Sit in a quiet room with normal lighting. If you are too sleepy, it would be best to get some rest and try this later. If you do not remain conscious the entire time, there is no real point in trying. Put on some head phones and play white noise into them. The noise should not be deafening, but should be sufficient to drown out any daily noise around you. Blindfold yourself, rather than simply closing your eyes. This is partially for complete darkness and partially for the psychological effect. Make sure there is nothing that will disturb you in this time (approximately 20 to 30 minutes at most), such as vibrations, smell of a flaming chicken in the oven, those kinds of things. Meditate in this artificial sen. dep. environment for the allotted time. In this time, you should have a goal; something that you have not seen before, but will view for the first time with this method. Pages of a magazine that you have yet to read, unopened mail, or something of that nature will do fine. Remember, the human mind works in association. If you view something separate from what you actually find, then compare and contrast the two. With sufficient experience, you should be able to do this without the need of the artificial sen. dep. and should be able to combine it with auric sight. Firstly, I would like to disperse a few of the nonsense ideas about astral projection. During astral projection, the only thing that actually leaves your body is your conscious focus. As with all levels of existence, the "astral realm" is a grouping of sub planes, not a specific place. You will find no sign stuck in the ground when you get there reading "Welcome To The Astral. Population: XXX,XXX,XXX." Once there, there are no huge, nasty astral beasts waiting for newbies to arrive and drag them away from their bodies for the rest of whatever, so you don't need to invoke any astral condoms. And lastly, there is no way to get lost and never find your way back to your body. There can be hazards, but these things stated are not among them. Astral projection is very similar to etheric projection, only it is vastly more difficult to accomplish while physically conscious. So, for all practical intents and purposes, a trance will be necessary until you attain god-like status (yes, that was a joke). The whole trick to astral projection is to trance while remaining fully conscious. Sleep can be substituted for such a trance, but I would recommend leaving that aside until you become reasonably experienced with both lucid dreaming and astral projection. It wouldn't do much good to try to project and never leave your dream construct, would it? A trance is necessary for astral projection and not for etheric projection because of the proximity differential between the two realms and the physical, which we have designated our "zero point" for gauging such experiences. The etheric realm, because of its close proximity to the physical, as stated, can be a veritable mirror image of the physical. While the astral, given its remote proximity to the physical, is much more dissimilar. I liken this to an anchored length of chain. Assume the physical realm to be the anchor point; the point that will not move. Our conical model tells us that the "compression" ratio increases exponentially as we further ourselves from the physical. So assume the etheric realm to be three links of chain. Out of that, you can achieve maybe a half turn in either direction. Exponential increase would place the astral at links four through twelve. Out of those twelve links of chain you could achieve two or three full turns in either direction. The same applies to all realms on the high side of the physical. Each realm becoming more and more malleable as one ascends. The act of trancing while remaining conscious is a bit more difficult than most magicians would like. However, there isn't much that we can do to change it in the short term. The process of trancing is really just shutting down the body as much as possible. Thus, there can be levels and/or stages in said trancing. A light trance is very temporary and a deep trance is even more effective than sleep, however lacking the regenerative factor. Here, you will want to employ the breath control technique outlined on the Beginner's Magic page. Your overall goal is to reach an Alpha state. "Alpha" being the designated name for a given frequency of brain waves. If you have any experience with biofeedback, it will be immensely useful here. Many people like to use an imagined falling effect to accomplish this. Hold on an inhale, and drop on an exhale. Note, not a visualization, but the overall effect on the body of falling. The best most people could do is liken the feeling to that of swinging on a swing set. The amount of time it takes to reach an alpha state will vary in accordance with the individual and said individual's experience with relaxation techniques (several effective techniques are listed on the Beginner's Magic page). Once you reach an alpha state, you will feel the atmosphere around you change. This will be accompanied by a humming or ringing sound and/or vibrating sensation. Everyone experiences this state differently, so you really will have to just find out what's there when you get there. Once you begin to become heavy, you are in a sufficient trance to projection astrally. Simply project your focus to an external location and you will go. You may feel a pulling sensation when you do this. If that happens, then there is no need to worry, but trance a bit more deeply next time. A deep trance can be quite uncomfortable, so you probably will want somewhere in the middle. In order to pull yourself out of a trance, simply concentrate on moving your extremities. Start by inciting a "pulling back" sensation and literally will yourself back to your physical body. Then concentrate on moving your extremities, such as your fingers, slowly. Then move them a bit more quickly. Then move your wrists, your arms, and your legs. By the time you work your way up to your arms, you should be completely grounded in the physical again. If you find that you can't move your fingers, then you are simply a failure as a magician and the rest of the world would be better off if you never returned. Will is the very basis of magic. Even an average, inexperienced person should be able to accomplish this, so there is no need for worry. Just work your way in and out of it slowly. At first, it may take as much as an hour or so to enter the trance, but it should only take a few moments to pull out of even a deep trance. As you progress, you should be able to enter a sufficient trance for projection in as little as five to ten minutes. Good luck. Dear God, this was an incredibly long paragraph. |
