I have been reading Robert Monroe's book, Journeys Out of the Body, and wanted to share a few thoughts I had on it.
And yet, at times, in visiting Locale II, a very unusual event periodically occurs. It makes no difference where in Locale II, the event is the same. In the midst of normal activity, whatever it may be, there is a distant Signal, almost like heraldic trumpets. Everyone takes the Signal calmly, and with it, everyone stops speaking or whatever he may be doing. It is the Signal that He (or They) is coming through His Kingdom. There is no awestruck prostration or falling down on one's knees. Rather, the attitude is most matter-of-fact It is an occurrence to which all are accustomed and to comply takes absolute precedence over everything. There are no exceptions.
At the Signal, each living thing lies down-my impression is on their backs, bodies arched to expose the abdomen (not the genitals), with head turned to one side so that one does not see Him as He passes by. The purpose seems to be to form a living road over which He can travel. I have gleaned the idea that occasionally He will select someone from this living bridge, and that person is never seen or heard from again. The purpose of the abdominal exposure is an expression of faith and complete submissiveness, the abdomen being the most vulnerable part of the body or the area that can suffer damage most easily. There is no movement, not even thought, as He passes by. Everything has come to a momentary standstill, full and complete, while He passes. ("Post Mortem" chapter)
Monroe gives this story in his book and I wanted to bring it up because it made me immediately think of the Buddhist sutras. I recall reading years ago that in the deva world the Buddha says there is a delusional creator god who thinks he is the father of the universe. I remember that distinctly because I found it such an oddity. So, it sounds like this could be that deluded deity.
To me, it was a place or condition of pure peace, yet exquisite emotion. It was as if you were floating in warm soft clouds where there is no up or down, where nothing exists as a separate piece of matter. The warmth is not merely around you, it is of you and through you. Your perception is dazzled and overwhelmed by the Perfect Environment. The cloud in which you float is swept by rays of light in shapes and hues that are constantly changing, and each is good as you bathe in them as they pass over you. Ruby-red rays of light, or something beyond what we know as light, because no light ever felt this meaningful. All the colors of the spectrum come and go constantly, never harshly, and each brings a different soothing or restful happiness. It is as if you are within and a part of the clouds surrounding an eternally glowing sunset, and with every changing pattern of living color, you also change. You respond and drink into you the eternity of the blues, yellows, greens, and reds, and the complexities of the intermediates. All are familiar to you. This is where you belong. This is Home.
As you move slowly and effortlessly through the cloud, there is music around you. It is not something of which you become aware. It is there all the time, and you vibrate in harmony with the Music. Again, this is more than the music you knew back there. It is only those harmonies, the delicate and dynamic melodic passages, the multivoiced counterpoint, the poignant overtones-it is only those that have evoked in you the deep, incoherent emotion back there. The mundane is missing. Choirs of humansounding voices echo in wordless song. Infinite patterns of strings in all shades of subtle harmony interweave in cyclical yet developing themes, and you resonate with them. There is no source from which the Music comes. It is there, all around you, in you, you are a part of it, and it is you.
It is the purity of a truth of which you have had only a glimpse. This is the feast, and the tiny tidbits you tasted before, back there, had made you hope for the existence of the Whole. The nameless emotion, longing, nostalgia, sense of destiny that you felt back there when you stared at the cloud-layered sunset in Hawaii, when you stood quietly among the tall, waving trees in the silent forest, when a musical selection, passage, or song recalled memories of the past or brought forth a longing for which there was no associated memory, when you longed for the place where you belonged, whether city, town, country, nation, or family-these are now fulfilled. You are Home. You are where you belong. Where you always should have been.
Most important, you are not alone. With you, beside you, interlocked in you are others. They do not have names, nor are you aware of them as shapes, but you know them and you are bonded to them with a great single knowledge. They are exactly like you, they are you, and like you, they are Home. You feel with them, like gentle waves of electricity passing between you, a completeness of love, of which all the facets you have experienced are but segments and incomplete portions. Only here, the emotion is without need of intense display or demonstration. You give and receive as an automatic action, with no deliberate effort. It is not something you need or that needs you. The 'reaching out' is gone. The interchange flows naturally. You are unaware of differences in sex, you yourself as a part of the whole are both male and female, positive and negative, electron and proton. Man-woman love moves to you and from you, parent-child-sibling-idol and idyll and ideal-all interplay in soft waves about you, in you, and through you. You are in perfect balance because you are where you belong. You are Home.
Within all of this, yet not a part of it, you are aware of the source of the entire span of your experience, of you, of the vastness beyond your ability to perceive and/or imagine. Here, you know and easily accept the existence of the Father. Your true Father. The Father, the Creator of all that is or was. You are one of His countless creations. How or why, you do not know. This is not important. You are happy simply because you are in your Right Place, where you truly belong.
Each of the three times I went There, I did not return voluntarily. I came back sadly, reluctantly. Someone helped me return. Each time after I returned, I suffered intense nostalgia and loneliness for days. I felt as an alien might among strangers in a land where things were not 'right,' where everything and everyone was so different and so 'wrong' when compared with where you belonged. Acute loneliness, nostalgia, and something akin to homesickness. So great was it that I have not tried to go There again. ("Post Mortem" chapter)
What he describes is consistent with the Empyrean (the supreme heaven) in Dante's Paradiso, which he envisioned as the Highest Heaven, a revolving Sempiternal Rose in which the petals were angels simultaneously in union with the absolute while also retaining their individuality.
I am not aware of any of Dante's writings where he goes into an explanation of the mystical life, though I have always assumed based on the Divine Comedy that he was a mystic.
9/9/60 Night
I was lying in a north-south position, when I suddenly felt bathed in and transfixed by a very powerful beam that seemed to come from the north, about 30° above the horizon. I was completely powerless, with no will of my own, and I felt as if I were in the presence of a very strong force-in personal contact with it.
It had intelligence of a form beyond my comprehension, and it came directly (down the beam?) into my head, and seemed to be searching every memory in my mind. I was truly frightened because I was powerless to do anything about this intrusion. This intelligent force entered my head just above the forehead, and offered no calming thoughts or words. It didn't seem to be aware of any of my feelings or emotions. It was looking impersonally, hurriedly, and definitely for something specific in my mind. After a while (perhaps only moments) it left, and I 'reintegrated,' arose, shaken, and went outside for some fresh air. ("Inconclusive" chapter)
9/16/60 Night
The same impersonal probing, the same power, from the same angle. However, this time I received the firm impression that I was inextricably bound by loyalty to this intelligence force, always had been, and that I had a job to perform here on earth. The job was not necessarily to my liking, but 1 was assigned to it. The impression was that I was manning a "pumping station," that it was a dirty, ordinary job but it was mine and I was stuck with it, and nothing, absolutely nothing could alter the situation.
I got the impression of huge pipes, so ancient they were covered with undergrowth and rust. Something like oil was passing through them, but it was much higher in energy than oil, and vitally needed and valuable elsewhere (assumption: not on this material planet) . This has been going on for aeons of time, and there were other force groups here, taking out the same material on some highly competitive basis, and the material was convertible at some distant point or civilization for something very valuable to entities far above my ability to understand.
Again, the intelligent force moved out and away quickly, and the visitation ended. I got up after a bit, feeling depressed, and went into the bathroom in our house, and actually felt I should wash my hands after working (although my hands were clean). ("Inconclusive" chapter)
And I wanted to bring this account up from near the end of Monroe's book.
These journal entries here are accompanied with a whole parable in which Monroe explains earth as an "experiment" gone awry; that cold alien intelligences observe us like rats in a maze; and that they are using us for some other purpose.
What Monroe describes here is consistent with Gurdjieff's idea that we are "food for the moon" - or that the earth is some sort of energy farm being exploited by alien intelligences.
I find it interesting that most of Monroe's alien encounters seem to have taken place early in his OOB experiences.
Jeffrey "Jhanananda" Brooks, who is certainly the best authority to turn to on this, has commented on this idea many times over the years, offering his conclusion.
The fact that he invokes the concept of alien abduction, versus the OOBE, I find his work tainted. I would prefer to see him recognize that he had an OOBE, if he did. (Jeff)
There are a fair number of people who have near death experiences who experience an OOBE, and some people randomly experience OOBEs during sleep, and as Luke mentioned the OOBE is often mistaken for an alien abduction. (Jeff)
I have examined a number of UFO abduction stories and they all read like classic OOBEs. (Jeff)
It is very unlikely that space aliens have come here from a planet far-far-away. (Jeff)
While I have had many encounters with apparent high tech cultures and apparent space aliens while in an OOBE; nonetheless most of those high tech cultures were not evident when space probes were sent to those planets. Thus, it is my conclusion that the space alien premise is the product of misunderstanding various phenomena.
My documentation here is an effort to show that these natural phenomena are either misinterpreted OOBEs, or experimental air and space research vehicles, and/or misunderstood natural phenomena, such as mirages. (Jeff)
The immaterial domains, and the OOBE are commonly misinterpreted. Misinterpreted phenomena on the immaterial domains is a product of people who are: dreaming, or dead, or in an OOBE, who collectively create a domain in the immaterial (spirit) world, where an apparent high tech culture exists, but it is simply a collective fabrication of the mind (delusion). (Jeff)
So, it seems that Monroe and Gurdjieff were both mistaken in this regard, misunderstanding delusions in the collective unconscious as bona fide aliens.