The pattern that I have mentioned before, has been consistent for centuries. A sensitive or exceptionally gifted individual discovers or senses a phenomenon and describes it.

The current bunch of scientists or experts shout ‘Fraud,’ ‘ Liar,’ ‘ Charlatan,’ ‘Impossible,’ and the like—without of course making any attempt to investigate what they perceive as nonsense. After about thirty years or so the phenomenon is absorbed into the enlarged scientific vision and the scientists and experts talk about it as if they had known it all along.

Of course by that time they are shouting ‘Fraud,’ ‘Nonsense,’ and so forth about something else on its way to orthodoxy some thirty years hence.

One example I have written about ad nauseam over the years is the persecution of vitamin and diet-therapy supporters in the 50’s through the 60’s by the medical authorities, who now talk learnedly about the importance of vitamins, supplements, and proper nutrition, though many of them know less about nutrition than their receptionist, particularly if she is in Weight Watchers.

Another fine example is the out-of-body experiences (OBE’s) which have been known about by many people for thousands of years. Yet only in the past thirty years has the possibility that body and consciousness are sometimes separable entered into things conceived of as possible by the scientific fraternity.

Some therapists are now actually training people to exteriorize, as they call it. And of course the military researchers of the major powers have been trying to find ways to use this now acknowledged human ability as a method of spying, or gathering military intelligence. Elisha, in the Second book of Kings had already forestalled them by centuries.

Elizabeth Kuhbler-Ross and a number of other brave souls with sound professional reputations, have spoken of OBE’s as verifiable facts capable of being understood by experiencing them.

But why in the name of Truth does it take so long for occult material to be read, let alone tested? The Tibetan Book of the Dead was translated by Wentz over 70 years ago. I used it in my social studies lessons in the 50’s. It details the out-of-body experiences for Tibetans for 49 days after the death of the body, with advice on how to interpret what seems to be happening, and what to do in various circumstances in order to make an optimum transition from living from a human perspective in a human body, to living from a subtle world perspective in the subtle body that was there all time but largely unacknowledged.

The book contained the accumulated data of centuries of work of trained and gifted psychics from the only theocracy in the world. The experts on other matters dismissed it as superstition, without reading it of course, and thereby wasted decades trying to discover what has already been known for centuries.

Muldoon’s text book on astral projection was published in 1929, yet well over seventy years later it is still news to some people that the phenomenon has been known about and taught for millennia. Muldoon was possibly the most famous projector in the last century. He lived most of his life in Wisconsin and had his first OBE at age 12.

He came into the literature because he read the work of the British psychical researcher Hereward Carrington who wrote a book called Modern Psychical Phenomena. In that book was a chapter about the experiences of the French projector Charles Lancelin. Muldoon wrote to Carrington and pointed out that Lancelin was probably an unconscious projector, and that he, Muldoon could project consciously after years of practice and might be a good source of new data for researchers.

He gave Carrington so many new concepts and details about the procedures that the researcher began a professional association with Muldoon, which resulted in the book The Projection of the Astral Body in 1929. This classic is still available in occult and metaphysical bookstores, though nowadays there are dozens of others inspired by the careful work of Muldoon and Carrington.

The experience of apparently leaving the body behind, and being able to see it—connected to the less dense body by what looks like an infinitely extensible cord of light— has been shared by millions of people over the centuries.

Most reported OBE’s come under the heading of autoscopy: seeing oneself from a distance. This quite frequently happens during experiences that shock the body.

Many accounts have been written about people watching complete operations on their bodies whilst under anaesthesia. George Sava, for instance, wrote a series of very popular books about his life as a surgeon. In A Surgeon Remembers, that came out in 1953, he recalled an operation on an elderly Mrs. Frances Gail.

She came out of her post-operative coma, quite annoyed at being brought back to her body, as many people are. She told Mr. Sava verbatim the discussion he had about whether to operate, and the replies of the operation room staff. I said Mr. Sava instead of Dr. Sava, because surgeons in England regard themselves as way superior to mere physicians, and are called Mister, to distinguish them from doctors. They are insulted to be called Doctor, and let you know the protocol immediately.

Mr. Sava then concluded " It is indeed a disquieting thought…that every time one operates one’s activities are under observation from the patient’s astral body hovering overhead."

Dr. Russell MacRobert was staff doctor at Lennox Hill Hospital in NYC when he was assigned to operate on a clergyman with a painful ear disorder.

The patient was under extra deep anaesthesia, and the surgeon was about to start when he found that he was missing an instrument vital to the operation. He swore vigorously before going to his instrument case and had to be prepared all over again while the instrument was sterilized before he could begin the operation.

All this time the astral body of the clergyman was watching and listening, and he told the surgeon the complete story on coming out of the anaesthetic.

A surgeon I know personally told me that his heart operating team had been warned to watch their conversation during the operations because it was an unexplained (and of course uninvestigated ) medical fact that the patient often knew what was going on, though medically unconscious.

My own uncle experienced watching his body do things from the other side of the deck, after being hit by machine gun fire when his Air Sea rescue launch was attacked by a German plane during the war.

But experiences like these are kindergarten standard and extremely numerous. The experienced astral travellers who can move about the planet, and remember what was seen and heard, are fewer, though still numerous.

Muldoon was the most famous person of this sort, if we exclude the Biblical references. Another was Oliver Fox, the English scientist who wrote Astral Projection.

Robert Monroe founded the Mind Research Institute in Virginia, and performed many experiments involving visiting people astrally, writing down a dated version of the trip, and then checking with them. His discovery as a sound engineer was that feeding specific, and slightly different frequencies into stereo headphones would produce projection in the hearer. And it was repeatable. Anyone who wanted to project could go to the Monroe Institute and experience it for themselves.

His book Journeys Out of the Body was published in 1971, and described in some detail the interpenetrating universes in which we live. This occurred at about the time that the quantum mechanics people began to make public the latest multiple universe ideas from the world of advanced physics. One interesting factor of his work to spiritual scientists was that the creatures and beings experienced by his team of travellers were identical to those experienced by the Gnostics in the 1st century when they wrote about going through the seven gates, each one guarded by one of the visible planets.

Projection may be what was actually taking place in the remote viewing being taught to Intelligence Officers in the then US military secret program in October of 1977. This was a successful experiment in using paranormal abilities as an intelligence gathering tool. It was only initiated because of the suspicion that the Russians might be using psychic methods to garner intelligence data.

The Autumn 1998 issue of the British magazine Kindred Spirit had a long article about the work of Joseph W. McMoneagle, who was one of the original six officers recruited for the project.

This project showed experimentally in the bleak area of the training of soldiers that it is possible to travel about, either in an etheric body, or by knowing how to think about where you want to go. This is fact. Debate about it as fact is based on ignorance, not a scientific attitude. Yet the wranglers and explainers away are still there, seeking their own comfort level.

Look at this scenario. Less than a century and a half ago, before the Eskimos contacted the sugar society of America, the phenomenon of toothache was totally unknown to Eskimos. They didn’t even have a word for it in their language. So let’s consider just for a moment that the unsugared Eskimo is the dominant culture, and that you have a toothache.

There is no way that you could convey your experience to the concerned psychiatric investigator. He would cleverly explain away all your symptoms and behavior as "all in your mind" and part of a rare dentopathy syndrome, just as insensitive and ignorant white coated experts do today, when someone is experiencing mental phenomena that they themselves don’t experience. In India, when someone’s Kundalini awakens and begins to clean out the garbage of many lifetimes, it is recognized as a spiritual phenomenon and there will be people who understand what it happening, look after them, and honor their attainment.

Here, such people are treated to make them ‘ normal’ like the experts. Drugs and electric shocks are possibilities in the spiritually ignorant West.

But if that expert experienced a toothache himself it might change his whole attitude. He would find other ways to explain your pain that hadn’t occurred to him before. And of course it would likely mean ostracism from his peers, and being labelled a crank, if he reported it professionally.

Kuhbler-Ross investigated OBE’s for years as one of the few professionals who considered that they were genuine phenomena. Fourteen years after she began work on them she had her own experience. Now she is fearless. She knows. The ignorance of the experts cannot alter her experience, no matter how clever that expert may be.

But so much of this kind of phenomenon MUST be experienced. Debate and wrangling won’t produce the experience which is the only valid test. The pseudo-objective attitude of the scientist, and the special consciousness that it involves are not adequate to the task.

The military experiments, and Munroe’s repeatable methods would be enough evidence in any other field of knowledge. Many concepts have been accepted in science with far less evidence. But peer pressure from an extremely left brained group makes it difficult for scientists to realize that their valid and valuable method of testing and organizing knowledge is inadequate in some areas of human life.

Many physicians meditated in secret in case their critical colleagues thought they were weird to do something so irrational. Only after an MD wrote The Relaxation Response, and there was a medical term for it, did they begin to come out of the woodwork and recommend it to stress patients.

My amazing mentor once said this, " If a question can be answered with words then it is not a fundemental question. Fundamental questions can only be answered with an experience, not a sentence." Good advice. Believe your own stuff. It’s all you have. Don’t let the doubts of someone without your experience influence your unchallengeable, but incommunicable knowledge. Remember the Eskimo! — rhymes with Alamo, should be easy to recall.

Douglas Buchanan from Tid Bits vol I, #18. Out of the Body