Monroe Institute's Hemi-Sync course "Wave I" audio course - for people who want an
Out of Body Experience
I found Wave I to be quite good as far as unlocking a certain amount of potential from a completely non-gifted person (ie me) for the purpose of out-of-body travel. However I have to say that I don't believe that there exists any hemi-sync tape which gives you an easy road. They always require tons of effort and repetition - unless you're naturally gifted of course. I used the cassette version of the course, which I would say is quite ok if you have a decent tape player, though I hear that the CD course is in fact preferable if a little more expensive.
"Wave I"
The "Wave I" series was good because it assumes no prior skills whatsoever and is pretty simple to follow with voice instructions included along the course of each tape. One downside is that it comes with only the most basic instruction booklets so most people don't really know exactly what they can do once they are getting interesting sensations, but are still are having no luck actually getting out. Definitely one of the most difficult parts of the whole thing is finding 45 minutes worth of quiet to shut yourself away to try a meditation tape most days (and preferably each day).
At the start of each tape session, you are taken through a few minutes of breathing exercises which require you to exhale through your mouth making an audible noise - so you will need to get away from other people mainly for peace and quiet but partly to avoid embarrassing yourself during this procedure. Note that I found this energy-raising breathing to be absolutely essential, so don't think you can just skip that part. I don't know if making the audible exhaling noise was particularly useful but I was happy to do it anyway. I did try some nights playing the tape without doing the energy-raising just to see - and the results were disappointing. So follow the instructions to the letter and I'm pretty sure things will happen for you too.
If you're wondering what on earth this talk about energy (or "chi") is all about, check Robert Bruce's web site. In short, this energy is what keeps people full of life and Yoga and Chi Gong are specifically designed to open blocked energy channels in the human body. Have you done either of these and found you felt more alive afterwards? This is why! Note that acupuncture too is based on the idea of correcting problems associated with energy blockages etc, so before you think this is all completely nuts, there is well over 2,000 years of serious research behind the concept.
Practice - and some results
When I started, I practiced the tapes nightly for ten days or so, listening to them in bed with the lights out. I gradually moved from tapes 1 to 2 and 3, and then onto tape 5. They mentioned that you needed to achieve the "mind awake - body asleep" state before going on to tape 5, but what I think they really mean is that your mind should be awake but your body be so deeply relaxed that you have lost most of your awareness of it. (Some people report hearing themselves snoring but I don't snore so I never experienced this.) However you should definitely not be in a state of "waking paralysis" where your body is totally asleep! This state is rare, uncomfortable and also generally regarded as being pretty unhelpful for the purposes of astral travel.
When I finally tried Tape 5 of the series, I noticed that I got to a point in the tape where I would get a very light vibrating (or fluttering) sensation throughout my body for maybe 15 seconds or so. I didn't know what this meant, but certainly hoped it was "the vibrations" that astral travellers talk about as a precursor to leaving their bodies. The rate of the light vibration through my body was about 5 Herz - ie five flutters per second. However initially I didn't get this effect every session.
With more practice of tape 5 though, this point of vibration became easier and easier to reach each time until I sometimes didn't need the tape any longer to reach this point - I just needed to recall the feeling in my mind and the vibrating would come. Interestingly, one night I asked my girlfriend when the vibrating started if she could feel it as she lay next to me, and even though she was touching me and we were both lying very still, she said she couldn't feel a thing - whereas to me it seemed bizarre that she couldn't tell at all.
Also another sign that things were working well was that after the energy breathing at the start of each session, I would notice that I would be really hot afterwards - even if it was a cool night and I'd got into a cold bed. I believe that the energy-raising takes quite a bit of practice to get right (and for energy blockages to be cleared in the body), so this process can take maybe three or four weeks to perfect. Note that after a few tape sessions, you can definitely feel the energy as you are pulling it up your body from you feet - which is a good indication that things are going right. (And practicing it during the day helps too.) Personally I don't believe that dragging the energy right the way into your head is a great idea and I usually was happy to just get it into my torso. (Otherwise I noticed I would not sleep well afterwards for some reason.)
[NOTE: after much reading I found that I had made a serious mistake following the instructions. I decided that the "resonant energy balloon" was not necessary for my protection, and yet this poorly named concept is actually the act of circulating the energy around your aura. So dragging energy into your feet and up to your head is fine as long as it is being circulated properly. Otherwise you suffer from energy congestion problems as I did.]
Extra preparation
I was reading all sorts of theories about Out of Body Experiences at the time and was trying all sorts of techniques. I changed my diet to minimise meat, starch and refined sugar and maximise carrot juice and raw fruit & vegetable intake. Plus I would drink the 2 litres (7-8 cups) of water per day.
When doing tape 5, I would also try to visualise things in my head - usually a flower in an imaginary garden setting - and would get quite an "intense" feeling at this point, for lack of a better description. I certainly began to believe that the clearer I could visualise something after the light vibrations had occurred, the sooner I might leave my body.
[NOTE: again after much reading I found that this is correct to an extent. To successfully project, you need to practice shutting your thinking down to a single point of focus and keep it there as long as possible. Or you can completely focus on being somewhere else until you separate.]
A high point, then losing my commitment
One night after about 4 weeks I had a minor breakthrough. Near the end of tape 5 I was doing everything I could to focus on an image of a flower and I managed to make the image quite vivid in my mind's eye. Then suddenly and very unexpectedly I felt my entire body somehow moving across the bed and realised I was moving in a very slow spiral fashion, parallel to where I had been lying. I was so taken aback that while I tried to keep focused on the image in my mind, I was so spooked that my concentration went right out the window and I ended up back where I had been within a few seconds.
Understandably I was pretty excited about this as that was the single weirdest experience I'd ever had, but then the next night I tried the same thing again and I just couldn't get to the same point, nor the next night either. (Unfortunately you have good days and bad days.) Around this point, I suddenly needed to do a lot of overtime at work and stopped practising every night. This soon put paid to the good work I'd done up until then as after a while I even lost the knack of getting the vibrations so easily, because I had gotten out of practice (especially with the energy-raising). Since then I haven't managed to regain the discipline to start all the work all over again, though I dearly wish I had. I will try again some time in the future, but it is a really big commitment.
Conclusion
I would say that the Monroe Institute's tape course is definitely worth trying and as I have never regarded myself as being spiritually or psychically gifted in by any stretch of the imagination, I definitely feel it helped me see that advancement in this area is really possible. However it can be a difficult regime to follow - especially if you have difficulty getting 45 minutes worth of peace and quiet to be by yourself to do a tape most nights. And if you don't think you can stick at it for three weeks at the very least, it's unlikely to end in success unless you're gifted in some way.
However - the best thing is that there are some good progress indicators along the way:
losing your bodily sensations during sessions yet still having your mind conscious and alert (maybe towards the end of the first 7 sessions)
a definite feeling of energy moving up your body as you do the energy-raising techniques (maybe towards the end of the first 7 sessions)
a noticeable feeling of heat associated with the energy raising (maybe within the first 14 sessions) - note that this may decrease over time
having a wave of fluttering vibration - light or perhaps intense depending on the person - two thirds the way through a tape 5 session (maybe towards the end of the first 14 sessions).
If you do give this a try, I wish you the very best of luck and I would love to hear how you get on.
Check out these links:
The Beginner's Guide to Astral Travel - at AstralVoyage.com
http://www.monroeinstitute.org/ - the Monroe Institute's main website with a ton of info on their courses etc
http://www.hemi-sync.com/catalog/ - Ordering the Wave I course
http://www.astralpulse.com - astral travel guru Robert Bruce's wonderful web site with lots of articles and training guides on astral travel, various forums and also a safer method of energy raising called New Energy Ways
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This page was last updated in December 2003
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