The Demo Site

Waking up within a dream is one of the activities the spiritual traveler practices when he or she leaves the body to travel the inner planes. Beyond this, the traveler is also always practicing and perfecting the art of directing his or her attention towards some desired state. It is the contention of the author that experience with meditation and actual spiritual travel experience during life can both be of great help in rising above the semi-conscious state characteristic of the second bardo, and moving into a more conscious and desirable state following physical death. 

For those who practiced a devotional tradition in life, some will semi-consciously repeat a religious or a meditative ritual asking gods or intercessors to draw them out of the second bardo world. We see an example of an attempt to create such a ritual in the Catholic rosary, where Mary as intercessor is requested to Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death 

This phrase is from the Hail Mary Prayer. One effect of the repetition of this prayer fifty times in the rosary is that such a prayer for help and intercession may become an automatic process, which will repeat itself in the bardo. 

For those fortunate enough to be more conscious in these bardo states, a petition to a god, guru, guide, saint, or intercessor can be made in hopes that the individual will be lifted or guided out of the bardo worlds by one of those entities. But here again, the call must be concentrated and the ability to ignore the surrounding chaos somewhat developed. When such grace is given, it is a form of salvation where the individual is saved from the discomfort and confusion of the "outer darkness" of the bardo by a powerful entity - usually one that individuals formed a bond with in their former life. To use the swimming analogy, here the 

individual calls out to a lifeguard in hopes of being rescued from the turbulent waters of the bardo state. This is the more passive approach of the devotee. 

We should also note that souls in this bardo are thought to be very sensitive to the thoughts and attitudes of those they knew during life. The Tibetans therefore put great effort into doing 

chanting, reading of sacred texts, and other religious rituals to help the dying soul on its journey in the afterlife. Praying for the peace and happiness of the dying person therefore has great value and provides a benefit to both the living and the dead. This process of sending good wishes to those who have recently died can create a positive spiritual atmosphere which can orient and bring peace to the person in the bardo realm, and can also counter some of the sorrow and upset that accompanies the loss of a loved one. 

The Third Bardo 

The third and last bardo consists of the stage of reincarnation where the soul is pulled into another body to start a new life, often but not always in the physical world. Tibetan Buddhists 

believe that the most desirable world to be born in is the physical world, since it affords the most opportunity for spiritual growth and realization. The third bardo consists of a series of images determined by the soul's karma that lead to psychic vortices that draw the soul into a womb. The soul's reaction to the images (attraction or repulsion) determines which vortex the soul enters and in which womb the soul ends up. The Tibetan tradition gives detailed advice on which representations to choose and which to avoid in order to gain a desirable rebirth. 

This ability to choose a good incarnation requires discrimination, and a certain degree of conscious awareness. The new age approach to reincarnation which claims we choose our new incarnation is idealistic and not always true from this vantage point. Many souls desperate to escape the confusion of the second bardo will grab on to the first opportunity that presents itself like a swimmer who grasps a log in dangerous rapids in hopes of making it to calmer waters. Choosing the first object (or incarnation) that comes along may not be the wisest choice. 

The average person is said to spend a period of about forty-five days in the second bardo. However, passionate souls with strong desires or those responsible for evil acts in their most recent life are said to reincarnate almost immediately. In some cases, the individual can stay in the bardo state for long periods, and be drawn into its currents awaiting rebirth. 

If the individual does not reincarnate in the physical world, he or she will go to one of the other five worlds of rebirth. These are the heaven worlds, the hell worlds, the world of hungry ghosts, the asura (demigod) worlds, and the animal worlds. Each of these is believed to be limited and inferior to obtaining another body in the material world. This is because they exist mostly to receive good or bad karma (the results of previous actions), and are not considered places to create new karma. 

The least familiar of the above worlds is the asura world which is a place of conflict and struggle where kings, knights, and warlords battle each other for dominance. Persons who were fascinated with gaining and exercising power over others during life are said to be likely to incarnate in the asura realm. The hungry ghost realm is a place of need and desire where souls are denied fulfillment or given only small rewards. Here souls experience states of continuing anxiety and frustration. The animal world is reserved for those whose extreme instincts for violence, gluttony, or sexual gratification dominated their previous lives in the physical world to the extent that they devolved into the instinctual and unreflective state of animal existence. The heaven and hell worlds have wide variations, but it is interesting that the Tibetan tradition has both burning hells (as in the Christian tradition) and freezing hells. 

The Freedom to do Spiritual Travel in the Afterlife 

One factor that helps the soul achieve the freedom of conscious control and spiritual travel during the afterlife is acceptance of death. Those who have not accepted death will resist the process of dying and introduce conflict into the bardo stages. This is why it is important for people to take care of any unfinished business as they near death so they can let go of life 

completely. In Brahmanical Hinduism, there is a stage of life called the forest dweller or vanaprastha stage in which the older individual who has finished raising a family is supposed to begin 

letting go of pleasures and attachments to life in preparation for death. However, in the West the goal is to keep spending money and maximize enjoyment up to the end of life. This makes it difficult for many to make a graceful transition into death. Intense attachment to the material world makes it difficult to do spiritual travel both during life and after death. 

It also usually helps to have faith in something beyond the material world at the time of death. Those with a strong faith in Jesus or another religious figure will be more calm and relaxed as they enter the bardo realms. While the religious person can look forward to heaven at the time of death, the spiritual traveler who has been trying to do spiritual travel all his or her life can also look forward to death in certain respects. This is because the opportunity for exploration and spiritual travel will hopefully be greatly expanded after death when the physical body and its needs will no longer be a major distraction. Of course the areas the spiritual traveler wishes to explore are the heavenly areas and beyond, and in that sense, he or she has much in common with other more conventional religious people. 

Both have a distinct advantage over the secular individual because they expect to enter into a positive afterlife (heaven), and expectations have great power in the inner worlds. This expectation combined with love and devotion towards some religious ideal can propel the religious individual towards a heavenly state just as the practice of spiritual travel does. The 

secular individual with no faith or expectation of heaven is more likely to flounder after death and get stuck in some intermediate gray area surrounded by thoughts and emotions from the past waiting for something to happen. 

A brief mention of ethics is appropriate when discussing the state a person enters at death. In general, both the state of mind of a soul and the world it inhabits is presumed to be the result of its past thought patterns and actions (karma). Trauma and intense pain whether experienced by the soul, or inflicted on another during life will tend to fragment the self and make conscious control after death difficult. Violence, cruelty, and hatred expressed towards others in life will almost certainly have a limiting effect on the soul's freedom both in the after death state and in subsequent existences . This is true even for souls who have become proficient in spiritual travel during their life. Unethical actions during life seem to separate the soul from the knowledge and wisdom attained while living, and leave it helpless to experience the results of its actions in the afterlife. 

Interestingly enough, some of the Western ideas of heaven and hell can be accounted for by the Tibetan notion of the second bardo. The saint or righteous soul will find itself in places of 

bliss, happiness, and light based on the kinds of thoughts it was in a habit of thinking, while the evil person will lead an existence of fear, anger, and torment in the afterlife. However, the second bardo is a temporary transitional state that actually precedes the longer term experiences of heaven, hell, or rebirth in the physical world which can occur following the third bardo. 

Spiritualism as an Alternative View of the Afterlife 

The focus of Buddhism in the afterlife is similar to its approach to earthly existence. The emphasis is on passion, and its restrictive and destructive consequences. It is therefore not surprising that the Buddhist view of after death states concentrates on desire as the mechanism which turns the dead into machines who must live out a karmic destiny in the afterlife. These individuals will exist in a depleted state of awareness with little freedom of choice during the bardo. 

As an alternate and competing view of the afterlife, we will briefly examine the Western tradition of spiritualism which has been around for more than one hundred years, and is still popular in some quarters today. 

The central conclusion of the data provided by the spiritualists and trance mediums is that dead people have scarcely more insight and wisdom in death than they had while alive. Such a proposition emphasizes the importance of learning spiritual skills such as spiritual travel while alive instead of hoping for spiritual redemption and transformation after death. Though the spiritualist's view differs from Buddhism in the specifics, it supports the contention that people should not wait until death to begin learning since such a delay can result in a very limited and routine afterlife. We examine the spiritualist's view on the page titled A Spiritualist's Approach to After-Death States. 

Kabir, the Hindu-Muslim poet of India, talks about the afterlife in an ambiguous way describing it as the "city of death" which could be consistent with either the Tibetan or Spiritualist's view of the afterlife. He offers the following words which support the notion that a person who is limited in life will also be limited in death. 

O friend! Hope for Him whilst you live, know while you live, understand while you live: for in life deliverance abides. If your bonds be not broken whilst living, what hope of deliverance in death? It is but an empty dream that the soul shall have union 

with Him because it has passed from the body: If He is found now, 

He is found them, If not, we do but go to dwell in the city of Death. If you have union now, you shall have it hereafter. Bathe in the Truth, know the true Guru, have faith in the true Name. 

Kabir says: 

It is the spirit of the quest that helps; 

I am a slave of this spirit of the quest. Songs of Kabir (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1991), pps. 46-47 

One Addition fot this Section: 

A Spiritualist's Approach to After-Death States 

Spiritualism as a movement became popular in America with the Fox sisters in the mid 1800s when they encountered a spirit that rapped in a code that they could interpret. They began communicating with the spirit of a dead pedlar who had been murdered in their family home in upstate New York. In the late 1800s in Britain, groups such as the Theosophical Society began making efforts to combine Eastern and Western religions into a syncretism or blending of religious ideas. They also practiced mediumship and communicated with spirits. Spiritualists developed abilities to talk to the dead on one hand and to ascended masters or spiritual adepts on the other. Spiritualism continued to gain popularity and was most widely practiced during and after World War I. So many people had loved ones who died in the war that there was a great need to feel the dead were happy and well even though they died in the midst of the suffering and madness of that war. 

Anyone who has attended a spiritualist church or group will be familiar with the basic formula where the dead interact with the living using a medium or spiritualist minister as a kind of communications relay station. The medium communicates with a dead person, and passes the information on to the person the spirit wishes to contact. This formula appears to have changed little in the past one hundred years. 

This description of spiritualists necessarily involves some generalizations, and we will not here attempt to discuss the channeling of spiritual teachers such as Kuth Hoomi, Seth, and 

Emmanuel but only the communication with ghosts and dead individuals. The spiritualist's basic view of the afterlife is one where the dead are able to watch the living from a distance, 

and often want to offer advice to living friends and relatives about how to solve their earthly problems. They also offer encouragement to the living about the certainty of an afterlife that is largely pleasant and satisfying, and in doing so contradict claims about the extremes of heaven and hell described in mainstream Christianity. 

Spiritualism can even be viewed as a concrete alternative to Christianity because the spirits purport to offer direct evidence of an afterlife by telling the audience facts about individuals 

in the audience that are unknown to the spiritualist and the rest of the audience. The target individual then confirms the facts to be correct and the audience concludes that the dead are indeed speaking. If the information is wrong or irrelevant (does not apply to the target individual), the spiritualist has various excuses about how or why the information got garbled. 

The spiritualist's approach usually requires no faith in God or Christ though some churches wed the two very different systems of Christianity and Spiritualism in a strange admixture of often contradictory ideas (most spiritualists believe in reincarnation). There is also no need of attaining salvation to escape hell in the afterlife. This statement that there should be no fear of hell in the afterlife generally applies to the average person who has not committed egregious evil acts during life. And even such evil doers will not experience torment eternally but will eventually move beyond it. 

One fundamental tenet of these groups is the well-known maxim attributed to the ancient Hermetic philosopher Hermes Trismegistos that is commonly phrased "As above, so below". In the context of the afterlife, the statement can be interpreted to mean that earthly life (below) is basically a reflection of the afterlife (above). The two are different only in subtle ways. It also means that the "lower" earthly reality is derived from the higher reality, and that changes in the state of mind of the individual (in the mind or "above" world) can have direct bearing on future events in the physical or "below" world. This opens up the whole area of positive or magical thinking where our thoughts and attitudes are believed to ultimately create the world we live in. Spirit (or spirits) can also influence matter in a different way as in the case where the dead interact with the living to give knowledge and advice that can be channeled by a spiritualist medium. 

The curious and surprising thing about communications with the dead is that despite their increase in telepathic skills, they seem to know very little about the workings of universe. Their vision and interests appear to be quite limited. They behave in some ways like tribal ancestors, and are often helpful and interested in the welfare of living friends and relatives. 

However, the quality of the counsel they offer seldom reaches the level of a "Dear Abby" advice column in a daily newspaper. The spirits, for instance, advise grandchildren or former spouses to go to the doctor and have a checkup, or to stop fighting with other relatives, or to leave a job where they are unfulfilled and find a new one. 

Those who are convinced that the medium is actually in contact with the dead in the spirit world conclude that death is not the end, and that they will survive dying to enter into a comforting and familiar afterlife when their body is laid to rest. This is how spiritualism competes effectively with Christianity, which attempts to convince people of their immortality by pointing to Jesus' promise that the dead will rise again. The spiritualist, however, will survive death without having faith in Christ and without living what is normally considered to be a religious life. 

Generally, the dead seem to be quite limited, sometimes discontent, and mostly concerned with the kinds of things that where important to them while on earth. They seem to be basically as conventional and narrow in the afterlife as they were while alive. 

This spiritualist's view of the afterlife is in some ways more disturbing than the Tibetan Buddhist view because at least the Buddhist view offers a change in consciousness and an opportunity to meet spiritual beings. Similarly, Christianity offers the extremes of heaven and hell, and therefore predicts a radical change in consciousness in the afterlife when compared to the spiritualist's provincial view of the afterlife. 

One possibility is that it is the limitations of the spiritualist who cannot understand and communicate the level of consciousness of the spirits that is the problem. Another is that the audience would be alienated by beings who are too far above their state of consciousness. The spirits therefore avoid speaking about certain elements of their experience in order not to lose their audience. Both could explain the lack of spiritual insight and low level of 

consciousness of the dead. 

However, if one attempts to work with the raw data and takes the information at face value, one must conclude after examining the concerns and goals of the dead in these spiritualist groups that learning spiritual travel during life is very important. Without such spiritual knowledge, the opportunities for exploration in the afterlife appear to be negligible. Expanding one's consciousness using spiritual travel techniques during life will likely carry over to the world of the afterlife because one world is said to closely parallel and mimic the other. Spiritual travel skills developed during life will therefore allow for expanded vision in the afterlife hopefully providing the increase in freedom and awareness that will make the afterlife more worth living. Knowledge of spiritual travel may help avoid the trap of an afterlife that closely resembles our lives on earth. 

The tradition of spiritualism has two very important results with respect to death. First, it provides comfort to the grieving who have lost loved ones by providing a world view that shows they still exist and it even provides a means of contacting them. It shows that they can watch our activities, and even read our thoughts. We can therefore think about them and they can be aware of it. The dead and the living are connected and contacting them through a spiritualist or medium is not required. This can be very comforting to those who have lost loved ones. The power of this connection can be seem in older traditional cultures such as 

China, India, and Bali where ancestors are respected, and this kind of connection with and reverence for the dead is an important element of life and society. 

Second, spiritualism makes death less fearful because death does not mean a severing of relationship with those that are loved. Death is no longer the fear of losing everything since a connection with the living can be maintained. The spirit following death can even continue to help and guide the living though in ways that are different from what was done while he or 

she was alive. 

The spiritualist tradition truly has some positive sides when looked at from the point of view of a living, dying, or dead soul. 

SPIRITUAL TRAVEL AND DEATH 

Spiritual Travel as a Dress Rehearsal For Death 

Spiritual travel and the experience of leaving the body may provide a kind of dress rehearsal for physical death. 

The spiritual traveler realizes by immediate personal experience that the everyday world that is normally so stable and predictable can disappear at a moment's notice, just as it will at the time of physical death. At this point, an entirely new world opens up to replace it. In some travel experiences, the traveler has the feeling of traveling huge distances from his or her earthly home and normal state of waking awareness in just a few seconds. The feeling that you are leaving the comfortable and familiar world of five senses behind is very strong in some spiritual travel experiences. 

There is a saying that only the bold and adventuresome find heaven. There is sometimes a decision at the onset of a spiritual travel experience: 

Do you wish to play it safe and stop the experience because it may challenge the ego and its limited view of the world, and by doing so stay ignorant of some facet of reality, or are you willing to take the chance and perhaps learn something new? 

The intuitive feeling that spiritual travel may involve travel through the realms of the afterlife gives it a certain gravity, since it means one may be experimenting with life and death. 

Mystical experience is often said to transcend all dualities including the opposition of life and death. Shamans are believed by their cultures to enter the realm of the ancestors and converse with the spirits of the dead during ecstatic journeys out of the body. 

One great gift that spiritual travel may provide is a feeling of confidence that death is not the end, and a familiarity with the realms beyond the physical world. To experiment and gain knowledge of spiritual travel may provide a sense of familiarity with the other worlds so that death will be less of a shock. Those who have had near-death experiences almost always confirm this sense of increased confidence about their ability to handle the act of dying, and their belief in the existence of life after death. Death can be a new birth into a confusing and alien world where like an infant, the soul is dependent and incapable of choosing its destiny. Or it can be a kind of graduation where after a long period of schooling, the soul enters a new world with a confidence that comes from having learned what it needs to know to survive, to thrive, and continue its evolution. Spiritual travel is schooling for the soul as it approaches the death of the physical body. 

Death is like traveling on an airplane for someone who has never ridden one before, and is unfamiliar with modern technology. The noise is frightening, the passenger is cramped and uncomfortable, once in the air he or she is a long way from earth and what is familiar, the air on the plane is different, and there are warnings of possible dangerous situations. It can be frightening. But riding planes often (as in practicing spiritual travel) lessons the fear. 

Death is one of life's greatest challenges. But death is like war, childbirth or any challenging experience. To use the war example, the inexperienced soldier never knows how he will react 

under fire. The best he can do is train and learn everything he can to help him face the battlefield situation with confidence. If his training is good, he will likely return from battle with life and limb intact. 

Learning spiritual travel only increases one's ability to face death with confidence. There is no guarantee that fear, confusion, and anxiety will not complicate the dying process. But how is it that so many are willing to go to the hour of their death without any training whatsoever? As Kabir says of those who make an outer show of religiosity but have no true religious experience: 

You are going to death's door bound hand and foot! The knowledge of spiritual travel can serve as a set of wings for the soul as it enters the vast open sky of the afterlife at the time of physical death. 

BEYOND SPIRITUAL TRAVEL 

Advanced Spiritual Perception Containing Both Physical and Nonphysical Elements 

For myself and other seekers who attempt to practice the art of spiritual travel, the concept of spiritual travel seems a natural one. In considering the variety of spiritual travel experiences 

presented here (some of which are of a personal nature), it seems justifiable to maintain a solid wall between two realities - the reality based on perception in the body, and the one based on perception outside of the body. This fits well with distinctions in Western philosophy by Plato, the church fathers and later Descartes who subscribed to the dualism which separates the spiritual and the material spheres. The spiritual world is defined as the realm of the mind (and afterlife for those with a religious world view) where thoughts exist, and time, size, and distance are irrelevant. The material world is the realm of earthly existence and the body where time, measure, substance, and matter are the dominant reality. 

However, there are people who have experiences that seem to violate this clear separation between "in the body" and "out of the body" experience. The following examples give a picture of souls who enter high states of spiritual awareness, and perceive both the spiritual and physical worlds simultaneously as part of one vast spiritual panorama. 

Though they violate the basic distinction we have drawn up to this point, it is our position that the physical world is dependent on and derivative of the spiritual world and not the 

reverse. If this is the case, advanced awareness of the spiritual world must also optionally include awareness of the physical world. Reaching a high state of spiritual awareness therefore allows souls to peer into the physical world while also perceiving a broad spectrum of spiritual and psychic states. At a certain stage of spiritual development, the soul is said to have no concrete location but is able to perceive any reality it directs its attention towards, physical or spiritual. As with most mystical systems, the dualism of inner and outer must eventually give way to a fundamental monism, or the all-pervading unity of the infinite spiritual reality. As Kabir states when referring to this spiritual reality: 

____________________________________________________________

IfIsaythatHeiswithinme,theuniverseisashamed:

IfIsaythatHeiswithoutme,itisafalsehood.

Hemakestheinnerandouterworldstobeindivisiblyone; 

Songs of Kabir (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1991), 

p. 53 

IfIsaythatHeiswithinme,theuniverseisashamed:

IfIsaythatHeiswithoutme,itisafalsehood.

Hemakestheinnerandouterworldstobeindivisiblyone; 

Songs of Kabir (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1991), 

p. 53

______________________________________________________

Gopi Krishna describes a spiritual travel experience where the physical world becomes transparent to the spiritual world. 

Gopi Krishna avoided meditation for a number of years after an initial experience with the Kundalini which threw him mentally off balance. He then adopted a very strict diet and physical routine while the Kundalini energy slowly transformed and strengthened his body and mind to prepare him for this experience. His extraordinary spiritual experience occurred as the physical world continued to exist as little more than a transparent vapor through which he saw the spiritual one. 

Wilhurst perceives the interpenetration of the transpersonal light and the worshipers at a church service This vision describes the way a participant at a church service comes to perceive physical objects as transparent. An all-encompassing spiritual light is then perceived to pass through the church, the environment beyond the walls of the church, and all the people of the congregation. 

Franklin Merrell-Wolff describes his experience of rising above the physical world Franklin had been analyzing the components of his own inner experience over the years slowly separating out the changing elements from the unchanging spiritual essence which exists in the background. Here he describes a breakthrough experience where he was able to perceive this essence directly 

which did not interfere with or negate his sensory perceptions but propelled him into a radically altered state of consciousness. 

All Additions for this Section: 

Gopi Krishna describes a spiritual travel experience where the physical world becomes transparent to the spiritual world. 

From: Kundalini: Path to Higher Consciousness 

Gopi Krishna, Kundalini: Path to Higher Consciousness (New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1992), pps. 165-166 

Without any effort on my part and while seated comfortably on a chair, I had gradually passed off, without becoming aware of it, into a condition of exaltation and self-expansion similar to that which I had experienced on the very first occasion, in December 1937, with the modification that in place of the roaring noise in my ears there was now a cadence like the humming of a swarm of bees, enchanting and melodious, and the encircling glow was replaced by a penetrating silvery radiance, already a feature of my being within and without. The marvelous aspect of the condition, lay in the sudden realization that although linked to 

the body and surroundings I had expanded in an indescribable manner into a titanic personality, conscious from within of an immediate and direct contact with an intensely conscious universe, a wonderful immanence all around me. My body, the chair I was sitting on, the table in front of me, the room enclosed by walls, the lawn outside and the space beyond including earth and sky appeared to be most amazingly mere phantoms in this real, inter-penetrating and all-pervasive ocean of existence which to explain the most incredible part of it as best I can, seemed to be simultaneously unbounded stretching out immeasurably in all directions, and yet no bigger than an infinitely small point. From this point, the entire existence of which my body and its surroundings were but a part, poured out like radiation, as if a reflection as vast as my conception of the cosmos were thrown out upon infinity by a projector no bigger than a pinpoint, the entire intensely active and gigantic world picture dependent on the beams issuing from it. The shoreless ocean of consciousness which I was now immersed in appeared infinitely large and infinitely small at the same time, large when considered in relation to the world picture floating in it and small when considered in itself, measureless, without form or size, nothing and yet everything. It was an amazing and staggering experience for which I can cite no parallel and no simile, an experience beyond all and everything belonging to this world, conceivable by the mind or perceptible to the senses. I was intensely aware internally of a marvelous being so concentratedly and massively 

conscious as to outluster and outstature infinitely the cosmic image present before me, not only in point of extent and brightness but in point of reality and substance as well. The phenomenal world, ceaselessly in motion characterized by creation, incessant change and dissolution, receded into the background and assumed the appearance of an extremely thin, rapidly melting layer of foam upon a substantial rolling ocean of life, a veil of exceeding fine vapor before an infinitely large conscious sun, constituting a complete reversal of the relationship between the world and the limited human consciousness. It showed the previous all-dominating cosmos reduced to a state of transitory appearance and the formerly careridden point of awareness, circumscribed by the body, grown to the spacious dimensions of a mighty universe and the exalted stature of a majestic immanence before which the material cosmos shrank to the subordinate position of an evacent and illusive appendage. 

Wilhurst perceives the interpenetration of the transpersonal light and the worshipers at a church service 

From: Contemplations 

W. L. Wilmhurst, p. 142, quoted in: The Two and the One by Mirchea Eliade, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962) pps. 

70-71 

I caught sight in the aisle at my side of what resembled bluish smoke issuing from the chinks of the stone floor. Looking more intently, I saw it was not smoke but something finer, more tenuous - a soft impalpable luminous haze of violet colour, unlike any physical vapour.

Thinking I experienced some momentary optical defect or delusion, I turned my gaze further along the side of the aisle, but there too the same delicate haze was present ... I perceived the wonderful fact that it extended farther than the roof and walls of the building and was not confined by them. Through these I could look and see the landscape beyond ... I saw from all parts of my being simultaneously, not from my eyes only. Yet for all this intensified perceptive power, there was yet no loss of touch with my physical surroundings, no suspension of my facilities of sense ... I felt happiness and peace beyond words. Upon the instant, the luminous blue haze engulfing me and all around me became transformed into golden glory, into light untellable ... The golden light of which the violet light seemed now to have been a veil or outer fringe, welled forth from a central immense globe of brilliancy ... But the most wonderful thing was that these shafts and waves of light, that vast expanse of photosphere, and even the central globe itself, were crowded to solidarity with the forms of living creatures ... A single coherent organism filling all space and place, yet composed of an 

infinitude of individual existences ... I saw moreover that these things were present in teeming myraids in the church I stood in; that they were intermingled with and passing unobstructedly through both myself and all my fellow-worshipers ... The heavenly hosts drifted through the human congregation as wind passes through a grove of trees. 

Franklin Merrell-Wolff describes his experience of rising 

above the physical world 

From: Pathways Through To Space 

Franklin Merrell-Wolff, Pathways Through To Space (New York: Warner Books, 1976), p. 19 

Franklin had been reading a chapter from a book on the subject of spiritual "liberation". He realized that a common mistake in meditation, which seeks enlightenment, was that the meditator seeks something that can be experienced. He realized the falseness of this approach and proceeded to "drop the expectation of having anything happen". He was then able to abstract the atman or "I am" from the objective reality around him. He found nothing but "darkness and emptiness" from an objective viewpoint but realized "it as Absolute Light and Fullness" and that he was That. He writes: 

I found myself above the universe not in the sense of having left the physical body and being taken out of space but in the sense of being above space, time, and causality. My karma seemed to drop away from me as an individual responsibility. I felt intangibly, yet wonderfully free. I sustained the universe and was not bound by it… I seemed to comprehend a veritable library of knowledge, all less concrete that the most abstract mathematics. The personality rested in a gentle glow of happiness. 

CONCLUSION 

The Comet Flying Through the Darkness of Space Attracted to the Infinite Spiritual Sun 

The facets of spiritual travel are many and varied. They range from near-death experience to mystical union, from immersion in states of spiritual light to shamanic journeys to the ancestor world, from soaring through skies filled with celestial music to riding mantric waves of sound, from encountering spiritual landscapes to rocketing through the tunnel that connects the physical world to higher worlds of being. In the past, spiritual travel might have been classified as an obscure form of mysticism on one hand, or as "astral projection" (as defined by Theosophy, the turn of the century spiritualist philosophy) on the other. The interest in it was very limited. But the recent interest in the indigenous religions of tribal peoples, which includes shamanic experience, has added a new class of experience to the list, and a certain respectability to the category. Also, the enormous interest in near-death experience has greatly expanded the awareness of spiritual travel and out-of-body experience as a valuable form of spiritual exploration. 

However, despite these developments, the fundamental question arises: 

Why is spiritual travel not a wider topic in human conversation? Why is it unknown to the vast majority of humanity? 

One explanation is that it is not an easy path, and inducing spiritual travel experience usually involves discipline, effort, time, inner experimentation, and even some good fortune since this ability is in some respects a gift. This is true to the extent that it is easier for some to leave the physical body than others. Therefore those who are not predisposed to this kind of 

experience might have to work harder and spend more time than those who have this predisposition to bring about out-of-body experience. As stated earlier, for most people (including the author), it is quite difficult to leave the physical body and some regard it with a certain amount of fear. 

Another explanation is that the physical world offers so many challenges and distractions that it fills the entirety of mankind's consciousness. But the pain of the death of a loved one, the dissatisfaction with the shallowness of the media-saturated consumer culture of the modern world, the sense of limitation that seems inherent in the makeup of the physical body, the knowledge that one's own old age and death are inevitable would seem to be enough motivation to counter at least some of life's distractions. 

In the West, there are other cultural and historical reasons for this lack of interest in and awareness of spiritual travel. In addition to the obvious wide acceptance of the philosophy of materialism, and a scientific world view that reduces both the universe and the mind of man to complex machines, spiritual travel is a radical notion which goes against several centuries 

of religious belief, and most interpretations of the Bible and Muslim Quran. 

In Hinduism and Buddhism, it is generally believed that a person can enter the highest or holiest states of religious consciousness while still alive in the physical body. If you are not a Buddha or an enlightened sage (siddha) with insight into the nature of reality, it is your limitation. The universe is infinite even if you cannot perceive its infinity because of your 

limited perspective. Each person has a unique set of barriers to overcome to get beyond his or her own limited view of the world. 

In mainstream Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, however, it is believed that the soul can only experience heaven after the physical death of the body. These areas are thought to be inaccessible to living people in the Western traditions, except perhaps for a rare saint or prophet chosen by God to reveal something specific to mankind. No individual can see religious visions of the world of God or visit heavenly worlds by his or her own choice. The person must wait for God's grace. Exploration is forbidden and attempts to explore are a sign of vanity. 

It is in this context of alienation from the spiritual world that some Christians look forward to and even seek to bring about the end of the world in order that they be "raptured" or taken into heaven. Similarly, some Muslims commit suicide as an act of religious war to reach heaven. Even when such events bring about so much obvious death, suffering, and destruction, they are desirable because they are believed to also bring about transcendent spiritual experience and immediate heavenly salvation. The motivations for both groups are complex but certainly one primary motivation is the desperate desire for the spiritual experience of heaven, and destruction of the earth and/or the physical body is only a means to this heavenly end. 

In addition, these are religions of surrender to a "higher power" that will take care of the individual like a parent caring for a child. At death, God, Jesus, or an angelic intercessor will take the soul of the individual and control its movements and destination. For Catholics, there is also the hope that prayer will move Mary or a Catholic saint to petition Christ to be charitable, and through grace give the dying individual a better afterlife than he or she might otherwise deserve. 

In mainstream Protestant theology, much of which is based on Martin Luther's doctrine of "justification by faith", the individual is subject to sin, and therefore cannot be saved by imperfect works and gains heaven by faith alone. Curiously, having faith is not classified as "a work" even though serious Protestants both now and in the past seem to work very hard at having faith. But it is clear that without access to deeper spiritual experiences during life in these traditions, maintaining such faith becomes a Herculean exercise. 

In each tradition, the unwritten religious contract states: "Once I am saved or have faith or live a good life according to the principles of my religion, I am guaranteed eternal life in a heavenly paradise". I sincerely hope this is true because so many religious people are depending on it. 

Spiritual travel certainly has an element of trust and surrender, but is really more like yoga in that its major focus is self-mastery rather than surrender. It is a kind of continuing vision 

quest in which the arena of the quest is the mind instead of going out into nature to seek a vision. Spiritual travel makes individuals responsible for their own limitations, and their spiritual perception or the lack of it. It is for those who are not quite able to trust the glowing promises of the mainstream religions, or at least those who would like some additional evidence for the existence of a spiritual world in the afterlife now instead of waiting until death. 

Taking the concept of spiritual travel seriously means extending and expanding the helpful and valuable Christian virtue of faith beyond a strong belief in God and his inspired word, and the equally important virtue of works beyond prayer, charity, good will, and helpful action towards one's neighbor. 

For the spiritual traveler, faith must be more than confidence in a distant deity which can only be encountered after death. It must also be faith in one's own ability to see and know the heavenly worlds and this ultimate reality here and now. Faith is also not the end of the individual's spiritual journey on earth. It is rather an important beginning of the spiritual journey because it provides a solid foundation for developing and pursuing a spiritual practice which leads to spiritual realization. Many in the West believe that faith divorced from works, spiritual practice, and the deeper study of a spiritual tradition is a ticket to heaven, and that salvation can come at the last moment of life after a long history of misdeeds. For these individuals, investment professionals have some valuable advice which can be applied to the spiritual path as well: 

If something sounds to good to be true, it probably is. 

The doctrine of "justification by faith" if wrongly understood could even be dangerous because it can be used to avoid living a spiritual life and to avoid doing any spiritual practice. While many mainstream religious traditions are strong in the areas of encouraging ethical action and religious community in their members, as educational institutions, they have a serious limitation. That is that they have low expectations of their members. The religious leaders or teachers who are many times very sincere in their desire to help others unfortunately have so little faith in their members (and also in themselves) that there is virtually no mention that such members are capable of having transcendent spiritual experience prior to death. If there is some glimmer of experience, it has to fit a narrow mold so as not to threaten the prevailing view of what is acceptable and possible. 

The concept of spiritual travel shows this view to be unnecessarily pessimistic, and substitutes for it a view of an individual who should have great expectations and great optimism about his or her spiritual potential. It further shows that spiritual experience is wide-ranging and that the universe is a very big place with many rooms in God's mansion, and that spiritual experience should be encouraged rather than feared. 

In the context of spiritual travel, works means adopting a spiritual practice that leads the individual step by step to mystical knowledge, and experimenting with such a practice and 

changing it if it does not produce results after extended effort. Works also means taking whatever religion one is currently part of and searching for the transcendent and esoteric elements in that tradition. This includes examining the lives of the saints, prophets, and saviors to uncover the core of transcendent religious experience that is at the heart of these great religious traditions. Spiritual travel as a practice is like mysticism. Both are largely nondenominational. They can be a part of almost any religious tradition. 

The philosophy of spiritual travel as outlined at this site asserts that the individual is not trapped in the body while living in the body. He or she is capable of making voyages into the inner worlds and returning to report on the experience. 

We can use various analogies to describe our identity during spiritual travel. The spiritual seeker becomes the comet flying through the darkness of space (the pictorial theme of this web site) attracted to the infinite spiritual sun which is its ultimate destination. 

But the change in how we view ourselves during spiritual travel goes beyond a simple analogy. We are all literally sailors on a cosmic sea. Even though our current home port is the physical body, there is no reason to insist on staying moored at home port indefinitely. Sailors are safe while in port but their role requires them to leave and explore the sea. At physical death, we must move out on the ocean again anyway, so why not do some exploring now? Sailing is always smoother when the boat is controlled by an experienced seaman who has navigated in a broad variety of waters and weather conditions. 

Through spiritual travel, we can become the captains of our vessels and master the inner sea of awareness. This mastery comes with a process of spiritual purification, and as it occurs, the 

inner sea of thought, space, imagery and emotion gradually becomes a sea of sacred light, sound, and Truth. When this occurs, the spiritual traveler can only echo the words of the Indian medieval poet Kabir: 

I have drunk from the Cup of the Ineffable, I have found the Key to the Mystery, I have reached the Root of Union. Traveling by no track, I have found that Sorrowless Land ... 

There I have seen joy filled to the brim, Perfection of Joy; There I have witnessed the sport of One Bliss! ... 

The inward and outward are become one sky, The Infinite and finite are united: I am drunken with the sight of this All! ... 

Kabir says: 

"My heart is frenzied, and I disclose in my soul what is hidden. 

I am immersed in that one great bliss which transcends all pleasure and pain." 

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