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From time to time I browse amazon looking for psi related books that appeal to me. They tend to be either about scientific research (Sheldrake, Radin, Carter) or occassionally personal accounts by seemingly sincere people with allegedly extraordinary abilities, who I've been impressed by in a book review or tv appearance enough to be curious

But there is a vast category of books out there I instinctively never think to look at. The instructional books. Some are highly rated, under the star system, but I never look at them. So my question is.....

Have you ever actually read a book promising to teach you how to improve your telepathic/clairvoyant abilities...or astral travel...or do remote viewing...and actually been impressed by it? Have you ever, even in a minor tantalising way, learnt to do somethign you previously couldn't from such instruction manuals?

Do tell.

Posted: 08-10-2013 13:11 Post subject:

I'm psychic and know they won't work.

Posted: 08-10-2013 14:45 Post subject:

I can remember going through a phase when I devoured books about astral projection. I think I must have had teenage ambitions of becoming an incubus or succubus.

The public library had a wide selection of books which addressed this vital issue, usually in very similar terms. One's astral body was usually depicted as an oval somewhat larger than the physical frame. It was often referred to in Biblical terms as the Golden Bowl. I think you had to be careful that your Bowl did not break free - so every now and then you should have a yank of your silver cord. If you lost your Bowl, you would have to wander the earth looking for it, presumably twirling your cord in your hands and calling it sweetly. Astral bodies don't respond to biscuits.

Later on, I picked up several books on Esoteric Yoga and Chinese Alchemy which gave astonishingly detailed directions for regulating the flow of ch'i through channels or points of energy which had no organic reality. What they did have were a lot of hard-to-remember names, which served to make the whole business slightly alienating. I don't think it's very British to put a towel up your bottom or sit on your big toe. There was once a certain market for these books and I still have some particularly opaque volumes by Sir John Woodroffe which bring on a headache just to contemplate.

"The Sammohana Tantra mentions 22 different Agamas including Cinagama (a Sakta form), Pasupata (a Saiva form), Pañcaratra (a Vaisnava form), etc etc"

There are hundreds of pages of this stuff but you would need to be immortal or saintly to get very far. nonplus

Posted: 08-10-2013 16:15 Post subject:

I remember inducing some extraordinary lucid dreaming episodes, after reading, Carlos Castaneda's, The Teachings of Don Juan. Perhaps, the suspension of disbelief helps, whatever the authenticity of the narrative.

However, I also had some very strange psi experiences, after I started practising Hatha Yoga, breathing exercises, when I was a teenager. A good way to unfocus the mind, relax the body and helped with insomnia, too.

Posted: 08-10-2013 19:18 Post subject:

I read a book about how to astrally project once, but there was a section on how you have to be careful or you will die of a brain haemorrhage so I never tried it.

Posted: 08-10-2013 19:56 Post subject:

Posted: 08-10-2013 20:36 Post subject:

Posted: 08-10-2013 20:53 Post subject:

Although, especially as I teenager, I did read a lot of books on how to astral travel etc. only 2 book that "worked" for me. One was G. M. Glaskin's “Windows of the Mind: the Christos Experience", which is directed at reliving past lives, but in practice frequently turns into something very similar to "astral travel".
You need two other people to "run" a "past life". I got friends/family to do it on me about 20 times and have participated in doing it for other people several dozen times, both informally (e.g. at parties) and in more formal settings with a group of people interested in the occult, which I was then involved with. It does work on 95% of the people I tried it on. I was particularly surprised that it worked on me because normally I am rubbish at visualisation.
To this day however I am not sure whether the experience involves some genuine "travel" by a non-material part of the body or whether it is an induced lucid dream whilst one is still awake, albeit very relaxed.

The other book was J.W.Dunne's "An Experiment with Time", which describes how to see one's future in dreams. I have described my experiences with this on another thread. During the course of my life (I am in my 60's) I have had about 20 dreams which predicted future events very accurately - most of the events were mundane and trivial.

Apart from that, my own "psychic" experiences have come about by just doing it rather than by reading about it. At one party, just for "fun", the host had arranged for guests to play at psychometry - i.e. one had to guess the contents of a cardboard box. I made 6 statements about my box, 5 of which were correct! To be honest this shook me because until then I had not really believed in the reality of psi.

At another party, the host had asked me to tell people's fortune by Tarot cards. I mugged the subject up a bit and offered my services: the first person I "read" for, I did a reading which was so accurate (and the lady's life experiences were extremely unusual - i.e. it is very unlikely that I could have "cold-read" them) that both she and I grew very scared. Needless to say all the other Tarot card readings I did after that one were and continue to be, rubbish. Perhaps this is an example of Charles Fort's "turkey tracks in red snow" experience.

Just recently I had an experience which really convinced me of the reality of the psychic realm. An "internet" friend suggested to a group of us that we should learn to "remote view" so as to enable us to develop the ability to such an extent that we could predict the results of sports games.
His training method was to pick out random pictures which we had to "view", draw and send to him, before he revealed them to us. The first one I was pretty accurate with, the next two I was absolutely bang spot on. Then it all went pear-shaped and the rest I flunked massively.
However, this was enough to convince me that there we do have a non-material part of us which is capable of accurately apprehending information beyond the reach of our normal senses.

Posted: 08-10-2013 21:06 Post subject:

Posted: 09-10-2013 13:36 Post subject:

There are lots of instructions for free on the internet. I created a little booklet for a "psychic party" about 7 years ago using various psi instructions found online. I can't remember everything that was in it, but I know I included scrying and creating an electrical ball with the energy from your hands (a psi ball I think it's called?)

It was fun. The scrying was the hardest preparation because it involved buying a black bowl, then gathering rain water and letting it sit through a moon cycle or something like that.

A friend and I sat down later to really try the scrying and the psi ball - which is why I remember them best. But, I either wasn't doing it right or have no mutant talents. I still think the psi ball would be the coolest to manifest because it's relatively harmless and you receive visual proof that the experiment worked.

Posted: 09-10-2013 14:46 Post subject:

I got some good results from Ophiel's Astral projection book, in my 20's.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Practice-Astral-Projection/dp/0877282463

The First chapter-the 'little system' worked fantastically, but I never had the time or energy to try the other three.

Posted: 09-10-2013 17:44 Post subject:

I've not tried anything that could be considered a psi experiment since I was a kid and don't remember ever getting a good result... maybe I neglected the bit with the towel. Embarassed

Posted: 10-10-2013 23:57 Post subject:

Come to think of it, the most influential book I recall from my deformative years was The Power Within by Alexander Cannon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Cannon_(psychiatrist)

He is remembered, if at all, as a quack who influenced King Edward VIII.

The book, from the occultist Rider stable, was a wonderful mish-mash of psychic curiosities, from living burials to levitation and auto-suggestion. All the usual pictures were there, to spike adolescent enthusiasm: yogic trances, the Kingsway Hall levitiaton, fire-walking.

There was also a gallery of horrors representative of the effects of glandular disturbances on the face and body. I particularly recall a patient who may have been the model for Buster Gonad of Viz. He looked less happy than you might expect.

I would like to find the book again. It was the basis of so many teenage thought-forms. I doubt if it contained anything fresh even at the time, which was just pre-war*, but we tend to remember the springs which intoxicated us first. Smile

*Wikipedia gives the date of The Power Within as 1953, which may be when it reached print. All its examples were, I'm sure, drawn from the pre-war world of celebrity occultists and their middle-class patrons. It made a big thing of Coué's auto-suggestion technique, which had peaked in the 1920s.

Posted: 12-10-2013 10:00 Post subject:

@drbastard ... care to elaborate on "good results" and "worked fantastically"?

What happened?

Any time I've tried to do anything mystical according to online instructions I fall at the first hurdle of visualising. My mind's eye is always slightly out of focus at the best of times, and wanders far too easily to be of any use in "picturing the vibrant colours, feel the textures, smell the fresh air" etc etc. Nah, can't do that.

I've tried to learn to lucid dream, never ever succeeded, but the first instruction - to learn to remember your dreams in the first place - lead me to discover how frequently they're precognitive, which was an unexpected consequence.

Other things I've tried to do, like others here, have worked first time and hten never again. I determined to visualise in the morning page 5 of a certain newspaper and got a startling success....never to be repeated. I followed instructionals on getting someone you'd lost touch with to phone you by telepathic will....again, first time, worked a treat, but never again.

I once went to be regressed by a hypnotist, just for curiosity abut the actual sensations and came up against another constant difficulty: as soon as I felt something was about to actually happen, ie I was abotu to go under and enter this virtual reality world as I liked to imagine it would be, some part of me paniced and broke the spell, so I ended up just answering his questions by saying the first things that came to mind rather than actually feeling or experiencing anything.

Posted: 12-10-2013 16:47 Post subject:

I sometimes play Youtube videos on a laptop beside my bed when I settle down at night. There are brilliant guided meditation ones and some which offer to help you achieve OOBEs and even, get this, meet your Spirit Guide! Very Happy

Unfortunately I too am crap at meditation and no matter how hard I concentrate and do the breathing I'm usually sound asleep in no time.
Sad

Still, eh! Very Happy