INTRODUCTION

 

Welcome to the spirit world.

Allow me to introduce you to the universe of metaphysics. Based on my personal experiences, these chapters explain the fundamental concepts of psychic phenomena. Take my hand and let us begin our voyage…

 

We journeyed to the land of the dead, danced in the eternal light, delved into spirit worlds none of us dreamed existed. Specters of the dark side guided us through their realms: Shaman in the twilight wolf wilderness, Spirit Bird in the Valley Of The Birds, Joel the medieval Irishman in the record of all time.

While on the other side my thoughts and emotions were shared first by my friend Ruth, and later by others as though we had one mind. I felt their fears and desires, their awe and adventurous spirit. They knew mine as well. Yet back in our body we could only communicate through the spoken word.

The fact that other people see the same visions as I while traveling in the spirit world is verification to me that my view of the outer regions is not just the product of my colorful imagination. The spirit world truly exists.

Ruth and I thought our travels together were wondrous accidents until it happened again and again. Each experience was more complex and powerful than the last. Our journeys were never planned, nor did we discuss beforehand places we had discovered while there alone. Neither of us wanted to plant subconscious hints as to where we should go or what we should do. But once we were there, we led each other to our secret places, dimensions and past lives that the other person did not know existed.

Considering Ruth’s and my own diverse backgrounds, the fact that our journeys were so similar is especially striking. Ruth was born to Christian parents in a small town in Wisconsin. She was taught in the ways of the church, and was spiritually born again. Her psychic abilities came to her as a child, when she left her body during a time of stress, and travelled to the wolf place. The wolf wilderness became her special sanctuary when she felt troubled. At the age of nineteen Ruth moved to Southern California. There she learned the rudiments of metaphysics from her sister who was also Christian. Ruth’s religious affiliations have always been with a strong Christian base.

I was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn New York, and married within that religion. My first lessons in the occult came through the books of Tuesday Lobsang Rampa. He was a Tibetan Lama whose teachings were popular in the 1970’s. At that time I also discovered yoga, both hatha (physical positions) and meditation. Yoga was my introduction to meditation. The meditation included relaxation, breathing exercises, and occasionally a guided meditation where the teacher told the class what to see, hear and feel. I did not think of the guided meditations as astral travel journeys. My beginner series of yoga sessions was part of a community extension course, and was held at night in a high school gymnasium. The mundane surroundings, and the way the teacher conducted the class did not appease my curiosity about metaphysics. Mind-teasing subjects like channeling, angel guides, and astral travel were not mentioned.

A few months after the beginner yoga classes ended I moved to California. That was in January of 1973. I soon found an intermediate yoga class. It was primarily hatha yoga with a meditation at the end of each session. Alice, my instructor, did not teach metaphysics, but she acknowledged its existence. One evening during a class meditation, I felt my consciousness float in the air. One minute my eyes were closed, and I felt my yoga mat that I was laying on touching my body from the back of my head down to my heels. The next minute I could no longer feel my body. It was night and only one candle flickered in the room so no light seeped through my shut eyelids. All was dark.

And then the beast appeared.

It was a darker form in the dark surrounding me. The only distinct shapes were its huge eyes. Even though I knew my body was safe on the material plane, I was terrified. I did not know what to expect, and the absence of light around the beast concerned me. To me light means a positive force. Then I saw sorrow in those eyes. There was something familiar in the creature’s expression. After a minute of trying to understand who it reminded me of I got the impression it was my sister Barbara who lived in New York. She had deep-seated emotion problems, and had just come out of a mental hospital. My fear dissipated, but I still felt uneasy. If this was what Barbara looked like inside her soul, she was in a lot of pain. I sent out mind messages to make contact with her to comfort her, but she was unresponsive.

Anxiety rushed through me that my teacher was going to call us out of meditation with her usual tonal “ohm”. I pushed that feeling aside with the determination to reach my sister before I went back to the earth plane. The dark spirit’s huge paw extended toward me. I reached my hand toward it, and at the moment of contact the paw turned into the long-fingered, artistic human hand of Barbara. An instant later I heard Alice toning me back to wakefulness.

The flight out of the void took only a few seconds. Again my yoga mat felt scratchy against my bare heels, and the hard floor beneath the mat was firm against my shoulders and head. I was back. Shaken, but back.

My teacher came to me as I sat up. “Are you alright, Sharon?” she asked, concern in her voice. “What happened? I wanted to call everyone back, but I heard you in my head telling me, ‘No. Not yet!’ You sounded upset so I waited.”

I told Alice about my vision, and she seemed mystified. She had no experience with that sort of thing, and could not explain it or help me. I was so upset with the unsettling insight into Barbara, and my lack of control and understanding of what had happened, and could happen to me in that level of meditation that I avoided it for the next five years.

Taking into account my leanings toward the oriental philosophies, it was natural that I convert to Buddhism. In 1979 I officially changed my religion to the Japanese Nicheren sect of Buddhism. One day shortly after my conversion I was chanting during my daily practice, and felt myself flying up. My eyes were closed, but I saw clouds floating below me. The physicality of chanting on the dense material plane kept me grounded enough that I felt comfortable, and more in control than during my first out-of-body experience. For years I only astral traveled while chanting.

Ruth and I met while teaching Project Self-Esteem at the elementary school our children attended. After speaking about our spiritual beliefs we realized that we thought alike on many issues. We called the concepts we shared by different names, but there was little if any difference in the meaning. We have deep respect for each other’s belief system.

In 1995, a few days after my mother died, her spirit channeled through my body. For me that was a time of emotional upheaval, and also the beginning of great spiritual growth. Ruth, recognizing my need for a pacifying influence, suggested we meditate together.

And so our journeys began.

At the start we were curious, but tentative about what was happening to us. We only went to places on the astral planes that one or the other of us knew. There was reassurance in the familiar. I followed Ruth to her wolf wilderness, and she came with me to the Akashic Record to view some of my past lives. Our capabilities expanded with time and practice.

During the next few years we journeyed together off and on. I attended classes in astral travel and channeling at The Learning Light Foundation, and we made use of my newfound abilities to deepen and expand our experiences. I met my guide Joel, Ruth had Shaman, and the four of us traveled together.

This book tells of my experiences on the astral planes with Ruth, alone and with other travelers. It also includes explanations of metaphysical topics such as astral travel, channeling, and metaphysical energy. This should help you to understand the goings on during my journeys, as well as afford you a sound base for further investigations. The information given in these chapters barely scratches the surface of each subject. I urge you to seek more deeply into any topic that piques your interest.