FAQ Corner --
Frequently Asked Questions
on Self Realization and Healing issues

N.B. Wherever in the following notes I use the word 'master' or 'Master', I have put it in quotes because I no longer accept the use of that word to mean a spiritual teacher - even a supposedly high level one - because of the issues of status, power and control which are fed by use of that term, and indeed the latter's astral ('dark') source.

What is spirituality?

What is generally called 'spirituality' is people's valiant aspirations and attempts towards true self realization which are to varying degrees sent off-course by astral- ('dark force'-) sourced beliefs in and preoccupations with illusory realities. The astral forces* have also almost universally tricked people into believing / imagining that what is actually their getting more ungrounded is their 'becoming more spiritual' or 'spiritually opening up', which is regarded in religions and other so-called spiritual traditions as extremely good, beneficial and even virtuous or holy. Sure, it is 'opening up' all right, but not in any way you'd want at all if you really understood what's going on, for when this happens, people are unwittingly opening to 'the dark side', which, being replete with deceptions, presents itself as apparently higher realities as well as 'lower' ones. Countless 'spiritual practices' are available, all of which to varying extents achieve this all-too-magical 'opening up' to the apparently Divine face of the astral sub-reality or 'the dark side'.

* This is the forces of unawareness / delusion, ego power, control, fear and negativity, which are commonly known as 'the forces of darkness' and which appear to exist in and interact with us from an aspect of reality (or of consciousness) which I call the astral sub-reality [of illusion and delusion].

My point here is that the more weakly grounded your awareness becomes, the more you open to the astral sub-reality - within which are ALL the so-called higher realities, including all the supposedly Ultimate and Divine ones, and ALL supposedly higher beings, from guides, through so-called ascended masters and Lords and Ladies to gods, God (of any religion), the Holy Spirit and indeed anything you'd call Divinity. They are ALL deceptions given to us by astral entities seeking to gain (more) control over us. You can read more about how so-called spirituality relates to self realization in Exit Spirituality - Enter Self Realization and  Interference and Attacks From Astral ('Dark') Entities.

So, now it just remains for me to point you to a good starting point for true self realization, where you can start seeing how different it is from any normal notions of 'spirituality' - and it doesn't in any way mean becoming more unaware or materialistic. What it does involve is becoming more aware but also greatly more grounded, so that you cultivate grounded awareness, which does not spontaneously open or connect you to the astral sub-reality and all its serious problems, and which allows your own core essence increasingly to open out and manifest in your Earthly presence - something which cannot happen much while your awareness is ungrounded.

But I caution - the entities which are already interfering with you (to some extent they interfere with everyone), may seek strenuously to make you feel that you don't want to face the challenge of true self realization, and you may initially need some strong determination to push through your entities-manipulated feelings in order to get on with the true self realization which would free you from all entity and astral interference. Go to The Guide to Complete Self Realization and the pages which it links to, and I wish you every success in stalling and puncturing the inevitable attempts from your own astral interference to turn you away from the direction which would bring you the true freedom which at least your deeper aspects have always been seeking.

What is the soul?

People widely talk of the soul as though it's something that a human has. That is actually misleading, even though not exactly wrong. It implies that the soul is a sort of add-on to the physical body, whereas actually it is an intrinsic aspect of your whole being, while you are incarnated.

That is of course a far cry from the materialist-reductionist view which sees us as physical bodies that happen to have a mind as a sort of incomprehensible add-on and doesn't recognise such a thing as a soul. Religions such as Christianity have sidetracked people into quite a materialistic view of their own nature, seeing the soul as something that gets judged and goes to heaven or hell after a person has lived their life.

Many people believe they know what a soul is, but really that is something we can never absolutely know. My best understanding currently is that it is a transient non-physical aspect of us when we incarnate, and so, provided we don't get diverted from 'going home' ('recombining with Source') when we die, our soul aspect dissolves then but the true, deepest identity of each one of us (as a micro-aspect or micro-facet of the all-pervading, creating, fundamental consciousness) persists and can incarnate again, but with a new soul.

The widespread belief in healing, mystical and 'New Age' traditions (which I myself espoused for a while) that we are souls (temporarily in bodies), is a seriously harmful fiction which has been widely disseminated and cultivated by the astral ('dark') forces for the purpose of helping to accustom and eventually program people to undergo soul reincarnation - which is what currently happens to the vast majority of people. Contrary to widespread astral-sourced belief, soul reincarnation is NOT a positive evolutionary process but instead is what one could call a retrograde-evolutionary or degradational process, in which, generally unnoticed by the affected people, the astral entities progressively close down those people's core-essence-awareness, so that each successive soul reincarnation is more unaware than the previous, and less open to love and more predisposed to power / control agendas.

There comes a point in this process where the soul no longer incarnates and remains 'floating', with its awareness lost in the astral level of consciousness, at the mercy and control of the dark forces, which direct such lost souls to attach parasitically to actual humans - especially those who are new arrivals with new souls - to help 'bring them down' and stop them from proper self realization and especially in an attempt to divert them from 'going home' when they die, so that they would then have embarked upon their own 'retrograde evolution' process, directed by the astral forces.

The end result of this 'downhill' process appears to be that the one-time human soul becomes just another 'dark' entity in the astral level of consciousness (or, you could say, of existence). I write more about this situation in Interference and Attacks From Astral ('Dark') Entities.

This all underlines the importance of our attending diligently to our own full self realization in this lifetime, and clearing out all beliefs, to ensure that you do not get diverted from 'going home' and 'recombining with Source' 'as Nature intended' when you die.  For more about how to go about this please see Healing and Self Realization - The Quickest and Safest Way.

"What was happening in our first session? I've never felt such powerful vibrations before or since."
(This question refers to the first healing exchange session with me, for somebody new to healing)

Many people have a very powerful experience the first time they get some healing, whether from hands-on healing or something else like Re-evaluation counselling (which focuses on emotional release) or the Alexander Technique. If you've been holding onto parts of your emotional and karmic 'baggage' for most or all of your life, as almost all of us have been until we get onto the self healing path, then you will be accustomed to considerable areas of stagnated energy in your aura and body, and it readily feels strange and very powerful when this starts shifting. In truth, later on you may well have much bigger changes occur without their feeling nearly so powerful and dramatic, because by then you would be accustomed to the feel of the shifting energy and indeed would be much less tolerant of the stagnated condition that you had been accepting before.

"Why won't people speak directly and clearly about their experiences and how they feel energy? I looked for this in my book and asked a Reiki 'master' (by email) but everywhere everyone speaks of energy only in set phrases as if they were just repeating what they had been taught."

That's just it - the intellectual laziness of ordinary people! Most people have real problems in thinking clearly about what they say, especially while they are speaking, and so, as you observed, they fall back onto phrases and formulae that they have learnt, and fail to be clear on many healing and spirituality issues, which require great clarity to make real sense of communicating them. I know I'm unusual (although far from unique!) in having so much of that ability. My slowness of speech is part of the scenario, because I give myself more time to think while I'm speaking. Similarly, I'm a slow writer, but the results tend to be worth the disadvantages of my slowness. I was often criticized at school for being slow, because the teachers and others didn't realize that I was seeking to think about and truly understand everything I was doing. Rote learning has always been alien to me.

Healing energy, and indeed the ways in which it works, is very difficult for most people to describe, because so many of the sensations that it gives us are outside what are generally regarded as true physical sensations. I myself have so far had very limited sensitivity to these compared with many healers - and yet the sensitivity or otherwise is largely a matter of how much your mind is conditioned to filter out and ignore the sensations which actually you are receiving all the time. When I got into healing I was amazed to discover that many of the sensations that healing and auric energy caused in my hands were ones that I'd learnt at an early age to ignore on the assumption that they were just part of the background 'noise' of my own physical nervous system.

Another important point to understand is that when we talk of energy and energy flow, we are using familiar concepts and imagery to describe experiences that really lie beyond what we regard as the physical dimension. For myself, I interpret certain sensations as indicating energy flow or, for example, some problem in a person's aura, but these interpretations of the sensations are just convenient labels, and are useful because they seem to lead to understandings from which we can benefit. "Is it real?" tends not to be a helpful question. What needs to be asked instead is "Does this interpretation work?", "Does accepting it produce more positive results than not accepting it?" or simply, "Does it help?".

It is worth adding here that a very high proportion of experiences that people have of 'feeling energy [or energies]' are actually nothing more than sensations being given to them by interfering astral ('dark') entities to convince them that they are feeling 'energies' when actually they are not. The aim, as in channelling, is to get the person unwittingly involved with the astral ('dark') forces.

It is thus extremely unhealthy and indeed dangerous for a person to allow themselves to get fascinated by or preoccupied with 'energy' of any non-physical type. People who are into martial arts and get into conscious manipulation of 'energy' for the most part do not understand that they are 'playing with fire', and those who do have some such understanding and still do it are among the most dangerous people we have, because they can wilfully misuse those abilities, which are mediated by astral ('dark') entities.

"What is your view of God, the life of Jesus, and Christianity?"

As explained in Interference and Attacks From Astral ('Dark') Entities, ALL religions and so-called spiritual paths and traditions are sourced from the astral ('dark') forces for the purpose of turning us away from true self realization and coming increasingly under the control of the astral forces. In all those traditions and spiritual paths the astral forces have got people taking on board beliefs which create for them astral realms (illusory realities) which are aimed to ensnare them when they die.

Part of this process is the inveigling of people into taking on beliefs in various sorts of supposed higher reality which almost always contain supposedly higher, non-physical, beings. These include God, the Holy Spirit and Jesus (as a current manifestation) as well as angels, archangels, Elohim and so on. So, sorry to say, Christianity and ALL other religions are very much of 'the dark side', and the supposed realities which they try to get people believing in are all likewise and are bound to cause tremendous problems on a timescale unthinkably beyond this lifetime for those who have taken on such beliefs.

I am not disputing, however, that there was a man who eventually got widely known as Jesus operating as some sort of high-level spiritual teacher approximately 2,000 years ago. However, the accounts of him and his life and teachings distort them almost beyond recognition - nowhere more so than in the accounts given in the Bible.

All the indications from the apparently less distorted accounts of Jesus (that is, some of those which are not in the Bible and indeed which the Church sought strenuously to suppress) are that Jesus was a mystic who was advanced in his self realization process but was still putting across a distorted, 'mystical' version of self realization. True self realization is beyond anything which you could call mysticism, because of its freedom from all belief, symbolism, ritual and sense of sacredness or holiness. It appears that Jesus had not got himself that clear of astral influence - though without actually going back there and observing him in action NONE of us can know that absolutely for sure.

So, we have the irony that JESUS WAS NOT A CHRISTIAN!! And the vast majority of Christians for most of the time since Jesus' time have been and are extremely far removed from following the true teachings of Jesus, which themselves, apparently, were not the 'ultimate word' on true self realization anyway because of their astral-sourced distortions. Indeed, the Church has strenuously sought to suppress information about the true, historical person who came to be called Jesus.

Christianity (or at least its mainstream elements) was very much under the influence of astral ('dark') forces when they deified what was really just an astral-sourced caricature of 'Jesus' and insisted that people should believe in all that (and an external, judgemental God). Anything to turn people right away from self realization and into the clutches of the very forces which the religious authorities would condemn as 'the devil', 'Satan' and so forth! Yes, Christianity is an organisation of their own self created 'devil' or Satan - not of anything truly beneficial to us!

I refer you again to Interference and Attacks From Astral ('Dark') Entities, where I put forward the overall picture which, I hope, will make sense of the above apparently outrageous claim that Christianity and all religions are of 'the dark side' and are seriously harmful to us.

"Would you like to tell me more about your crossing the threshold of enlightenment?"

That is where I have to refer you to my very full account here.

"I've never been to a crystal shop or met a healer in person who used crystals, so I am totally ignorant of them. Any advice on what types tend to be more useful than others - any particular characteristics to look for or avoid? Or should I just find a shop and start touching up crystals until I find one with good energy?"

I did write here a quite long answer to the above question, but now I do NOT recommend using crystals at all - nor healing wands* (most of which use crystals or even are constructed almost entirely of crystals). There are several issues which make crystals best avoided - even though it's almost universally believed among healers that crystals are a Good Thing and can assist in healing work.

* I particularly caution that sacred geometry healing wands or devices, including merkabas, despite any good intentions of their makers, are products of astral ('dark') force influence, and, despite any healing effects which they may have, they also have disruptive effects in one's energy system and increase one's susceptibility to astral ('dark force'') interference and influence. I was using such devices myself and I have little doubt that they significantly contributed to the serious problems which I experienced with astral ('dark') entities from late 2003 to the first half of 2007.

It's true that crystals and fashioned mineral stones can gather and focus subtle energies which, if used appropriately, can have a healing effect for some people. The problems include the following:

• Environmental stress - the outputting of disruptive energies. Whatever positive and helpful energies the crystals emit, all crystals or crystal-shaped (i.e. faceted) mineral stones give off harmful, disruptive energies (known as sha chi or cutting chi) from their edges and points. They are thus unhealthy to have around you at all, even just placed ornamentally on a ledge in your living space. The only forms of crystals or stones free of this effect are rounded forms free of facets and points - particularly spheres. However, spheres of these crystals and minerals still are subject to the following problems. 

• Individual sensitivities and appropriateness. We are generally told that a particular type of mineral or stone has a specific set of positive and healing effects for particular issues for people generally (or at least of a particular Zodiac sign). What we are virtually never told is that each individual has his/her own unique set of resonances, sensitivities and susceptibilities. What this means in practice is that it's a serious misunderstanding to operate on the basis of, for example, "Mabel would benefit from more love energies in her life, so let's use some rose quartz on her and recommend that she has rose quartz around her for much of the time, because rose quartz resonates with love energies". Also, categorizing people by the twelve Zodiac signs doesn't really take one forward, because it still is avoiding the issue of each individual's uniqueness, and the whole field of astrology is of the astral sub-reality ('the dark side') and connects you with problems beyond your wildest imaginings when you use it.

  Yes, rose quartz may resonate with love energies (but then again that may be one of the vast number of healers' myths promoted by the astral entities which interfere with each of us), but what actually are Mabel's own needs and sensitivities? Most healers would seek to answer that question by asking supposed guides or other higher beings - but as I explain in Better Without Channelling, that is simply asking astral ('dark') entities, which in such situations typically present themselves as some higher source.

  There is a method of finding out what a particular person's needs / sensitivities are, and I use it now: energy testing.

• The supposed healing energies from crystals and stones are inherently unbalanced, being to a large extent fixed by the nature of the crystal / stone. Why mess around with seeking to apply the most appropriate unbalanced energies to a person when you can instead work from your core and bring out the exactly appropriate, highest-possible-sourced and purest healing energies in the whole of Existence, allowing them to be controlled by the Ultimate itself so that they are always appropriate and balancing for the recipient, whether that is another person or yourself?

• The myth that we need to receive healing energy from 'outside' ourselves. In fact, as noted above, the 'highest' and purest healing energies are accessed from our own core or deepest essence, which is the all-pervading consciousness of which all living things are manifestations. Thus if you invoke supposedly higher beings or use any sort of device such as a crystal or a wand to bring in healing energies, what you are doing is bringing in energies which are 'lower' and generally less pure than the Ultimate, which latter is what you can get from your own core. The dark forces have sidetracked healers almost universally into using methods which are inferior and which in various ways allow dark entities to gain access into people's energy systems in order to gain more control over them. Encouraging the use of crystals and stones is part of that strategy.

• Crystals, stones, wands and other devices (even symbols), as well as giving out disruptive and unbalancing energies, can become possessed by problematical entities or other troublesome foreign energies, which are commonly hidden from most healers and psychics. Healers generally glibly tell you methods of clearing the items of any 'negative energy' that they are holding, but you have no guarantee that whatever methods you've used have actually and completely worked - and even if they have, how soon would it be before the items become 'possessed' again? In reality, entities cannot be cleared out by normal healers' methods, despite most healers' belief that they can.

• Strong channelling crystals such as Lemurian seed crystals (a striking and beautiful form of quartz crystal) are a MENACE, because they do indeed assist channelling* and thus, however pure your intentions, will increase your dark force connection, whether or not you realize that it is dark entities and nothing truly beneficial that is communicating with you (even if it does call itself a Lemurian or Archangel Michael or Maitreya / Jesus / St Germain / Ashtar / Merlin, etc and seems to be very wise and 'enlightened'). I was actually using one of these Lemurian crystals when I started dowsing systematically, trying to channel from supposed higher beings, and that landed me in a nightmare scenario which has taken me several years of determined work to get out of. Please see Troublesome Astral ('Dark') Entities in One's Aura - My Own Experience.

  * I explain why channelling isn't a cool option in Better Without Channelling.

If you want to use a truly beneficial type of stone for healing, then you are left with the user controlled programmable energy devices such as the Energy Egg and particularly the Clarity-Sphere, which are free from the various problems listed above and work in a quite different way.

"What's your secret?"
-- asked by a group of mountain walkers taking a refreshment break on the Coire Dubh Mor track gently ascending round the flank of Beinn Eighe in the North-West Highlands (Scotland), as they watched me gliding with seemingly no effort up the rocky track towards them (May 2000).

My immediate reply was "An inefficient digestion!" - to which there were sounds of puzzlement, so I helped them out: "Jet propulsion, my friends!". I sailed on, accompanied by the receding guffaws of laughter. Well, my legendary farting status was good for a laugh, but then I started slightly regretting that I hadn't stopped and actually told the good fellows what it was that was really easing my walking so much.

Having reached Beinn Eighe's main summit by a direct and very steep but secure route that not many people take, and eaten my packed lunch up there in blissful and elevated solitude, I moved on towards the main part of the summit ridge, to be greeted by further hoots and guffaws as I encountered that group again as I approached the col that most walkers aim for from Coire Mhic Fhearchair on their way to the main summit. Then I told them the real cause of my ease of walking - the Alexander Technique, which among a multitude of other benefits makes for a much looser and more efficient mode of walking. This more efficient walking mode enables you to make maximum use of gravity, which can greatly help you even in walking up steep mountain slopes.

"What is the one most essential piece of advice you would give to everyone - say, on a brief TV interview?"

Be fully true to yourself!

However, I must immediately add some provisos here. Most people are not only far from being true to themselves but also don't even know what that means. Many people would interpret that exhortation as an instruction to be all the more direct in their irrational and negative communications and behaviour, irresponsibly indulging every feeling that they experience. That sort of thing is precisely what my core instruction is intended to steer away from.

To be fully true to yourself you have be ruthlessly honest with yourself. You have to look deeply at all levels of your life experience, right down to the deepest levels of your consciousness, and recognise the way that all manner of uncomfortable feelings are causing you to avoid them by presenting a false ID to the world and even (usually) to yourself. So, to be fully true to yourself you have to be constantly vigilant for manifestations of your false ID and set them aside. You must learn to observe, recognise and set aside your ego's many little agendas. You must never assume that you're now fully self-aware and manifesting your true ID so that you needn't hold yourself and your experiences up to question any more. The latter is what is known as 'living in denial', and to some extent we all fall into that trap at times. To cultivate the rigorous honesty which I'm pointing to, you need always to keep open the possibility that you are or have been fooling yourself and there are truths about you and your everyday motivations that you have so far not acknowledged.

We have the irony that the more honest you are with yourself, the more you acknowledge the possibility that you are not being honest with yourself...

Later note (November 2006) - The simplest and easiest method I know for anyone to become fully true to themselves is The Work.

"I have meditated for years and years, and life has now become a flat, almost dull experience with no real feelings. Please, is this really what enlightenment is like?"

Emphatically, no, my friend!

The trouble has been that you have been using meditation to try to 'get there', no doubt because you were deceived by others, such as in the various Buddhist traditions, who themselves have been extensively deceived by the astral ('dark') entities which are interfering with ALL of them, including the so-called 'great Masters'.

That fixation on meditation, quite apart from denying much of the abundance of life experience, results in the creation of astral realms (illusory realities) in which it ultimately appears that one has achieved one's aim when actually one is experiencing only a distorted facsimile of the real thing. It is thus important to extricate oneself from such methodologies and traditions - which are ALL of 'the dark side', in that the astral forces have brought them to us in order to divert us away from true self realization and into illusory realities which would make us captives of the astral forces.

I have come to the clear understanding that enlightenment and self realization are most readily achieved without formal meditation, even though for some people an occasional meditation session can be helpful.

For 'astral free' methods of gaining true and balanced self realization and enlightenment, please see Healing and Self Realization - The Safest and Quickest Way.

Any tips on mind chatter? As soon as I start to meditate my brain goes into overdrive!

Yes. A great starting point would be to stop trying to empty your mind of chatter, and let it run! -- Sounds sort of unlikely and contradictory, doesn't it!

Instead of worrying about all that mental chatter and gossip, just train yourself to observe it without responding to it, and to recognise that you yourself are not the chatter but are instead the peaceful, indefinable presence that is the observer of the chatter, and are indeed the very space within which it arises. You will find after a while that as you focus your observation upon any specific thought, it will tend to dissolve, and with practice over the weeks and months this will happen more and more, and less thoughts will arise, so making your mind quieter. That focusing on thoughts to make them dissolve should not be done in a manner that is striving to clear the mindspace, but just allowed to occur in a relaxed and peacefully joyful manner. Anytime you notice you're trying to achieve anything, relax again and let go of that 'trying' urge.

I counsel against anyone seeking to achieve a completely thought-free mind, even only in formal meditation sessions - and note also my answer to the previous question. Trying to achieve a thought-free mind can be a very problematical sidetrack and is completely unnecessary for you to become enlightened. Your innermost level of consciousness, which is effectively your enlightened state already there within you, is and always has been 100% thought-free, so you don't need to clear it of anything. As you learn to perceive yourself as the silent observer of your thoughts, you are progressively taking yourself towards the eventual moment of recognition, when you perceive directly that innermost nature of yours and recognise it as your true ID. That is all that is entailed in the crossing of the enlightenment threshold. Anything more complex or esoteric, e.g. as taught in the religions (even in much of Buddhism), is a sidetrack.

When you have that recognition, then you perceive directly that you have been in a sense thought-free all along, even while thoughts were arising and dissolving again within your mindspace. As you progress, so at times even that mindspace will have thought-free spells, but it is important not to make that state a goal, and to let it occur naturally without regarding it as good or bad or anything to try to maintain. Just perceive all thoughts, feelings, objects and phenomena as temporary arisings within the expansive space of your enlightened presence that always observes.

The beauty of this approach to meditation - what has often been called 'non-meditation' - is that it is really best carried out to a varying extent all the time in everyday life, and really doesn't require formal meditation sessions at all, though for some people the sparing use of formal sessions can be useful initially just to get the process well started. I don't have formal meditation sessions at all myself, though my self-healing sessions are in a sense meditation of a sort - but for my specifically 'Dzogchen' type of 'mindfulness' meditation, which is what I've been describing here, my everyday life finds all sorts of slots for me to have moments of 'observational repose' (just invented that expression this moment!). Just think of your waits in queues - supermarket checkouts, airports, traffic tailbacks, and so on - and how you can joyfully use each such experience to bring yourself back into a state of peaceful harmony and balance, not drifting off into preoccupations with non-thought or spaciness, but simply being fully aware and at peace. But you don't need a queue as your cue (ouch!). I find whenever I'm walking, whether on a hike or simply about in town, it's a great time to just let go of preoccupations and relax into full 'peaceful observer' mode, which, after all, is nothing contrived but simply my (and your) most fundamental and natural state. And so on...

Actually, much more effective and safer than meditation is the methodology which I present in Healing and Self Realization - The Safest and Quickest Way.

So, you believe in reincarnation?

The strict answer to that is, no, I don't. I hold no belief in anything, but simply live on the basis of what I experience and observe, and the best possible working interpretations of my observations. I have many aspects of my life experience which appear in various ways relate to lifetimes before my present one, and which thus on the face of it appear to support the thesis that I've lived through a great number of different incarnations.

However, that's not the end of the story, because we have a complex situation in which the astral ('dark') forces are constantly interacting with us and seeking to lead us away from true enlightenment and into illusory realities which can then manifest after our death, leaving us trapped by the astral forces and progressively processed by them to become increasingly like them and closed to our true nature as manifestations of fundamental consciousness ('the Ultimate').

One of the tricks of the astral forces is to get us believing we've had past lives that we haven't had, and this appears to be the cause of  my supposed past lives. I have no way of knowing about this for sure, but it looks to me as though what had seemed to be past life memories and traumas of mine were actually experiences of parasitic human consciousnesses which were attached to me - so that I was indeed experiencing memories and trauma feelings from particular past lives, but those past lives were not of mine but of people who died at various times in the past and whose consciousnesses themselves had been entrapped by the dark forces with their awareness stuck in the astral sub-reality, then behaving parasitically - attaching to new souls as they incarnated, as directed by the programming they'd received from the astral forces.

You can read more about this scenario in Interference and Attacks From Astral ('Dark') Entities.

As indicated on that page, it looks as though there are two distinct types of reincarnation which occur. The generally recognised type is reincarnation of the soul, which occurs only for souls whose awareness has become ensnared by the astral forces and so prevented from simply dissolving back into fundamental consciousness. Such reincarnations are sequential ones in which karma carries over from one to the next, so they can be described as 'karmic' reincarnations. For those people karma tends to operate in a distorted way (reflected in the distorted teachings about karma in, e.g., much of the Buddhist teachings) which appears to be primarily concerned with the supposed rightness or wrongness of your actions.

On the other hand, those people who didn't get ensnared by the astral forces upon death, and thus dissolved back into fundamental consciousness, still have their own unique individuality as microfacets of fundamental consciousness and can incarnate again, but through a new soul each time. Such reincarnations do not follow any particular chronological or karmically determined sequence (no karma carries over from one incarnation to another because it is the soul and 'lower' energy bodies which carry any karmas), and so can be described as non-sequential and non-karmic.

You are presumably a Buddhist...?

No. Because I have the viewpoint of the enlightened state I transcend all religions and named viewpoints. In fact the same can be said even of many deeply aware people who have not yet crossed the enlightenment threshold. If you must put a label on my outlook and lifestyle, 'mystic' would come close - except that that still implies a lot of baggage which actually I do not carry. Really I know of no fully suitable word for it. Off the top of my head, let's say that I'm a self realized clear thinker.

The general problem about the Buddhist teachings is that in a wide range of specifics and fundamentals they are distorted to scare and coerce people into following a Buddhist path rather than opening directly to your own inner 'truth' (which is what true self realization is about). Their distortions also lead people into astral realms (illusory realities) mimicking enlightenment and self realization rather than true and balanced self realization.

Do you do your healing in the name of Jesus Christ? The only true healing is in His name. Any other healing is the work of the devil.

That question is the voice of ignorance, prejudice and bigotry - a preaching of fear and hatred, not love. It's that very sort of attitude that got Jesus crucified.

The energies emanating from fundamental consciousness (universal consciousness), which is the true 'Ultimate' as far as any enlightened person can tell, and which is the core essence of every single person, are to a considerable extent attenuated and distorted by invoking any sort of supposedly higher beings or higher energies. Thus the only safe and healthy way to give so-called 'spiritual' healing is purely from one's own core essence, without invoking any supposedly higher source at all - for nothing can be higher than 'the Ultimate', which is what your own core essence is.

Indeed, from this viewpoint, gained from much hard personal experience, I can say with some security that every single person who does their healing in the name of 'Jesus Christ' or 'God' or 'the Holy Spirit' is actually invoking the astral ('dark') forces for their healing work - with all the problems that are implied by that, and so can be said to be working with the devil.

I have seen a message on a website, from a group of extra-terrestrials who are wanting to help Humanity and are asking us to open to them telepathically. Shouldn't we open to them?

My short recommendation is "No, definitely not". Any apparent approaches from aliens or indeed higher beings seeking to assist us are, to my understanding, simulations given to us by the astral ('dark') forces with the aim of luring us into getting more involved with 'the dark side'. Astral entities are tremendous deceivers and the magnitude and convolutions of their deceptions are breathtaking. Almost certainly, opening to supposed telepathic (or any other) communications from supposedly beneficial aliens will actually get you involved with astral entities.

The aliens may in some cases be real physical aliens, but most likely with an agenda of deceit directed by the astral forces. You may never in this lifetime realize that you're dealing with anything other than truly beneficial beings, but you may pay a horrendous price beyond this lifetime, in having come to accept an illusory reality which manifests after your death and so prevents you from dissolving back into fundamental consciousness then and instead commits you to being progressively processed and degraded by the dark forces into one of their unaware, programmed minions.

For more about what you could be letting yourself in for, see Interference and Attacks From Astral ('Dark') Entities.

There is no evidence that...

Anyone who makes a statement starting in that manner is being dishonest to himself, let alone anyone else. You can NEVER know that there is no evidence for something. You can only not be aware of any evidence for something, and that proves nothing except possibly your lack of awareness. All too often people use the "There is no evidence" line to support their denial of a higher, non-physical reality and the efficacy of healing methods - the fallacious notion that you can somehow prove a negative hypothesis. Not many people like to use the honest statement - that they aren't aware of evidence for... - because that wouldn't conceal the fact that they hadn't exactly looked very hard for such evidence in the first place or had dismissed what they'd found.

I have no time for people who seek to argue in that opinionated manner. Let them all become politicians on a planet in some far-removed star system, where I'm not going...

Do dreams have any purpose or meaning?

I explain the apparent true nature of dreams and the dreaming process in Interference and Attacks From Astral ('Dark') Entities, also explaining the mechanism and significance of nightmares. It must be clear from that account that there is no overall 'meaning' of any real significance in one's dreams.

However, that isn't the end of the story, because your own deepest aspects often single out particular sequences in order to to draw something to your attention - to give you some sort of message. It is important to understand that such 'messages' are not intended as 'story' but as prompts for you to subject something in your life to scrutiny, which may lead to positive change. Additionally, an interfering entity may give you a vision which is not part of the true dreaming process, and this would usually be thought of as a dream, in ignorance of the fact that there are at least two distinct types of visual experience in our sleep which we usually call dreams (and that's completely apart from true night terrors, which are a completely distinct and separate phenomenon).

There are various books on dream interpretation, but I have to say that those I've seen are totally unhelpful, because they give specific interpretations for particular images, in ignorance of the fact that each person's symbolism is ultimately unique to that person and even the particular moment of the dream. Best to put all those books on the recycling pile, as they will greatly mislead.

Yes, there are common 'meanings' for certain types of image, but common 'meanings' are quite inappropriate to apply to individual cases. If you want the precise meaning of a particular dream of a particular person at a particular time, then no-one apart from that person has all the information that allows the uniquely correct interpretation to be made, and so there is no point in looking to any other source for our answer. And yet the person who'd had the dream in most cases would not be savvy enough to give a full and accurate interpretation. After all, a vision or dream is often meant to point to things which the person has been suppressing from their ordinary, waking mind. What do we do, then to interpret a seemingly significant or compelling dream?

Well, actually there's not a lot that most people can usefully do! I've come to recognise channelling and ordinary dowsing as being no solution, because I've found out the hard way that although such a method may appear to work, it opens everyone involved to the influences of astral ('dark') entities - see Better Without Channelling, and because astral entities are pretty well certain to be interfering in the gaining of any such information, the latter is not to be relied upon and is indeed very likely to be a fiction or at least contain distortions which further the astral forces' agenda of gaining control over humans (both individually and collectively).

My counsel, therefore, on the matter of dreams is simply for one to consider whether anything in one's own dreams might be a useful prompt for some positive change in one's life - without theorizing or getting into 'story' about any of the dreams. This can actually be very useful and indeed powerful if used in conjunction with rigorously and awarely applied energy testing (NOT channelling), which I myself am using to great effect. However, I know from my own experience that even energy testing can be seriously interfered with by astral entities, so great care is needed, and if that method is to be used, it's wise to also use various chi cultivation methods such as the Returning Life Sequence and other practices which I enumerate in Healing and Self Realization - The Safest and Quickest Way, for those methods progressively strengthen your ability to 'read' from your own deepest aspects and also progressively to weaken and 'squeeze out' the interference and influence of entities.

It is actually the astral ('dark') forces which encourage us to try to find out "what a dream means" (and so ensnare us with more 'story' and illusory realities), and so, that approach is best dropped in favour of "Let's consider how I might use the dream content in a useful way" (i.e. as prompts). It's important, though, that you don't see anything of a dream as being an instruction, for if you do that you are at once enabling astral entities to control you through dream content. It's very important therefore to stick to using dream material only as possible prompts for you to then consider for yourself what are the most useful and positive choices to make in your life - and to then to let go of the whole dream, no matter how powerful or alluring it may appear to have been. Indeed, if a dream seemed particularly powerful / compelling, then it is almost certain that astral entities were involved and it would be better completely ignored.

You also need to be very aware and thoughtful about what particular types of dream image or experience may mean (also bearing in mind that they may contain elements that are not truly dream but are insertions from interfering entities). Suppose you see a forbidding or frightening dream image which you think relates to a choice that you may make tomorrow. Does that mean that it would be best not to make that choice, or is it simply suggesting to you that you have fears relating to that choice which actually is important for you to make - or, again, that an interfering entity is trying to scare you off that one? Carefully applied energy testing would give you the opportunity to establish whether that choice would really be best for you at that time.

Do we need to destroy the ego?

The whole notion of destroying or getting rid of the ego is a distortion, which has come to us primarily from various Eastern religious traditions which misguidedly seek to diminish or even eliminate people's true individuality and any abundance of experience in a person's life. Hence the typical gross overemphasis of formal meditation and the ritualization of many areas of life.

As anyone who truly becomes enlightened will know from actual experience, there is actually not such a thing as the ego, for it is just a particular delusion which non-enlightened people have, in which they believe that there is actually a discrete thing which they perceive as 'I' or 'me', which interacts with a real external 'reality'. Enlightened people still have that perception as an illusion, but they also perceive their true, deepest identity as being the actual 'space' within which all experiences arise, and which is the peaceful observer of everything that one experiences.

What you do by focusing on trying to eliminate 'ego', for example to achieve the supposed state of 'selflessness' so much prized by certain Buddhist traditions, is to (a) make an impoverished, distorted travesty of your life, and (b) to create for yourself an astral realm (illusory reality) in which you believe you have achieved your aim of full enlightenment or self realization, and which will ensnare you when you die, so that then you have become captive of the astral forces instead of dissolving back into fundamental consciousness. I explain more about this scenario in Interference and Attacks From Astral ('Dark') Entities.

The most effective way to clear the problematical aspects of what people often call the ego is to use a grounding and balanced self realization methodology such as what I present in Healing and Self Realization - The Safest and Quickest Way. When you work that way you have no need or cause to think about the ego as such at all, and simply progressively clear from your system all that is not right for you as a unique individual. At the same time, that sort of methodology cultivates a healthy abundance and sense of your own, deepest, uniqueness in your life, which meditation based methodologies universally fail to.

Cannabis and personal growth

Here is an e-mail from a visitor to this website, followed by my reply to it (updated in September 2005):

I have read your article Cannabis - a Serious Warning and I'd like to ask you about personal growth.

I smoke it about once a week and lately I have been exploring the personal growth and the nature of the mind while on the drug. I want to be able to take the effects that happen while on the drug (ex: presence in the moment, very strong will-power, ability to concentrate, gratitude for life) into my normal everyday state. You have a good quote on this exact subject in your article: "I knew intuitively that these experiences were showing me capabilities and potentialities in my mind, and my task was to leave cannabis behind and work through various means to open up those potentialities so that my mind was every bit as expansive and creative as in the cannabis experiences - indeed much more so - and fully under my own control, without need for any further drugs or 'props'".

So I am interested to how you went about enacting this change. The last time I smoked cannabis I started paying attention to my belief system. While 'high', I have a high level of confidence, and a deep gratitude for the present moment (unlike my normal consciousness where I seem to always be in resistance to it). So, the way I see to make this change is to change some of the deep seated limiting beliefs. Do you have any suggestions on what is the best way to change deep rooted beliefs?

Anyways, I hope that you, having gone through this experience, can offer me some advice on my path of personal growth.

The best thing to start with is to come right off cannabis, as regular smoking of it reduces people's motivation and capacity for the very sort of personal change which is needed and indeed which you recognise that you want. In my case, Re-evaluation Counselling was my initial, and for a long time, primary, means of effecting my personal opening up and 'growth', but the Alexander Technique, fully applied as an ongoing mental discipline, became equally important later on, and then still more recently, through convoluted and difficult experiences in spiritual healing, about which you can read in My Own Self Realization Path, I arrived at the safe and efficient methods given in Healing and Self Realization - The Safest and Quickest Way. For people wanting to let go of Cannabis or other addictions / habits, I also recommend  Letting Go of Addictions and Compulsive Behaviours.

Cannabis has shown you some things, and now the need is to leave it and its experiences behind, otherwise you will have more problems later on. One of the problems is the tendency to assume that while one is 'high' one is experiencing 'it' - enlightenment or a highly spiritual state, so there is an understandable tendency for people to want to keep on repeating the experience and to kid themselves that their drug use is a workable spiritual path. That is not a way forward, for we need to let go of our attachment to any type of experience. Cannabis gives one only a temporary facsimile of the real thing, which is achieved in a state of considerable dysfunction. Being truly spiritually open and indeed enlightened involves enhanced function - light years from the mental and physical impairment caused by such drugs - so it is a very different experience yet again.

Shamans routinely use drugs to open their consciousness, but they are attached to their particular ways, which commonly involve drug-induced dysfunction and for the most part are not on an effective path to enlightenment and self realization (i.e. within this lifetime). A true path to self realization is like a bridge - you pass over it but you do not settle down on it.

Note, however, that I am not talking of anything here as being right or wrong, but simply of cause and effect. It is not my task to tell anyone what he ought to do; in my writings I am just giving pointers to what is most effective to take one towards self realization and functioning as a complete human.

How did you discover you were a healer?

Actually I didn't experience a sudden discovery that I was a healer, and my start into healing was most undramatic and tentative. The dramatic discovery came before that, when I crossed the threshold of enlightenment at the beginning of 1997. At that point, at age 56, I suddenly recognised that I was on what I interpreted as a 'spiritual path' and indeed a very high one. It then made sense to me to accept that there was something in spiritual healing, for until that point I'd regarded all that as most likely the province of cranks and charlatans. However, I didn't at once point myself towards getting into any sort of healing work, because although I had a gut intuition that my life had some underlying purpose involving benefiting Humanity I was concerned that healing could easily become an ego trip for me. So I just assumed that I would be able to do healing, at least with a little training and practice, and shelved the notion, assuming that at some point if I were really meant to involve myself in healing, somehow I would be guided into it.

In September 1998 I had a strange hitch-hiking encounter. I'd hitch-hiked out to Bude, a Cornish coastal resort, for a hike on the coast path but found the wind just too strong, and so I abandoned the outing and hitch-hiked back on the same route as my outward journey. I got dropped at a village along the way, and was almost immediately picked up by a strange man who I could feel had a strong charisma about him, and he immediately remarked that he could tell I was a highly 'spiritual' person and he wanted me to be his guru. I felt uncomfortable about that, feeling that there was something not quite right about him. He said he lived down a turning only a little way along the road, and he wanted me to come with him to his home, and he would drive me further along later. Although I felt a little unease about this, I was mindful that I had plenty of spare time and so might as well venture a little bit into the unknown.

At his home he introduced me to his sister, who was physically and in some ways mentally retarded, and he told me that her problem was possession by a 'spirit', and he wanted my help in finding an effective healer for her problem. This was the first time I'd ever had contact with such an issue, and I felt rather nervous about it.

I took this as a sign to me, and then I started reading up about spiritual healing and found a small local group of healers who met every Thursday lunchtime above a shop in central Exeter and accepted novices. At the time I was not able to help the strange man or his sister, for, as I quickly realized, he was in the grip of a strong manipulative pattern which was seeking to use me in a quite negative agenda of his, and he rapidly lost interest in me because he could sense that I could see what was going on.

In the sessions with the healers' group (led by an 'Usui' Reiki teacher) I started without having any idea whether I was really channelling any healing energy at all. I just felt that I had to trust the process and keep looking out for signs that something significant was happening. Indeed, after a few sessions I did increasingly get experiences which couldn't be explained satisfactorily except through accepting that healing energy was being channelled. Later, I went on Reiki I and then Reiki II workshops with the leader of that group, though that teacher on the Reiki II workshop set some homework to be completed before she would issue a Reiki II certificate, and it included one particular item which I could not complete because of my situation of isolation - and so on the basis of a completely unnecessary technicality I never received my Reiki II certificate. I was in no rush anyway to get a Reiki III certificate, and it wasn't till some two years later that I went on a Reiki III workshop with another teacher, who fully accepted that I'd 'done' Reiki II even though I lacked the certificate.

I didn't at any point observe 'miracle' instant physical cures to prove to me that I was a healer, but I did find that I was being catalytic in various people's positive life change, and the channelling of healing energy was undoubtedly part of that, although also my functioning as an effective positive life change and emotional counsellor was part of the equation. Being a complete healer is a lot more than just channelling energy, and calls upon a wide range of disciplines and skills. The underlying primary purpose of spiritual healing is what I used to call 'spiritual opening up' and emotional / karmic healing, but actually I now understand that what people are achieving with all the various types of spiritual healing is a distortion of what people are really needing, which is self realization, and for a long while I was actually using healing with the normal, distorted view of its real purpose, not at that time recognising how I'd parted company with the true self realization direction.

In any case, physical improvements follow through as a by-product of 'spiritual' healing, rather than being a main focus.

Now I've gone beyond and indeed jettisoned standard Reiki, which I now understand to be highly problematical and no doubt contributed to my eventual big troubles with astral ('dark') entities. I now work (as any of us could) only from my innermost core, which is actually also 'the Ultimate', and so not invoking any supposed higher beings (apparently always simulations from 'the dark side') and no longer using any crystals, wands or other supposed healing aids, except for certain user programmable energy devices - particularly the Clarity-Sphere - which connect only with one's own deepest aspects and do not channel any external energies or 'presences'. Also I am now using and promoting extremely powerful yet simple self realization / healing methods - see Healing and Self Realization - The Safest and Quickest Way.

Later note (January 2008) - I have more recently established that I had picked up various problematical energy configurations, ranging from thought forms to implants, from the various Reiki teachers and other healers with whom I worked - so I do strongly caution that getting involved in 'healing' as usually understood is highly problematical and could very easily cause you major problems, even if only covertly. That underlines the importance of the lattermost page I link to above, where you can find truly safe means of self healing, self realization and clearing yourself of all astral and entity interferences without depending on teachers or other healers who can so easily unawarely give you more than you bargained for.

Are night terrors caused by fear of the dark?

No, not at all. It's the other way round - night terrors are often (probably always) one of the causes of fear of the dark. As I say on my page Night Terrors and Hearing Voices, to which I refer you for a full explanation, true night terrors are the result of certain types of interference and attacks from astral ('dark') entities. Their underlying cause is thus not something traumatic that has happened to one in this life, though they can be precipitated by a traumatic event or indeed the use of certain psychoactive drugs such as cannabis or LSD.

I used mind power to try and divert a tornado. The tornado did divert but there was a severe flood instead. Had I done anything wrong?

I wouldn't get into judging something as right or wrong, because 'right' and 'wrong' are just labels that we put on things and are not an intrinsic quality of anything. However, this question raises an important point. The principle here is exactly the same as in healing work upon a person. If you use your ordinary mind to try to achieve a specific outcome, (a) you are very likely using some of your own energy and thus wearing yourself out and threatening your emotional wellbeing and health, and (b) you are quite possibly trying to achieve something which is not for the ultimate good of those involved or indeed of all of 'Existence'. Your ordinary mind does not know what is for anyone's ultimate good.

The way to keep clear of this dilemma is to set your intent that whatever is for the person's or people's ultimate good should happen, whether or not it's what your ordinary mind wants. There may be specific reasons why it's for the ultimate good* of a community that a tornado comes ripping through it, causing considerable hardships and loss of life - so you could be doing the community a great disservice by diverting that tornado. You would find that if you face situations with an intent for the outcome to be for the ultimate good of all concerned, without fixating on a specific outcome, then you would have a positive effect if indeed that is appropriate, and your own energy would not get used, so that you would then not end up drained and eventually health-compromised.

* This is something our ordinary minds can know little or nothing about. It is not about seeking to make people happy (or indeed unhappy) at the present time, but would have a great deal to do with what give people maximal opportunity or incentive to move or develop towards true self realization.

The same principle applies to other types of world events such as wars. Your ordinary mind cannot know what is for the the ultimate good of even one person, let alone everyone. If you think it does, that is just belief, which can be speedily released by putting the thoughts relating to that to inquiry using The Work. By releasing such beliefs from your system you are then enabling yourself to be radiating an intent and wish for what is for the ultimate good of all concerned. That's much more helpful at every level.

Aren't your troublesome entities just creations of your own mind?

I periodically get people asking that question - usually not because they really want to know the answer but as their means of expressing their very confused belief on the particular issue and their fear-based desire to impose their own level of unawareness upon me. I do empathize with such people to a point, because until I started channelling and ran into major problems with troublesome entities, I myself strongly suspected - though held no full belief - that 'lower' or 'dark' entities were manifestations of the fear in particular people's minds and were not real separate entities. Significantly, I felt a great deal of fear at the notion of 'dark' entities having any sort of independent existence, and was really being driven by the fear to half-believe that as long as I disbelieved in the existence of such entities I would not encounter them. Real head-in-the-sand stuff. Things are as they are, whatever anyone believes.

To the people who ask the actually quite unhelpful question quoted above, I'd like to say, "Aren't all your experiences of this fellow called Philip Goddard, and indeed all other humans, just creations of your own mind? Wouldn't it be better if you just ignored them all?"!

You see, that question - or rather, the belief that would underly it - is confused and unhelpful thinking. Where does it actually get you? If you have no personal experience of troublesome entities, then isn't it better to keep a very open mind about the issue and leave it to people with such experiences to seek to understand and explain them?

Yes, it's true that from a truly enlightened viewpoint all experiences and objects can be seen as illusory and indeed creations of consciousness - but is it realistic for me or anyone to turn away from all experience, therefore?  "Oh, that dratted alarm clock is illusory - I won't get up.  Indeed, there's nothing to get up for, because all experience is illusory." The fact is, we do have this experience of life, whether or not anyone puts a label of 'illusion' on it, and regardless of whether it is ultimately 'real' in any objective sense. We do get up in the morning and breathe and eat and drink and shit and piss and interact with people, whether or not we could describe any of that as illusory. Oh yes, "I won't go to the toilet because my discomfort is just a creation of my mind." - try it! 

There is a very simple practice generally associated with Tibetan Buddhism, called Dzogchen, in which, having recognised your innermost nature (naked, non-dual awareness) as your true identity, you allow yourself simply to be peaceful observer of your thoughts and feelings and allow them to dissipate. This is widely used in a distorted way by people to enable them to go into a very deep denial of major issues which they are carrying. They regard all their issues as illusory and simply get on with life as though they didn't have those issues.

Yes, they do often find immediate comfort and peace that way, but at a great price. What that practice of "everything is illusory" results in is various deep and major issues such as emotional traumas remaining buried and never being addressed and resolved, so that they then cause problems which may extend far beyond this lifetime.

And so, if you get manifestations in your non-physical levels of experience - what you'd call your mind, though your 'awareness' would be a better term to use - which behave as though they are entities separate from yourself, and particularly if you find that regarding them as separate from yourself is helpful in dealing with those manifestations, then why on earth go denying that they are what they appear to be?

And it's not as though the people who claim that the entities are one's own creations actually have a useful or constructive angle on dealing with them (I don't count denial or medication as constructive). For myself, I hold no belief about what is absolutely true or 'real', because nobody can ever know such a thing. I operate on the pragmatic principle of "If it works or is helpful, use it".

I've found not one good reason for believing that the interfering entities which have caused me so much trouble from October 2003 are just creations of my mind and not discrete, separate entities. But if I did believe that, then what? Do you really imagine the entities would be good little boys and girls and then evaporate and trouble me no more? Or do you really imagine that I'd then 'come to my senses' and get a doctor to prescribe for me some nice antipsychotic drugs to try and hide the issue?

In fact, in early 2005, while I was getting frequent severe attacks from the astral entities, I did briefly appear to benefit from taking on board a 'reading' which I'd had from one very psychic young enlightened teacher, who reckoned that I didn't have any entities and most likely what was troubling me was just thought forms created by my own mind. He told me that not all that long ago he'd had strong anxiety attacks, and these had created troublesome thought forms, and most likely the same sort of thing was happening for me.

I eventually got to understand that almost certainly the particular fellow had got things the wrong way round, and what he had interpreted as troublesome thought forms were actually astral entities which were attacking him to produce his anxiety attacks.

The reassurance of this idea that it was only thought forms and not actual beings (the thought of which still aroused fear for me) actually took me out of the feedback loop of fear and panic of one attack, and briefly I imagined that I'd found the solution. Just perceiving all the troublesome communications as being from thought forms rather than actual beings did hold the trouble off for a few days.

Then more severe attacks came, and then, without recognising any such thing as attacking entities, I had a problem, in that I hadn't a clue what these hellish and highly disruptive upwellings of fear, anxiety, panic and even full throttle terror were or how to handle them. For a little while my intensive use of powerful sacred geometry healing wands became the scapegoat, but the attacks still came even when I'd temporarily stopped using those wands, and there appeared to be no rhyme or reason about why these trauma emotions were coming in such disruptive surges like that. Surely, if the problem had been just that my possibly over-zealous use of the wands had freed up more old emotional trauma to release than was comfortable for me, then I'd have had a steady arising and release of that material and not having it concentrated into a succession of hellish episodes which were highly disruptive to my everyday life. And why the concentration on fear and related emotions in those upwellings? Straight away that suggested the work of 'dark' entities and not a straightforward self-induced healing crisis, which would incorporate a good measure of grief and related emotions.

Eventually - especially with a crisis brought about by the astral entities in late April 2005 - I could stretch the credibility of the 'thought forms created by my anxiety' hypothesis no more. The behaviour of the astral ('dark') entities was so calculated and scheming - as was so much of my supposed guidance, also really from the astral entities, during my 2004 ordeals - that it made no sense at all not to recognise the troublesome entities as something separate from myself which was interacting with me and attempting to cause me very major problems. To have continued to regard what was going on as being just manifestations of my own mind would have kept me in a state of powerlessness to understand and resolve the issue.

In any case, one does have to ask why on Earth one's own mind would turn upon itself so and behave like immensely malevolent entities. Doctors and psychiatric workers would of course 'explain' that by sticking the label 'mentally ill' on an affected person - not realizing that the label has merely served as a fig leaf to put over the person's problem because they haven't a clue what is really going on. The 'ill' label then is used as an excuse for further disrupting the person's mental functioning by use of medication or ECT to try to hide the problem.

It has actually been through my going against all my fears of 'dark' entities and recognising the entities as being as real as you and me, that I've developed understandings and insights which have brought me forward tremendously and given me great strength against the entities. I note too how many people who have troublesome entity problems themselves have been finding the wealth of information about such entities which I've put on this website extremely helpful for them in their own difficult and in some cases desperate situations.

So, to any person who asks that ever-so-helpful question heading this section, I have this to say:
If my troublesome entities don't really exist and are just a creation of my mind, then, you yourself also don't really exist and are just a creation of my mind. And if that's true, I'm supposed to ignore you? - Right?

Later note (April 2008) - I explain my current understanding of the very likely true nature and origin of astral entities in Interference and Attacks From Astral ('Dark') Entities.

What do you think about homosexuality being taught to 5 year olds at schools?

I'm not aware that homosexuality is being taught to anyone, let alone 5 year olds, at schools. Indeed, I'm not aware that homosexuality can be taught to anyone, period.

The above question reflects a confused, judgemental anti-gay outlook which dishonestly makes out that teaching people about homosexuality or homoeroticism is actually teaching them homosexuality (i.e. turning them into 'homosexuals') and is therefore bad.

Whether it really is helpful to be teaching such young people about sexual orientation, I really don't know, and my deepest intuition is that there is no general rule about this because each person, each child, is unique. If I myself had the opportunity to teach young people about sexual orientation, I would use energy testing to establish for each person whether it was helpful to him/her for me to teach him/her about the subject at the present time.

As long as you are living by rules and judgements, you are effectively living 'on the dark side', allowing yourself to be controlled by the astral ('dark') forces which operate on the basis of power, control and fear rather than love and free choice, even though you may justify it with 'morals' or religious belief (both of which are also products of the astral forces). Living on the basis of love, you don't follow rules but instead you listen to your deepest essence and ascertain what is currently most advancing and strengthening for each person in their uniqueness.

I say more about sexual orientation in Love Is Not What Nearly All People Believe.

"I have an increasing awareness of the sexual field / sexual history of others [account given] and wonder if you have such perceptions yourself..."

My counsel is that, if you want to become healthy and complete, free from astral ('dark') force connections and influences, for the time being you totally disregard ALL those impressions which are coming to you through non-physical means - whether clairvoyant or channelled, and also to completely disregard any such perceptions or 'readings' or channellings which come from other people. I'm serious about this, for a very serious reason.

You, like virtually every healer, psychic or other 'sensitive' person in the world, have an important part of your awareness poorly grounded, and thus your awareness tends to be open to the astral sub-reality, and thus, whether you intend it or not, your perceptions are mediated by or/and indeed sourced from the 'dark' forces. To heed such perceptions cultivates your connections to and interference / control from astral entities, whether or not you are ever aware of them, and would lead to very serious problems for you which go way beyond this lifetime.

Grounded energy awareness is very different.  Such grounded awareness senses energies around us simply in terms of how they are affecting us - specifically, whether they are strengthening or weakening for us - so that we can make the most strengthening choices at every point in our lives.  Such grounded energy awareness operates without 'story'.  It is the astral or 'dark' forces which continually seek to insinuate 'story' into people's energy awareness, and divert our attention from the reality of 'What Is', and away from our own core essence, which latter is our only worthwhile source of information / guidance / healing.

As my own experiences showed, the dark forces will relay to you an amazing array of supposedly accurate clairvoyant or channelled information, but it will ALWAYS come with distortions and usually total fictions too, and often purporting to come from 'higher' sources. This happens not in some sort of chaotic or random way, but following a ruthless agenda of seeking to lure or manipulate the 'sensitive' person into getting more into their control.

So, do you want to be yet another of the myriads of humans who have become 'lost' to the dark forces because they have fallen to the latters' lures (particularly fascinations and illusory realities), or do you want to become free, happy and fulfilled and to recombine with Source as Nature intended when you die? -- If it's the latter alternative you want, then getting properly grounded is crucial, as is using self healing / self realization methods that are free from dark force connections (nearly all aren't) and which are grounding in their effect. In Healing and Self Realization - The Safest and Quickest Way I outline a range of such methods, and I include a section on proper grounding. Also crucially important (actually linked to from that page) are Healing From Our Core Essence and Affirmations and Declarations of Intent - for fundamental self healing / self realization and removal of entities and astral influences.

The most powerful way that I know to cultivate grounded energy awareness is by use of the energy awareness methods which I have adapted and developed from Stephen and Lynda Kane, and which I expand upon in Healing and Self Realization - The Quickest and Safest Way. I use these methods myself nowadays, and it is they more than any of my other methods which are empowering me, turning my life around and rapidly wiping out astral / dark force interference and influence.

And finally, to answer your query directly - my answer is "Yes and no". That is, I do pick up certain non-physically derived impressions about people, but they are generally NOT of a clairvoyant nature, but more in the sense of my having a recognition of the areas of energy/awareness openness, blocks and distortions which a person is carrying. If I do get a more detailed element of 'story' about a person come into my mind, nowadays I filter it out, because I know from experience that this would have come to me from an astral ('dark') source and, whether it is true or false, it has been presented to me with an agenda to lead me astray in some manner or other, and get me more into the clutches of the astral entities again.

If you're in any doubt as to whether astral connections are worth excluding entirely from your life, just read Troublesome Astral ('Dark') Entities In One's Aura - My Own Experience and related pages which are listed underneath that page's Contents list. If, having read all that, you're still happy to be ungrounded and open to the astral level, well, that's your choice, and your business, not mine!

Why is there a pain around my solar plexus while I'm astrally projecting?

-- To which I'd be inclined to say, "Why the hell are you astrally projecting anyway?", and also "Why is there a searing pain in my hand when I put it in a flame?".

Astral projection / travel is one of the most dangerous things you can possibly do, with regard to non-physical aspects of reality.

When you do astral projection or astral travel, you are massively ungrounding an important part of your awareness, and opening yourself Big Time to the astral ('dark') forces, for them to do what they want to with you, including giving you a partial walk-in or a serious spirit attachment problem. Indeed, if you've been doing astral projection / travel, there's a high chance that you already have one of those, and this is a major part of the cause of the various problems and issues which you are nowadays experiencing. The astral ('dark') forces widely interfere with particular people to cultivate an interest in and fascination with astral projection / travel for just that purpose.

Also, what you perceive during astral projection / travel is NOT anything 'real' or 'concrete' but instead is simply images and impressions given to you by the astral ('dark') forces in order to mislead you and get you ensnared in astral realms (illusory realities), so making you a total captive of the astral forces on a timescale extending unthinkably far beyond this lifetime, as I explain in Interference and Attacks From Astral ('Dark') Entities.

When people use astral projection in healing, they have a tremendously misguided notion of how to go about healing work, and every time they use such a method they put themselves in extreme danger, quite apart from not even doing very effective healing work. You NEVER need to use astral projection or travel for truly effective healing, or indeed for anything at all that is worthwhile.

So, to answer the original question, I'd say that any such solar plexus ache clearly indicates an attack from astral entities, though they will most likely be using attached parasitic 'lost' souls or other attached entities as weapons for this purpose.

Are you so sure now that you want to be astrally projecting / travelling?

If you have been doing so and now want to clear yourself of the problems you have thus created or greatly exacerbated for yourself, there is still real hope for you! Please see Healing and Self Realization - The Safest and Quickest Way.

As a teacher, can I be myself?

To me that question is utterly bizarre, and it reflects an almost universal misunderstanding as to what makes a worthwhile teacher. There is an almost universally held notion that to pass on information to another person for the purpose of that person's learning it you have to put on what I call an inscrutable front of 'perfection'. In other words, Teacher has to be perceived as 'right' and unflawed, or at least superior, and unquestionable.

This is all bullshit which has come to us from the astral forces of power and control, which seek to get us all inextricably tied up in personal control agendas.

So, to come back to that question, I'd say that anyone who is not openly being him/herself cannot be a worthwhile teacher (except of deception). Period.

Why is self realization so difficult?

Wrong question! Try this one instead: "Why does self realization appear to be so difficult?".

There can be nothing really difficult about self realization, because it's simply a matter of learning to be fully yourself, and to stop doing the 1,001 things you habitually do that point you away from tuning into your own deepest aspects. To do that requires releasing all the emotional stresses, traumas and beliefs that you carry - which actually can be a simple and easy matter, albeit an ongoing process and not instantaneous.

So, how come that not doing all those things that get in the way seems so difficult?

The answer is habitual tendencies or patterns, and the very much related issue of attachments.

These arise as a result of emotional stress or trauma which we fail to clear from our system, and are very much kept in place and indeed by various means augmented by interfering astral entities and attached 'lost' human souls. The astral entities in particular strenuously seek to divert everyone's focus away from any direct and simple means towards self realization. The entities' means to divert people in this way include ALL religions and ALL so-called spiritual paths and traditions. These have come to us from the astral ('dark') forces to lure people into distorted views of self realization which make true self realization at best a long and difficult process and indeed for most people frankly unattainable.

The solution to this situation is simply to turn away from so-called spirituality altogether and use methods such as those which I present in Healing and Self Realization - The Safest and Quickest Way, where you are working from and with your own core essence, which is effectively 'the Ultimate' and are no longer being led astray by astral entities and the obstructive beliefs which they cultivate.

What are the karmic consequences of a grudge?

When a person asks this sort of thing I can be pretty sure that they have in mind the troublesome distortion of the real meaning of 'karma', which the astral ('dark') forces have cultivated in various religious, spiritual and healing traditions. I explain about the real and distorted meanings of karma in Karma - Cutting Through the Confusion.

So, I reject any notion that you will get some sort of punishment (i.e. from some external force or presence) for holding a grudge (i.e. because it is a Bad Thing). However, that is far from the end of the story, because even with the undistorted meaning of 'karma' (i.e. the accumulation of weakenings and distortions in your non-physical aspects caused by unharmonious choices, events and situations in your life) you do gain a karma from holding a grudge.

This is because the grudge itself is a distortion of your emotional energy, which creates distortions in other parts of your non-physical aspects, and, quite apart from the grudge itself greatly marring your life experience, you would over time get physical health issues and very likely various 'misfortunes' which result from 'fruition' of those distortions as they increasingly distort your physical being and life experience. Held grudges, for one thing, are well known to be potent causes of eventual cancers.

However, for many (but far from all) people, there can be an apparent sort of retributional or 'an eye for an eye' quality about the harmful effects that eventually manifest. That is because the particular people are (often unawarely) carrying beliefs that karma operates in that retributional way. Beliefs create for us astral realms (illusory realities) in which the beliefs appear to be true, and these can impinge upon and distort one's experience of the 'real' physical world. Astral ('dark') entities are constantly cultivating such beliefs for most people, making distorted perceptions of reality to appear to be 'normal' and thus supposedly to represent the true reality.

The simple way out of this mess is to take on a direct and effective genuine self realization methodology, such as I give in Healing and Self Realization - The Safest and Quickest Way. Then you could be rapidly clearing yourself of any grudge and any distorted notions of the nature of karma, and indeed retrospectively clearing from your system the accumulated harmful effects of having been holding onto those over time. Such methods also progressively weaken the hold of and eventually 'squeeze out' in one way or another all entities and entity interferences which have been cultivating such distortions and helping to keep them in place.

Does masturbation interfere with self realization?

It isn't masturbation itself which interferes with the self realization process. Masturbation is just as neutral in itself as, say, sitting on a clifftop rock to admire the tremendous view. The problem is in the enormous degree of attachment which nearly all of us have to erotic and orgasmic ecstasy feelings, and the way that this is cultivated and ruthlessly exploited by astral ('dark') entities in order to control us and keep us pointing firmly away from true self realization.

Because of this, masturbating at one particular time or in one particular context would be highly problematical, while on another occasion, in a different context, a particular masturbation could be actually supportive to your self realization process. A key consideration is, to what extent are you allowing yourself to be driven by desire (which is an aspect of attachment) and are keeping your awareness within that desire and attachment rather than maintaining a balanced and more detached perspective?

If you are seeking some sort of reconciliation between self realization and masturbation, a prime need is to keep aware all the time of the extent to which feelings of desire and attachment are taking you out of balance, and to seek in a loving and non-judgemental manner to get yourself more into balance. It is extremely unhealthy and unsupportive to self realization if you are constantly trying to suppress urges to masturbate or have particular sexual or erotic experiences, so aware balance is what is called for, not a general suppression, and NOBODY is truly in a position to prescribe to you how much or how little masturbation or eroticism would be healthiest for you, because they simply haven't a clue and are just mouthing astral- ('dark'-) sourced beliefs if they do say anything on the subject.

As I intimate in Love Is Not What Nearly All People Believe, the most effective way to assist yourself into a truly healthy balance is to take up careful, aware and discerning use of energy testing. Then you can test for yourself as to whether it would be 'strengthening' or 'weakening' for you to masturbate or have some particular erotic experience at the present moment. Provided you are using the energy testing method carefully and aren't getting misled by astral interference, you would almost certainly find that the answers that you get point to some prospective masturbations as helpful while others would be 'flagged' as 'weakening' or unhelpful.

However, if you are being strongly driven by an arousal that won't go away (almost certainly caused by interfering astral or 'dark' entities), it is important to energy-test not only the notion of masturbation but the notion of continuing to try to resist that particular pressure to masturbate. While during the daytime you may be able to get your attention on to other things and so get it more grounded, when you are in bed the entities can keep you awake all night if you keep trying to resist the urge, and that would be exhausting and actually harmful to you because of its stressfulness. Your own deepest aspects would recognise that and in such circumstances almost certainly, if given the appropriate 'query', indicate that it would be healthiest for you to 'go ahead' just so that you could get that pressure off you and then get some sleep. If you do that with the clear intent that you are aiming for a better balance and are simply making pragmatic interim choices towards that end rather than making your masturbation or sexual / erotic experiences an actual goal in your life, then you are on a very healthy and 'strengthening' course despite sometimes having to pragmatically make the odd 'weakening' choices.

I do not mean by this that one needs to avoid enjoying and indeed getting the most out of the experiences while one is having them, for such avoidance would be getting into self denial, and that is just as harmful as attachment to seemingly pleasurable or ecstatic experiences.

Even if you seem not to be getting 'driven' at all towards masturbation, if you are male and do energy testing you would probably find that if you don't have moderately regular opportunities for eroticism with one or more appropriate people, you get an indication that periodic masturbation is actually beneficial, and not doing it at all is actually harmful, because not to have periodic ejaculations adversely affects hormone levels in the blood and quite potently encourages prostate enlargement. I don't know whether there is an equivalent situation for women, but in any case energy testing is the way to find out what is uniquely 'right' for you at the present time. The words of supposed 'experts' on the subject are worth nothing against the results of your own energy testing, provided the latter is carried out with due care and awareness.

Why do we need channelled information?

Why do you need a hippopotamus in your life? -- The answer is just the same: you don't! Indeed I'd go further and say we need channelled information like we need a great big hole in our head. My own hard experience demonstrates a definite need for us to keep completely clear of any channelled information, never mind how elevated or even 'Divine' the source may appear to be. See Better Without Channelling, Troublesome Astral ('Dark') Entities - My Own Experience and Interference and Attacks From Astral ('Dark') Entities.