Editor’s Introduction

Jorge R. Lopez-Buso (real name) has a Masters of Science degree in mechanical engineering and has been employed as a research associate. His experiences are interesting in tacking a primarily practical approach toward transcendent experiences: can they stimulate real-world creative discoveries?

The author refers to a book in his narrative by the late Robert Monroe, I imagine this is his first book, Journeys out of the Body (New York: Doubleday/Anchor, 1971). Monroe was a close personal friend of mine, a practical, honest man, quite puzzled by the out of body experiences (OBEs) that began happening to him, and doing his best to accurately describe what happened to him over the years as the experiences developed from mere curiosities to a central focus of his life. Monroe wrote two subsequent books, Far Journeys (New York: Doubleday, 1985) and Ultimate Journey (New York: Doubleday, 1994). He tried to develop methods that would allow others to have to have OBEs and so decide for themselves whether there was anything to them. His work is carried on by the Monroe Institute http://www.monroe-inst.com/.

The Book of Knowledge
Jorge R. Lopez-Buso

How it started happening for me is very difficult to pinpoint. All I know is that while looking back at my life, I have had different experiences that have served to stimulate my curiosity for transpersonal experiences. I have recalls that while in high school, one friend of mine brought a magazine that talked about Astral Projection. I remember how we read it and, out of curiosity, tried to project while sitting quietly in the hallways of our school. Those initial attempts were not successful, and we dropped the topic and forgot about the whole deal.

Perhaps some eight years later I once more found myself with a book about out of-body-experiences (OBEs). The book, authored by the late Robert Monroe, served once more to ignite my curiosity about these experiences. After reading his book, one day I recalled a childhood experience that now I would catalog as an OBE. I was perhaps some five to seven years old. I remember how some mornings I would wake up recalling what I used to say was a “dream”. In my “dream,” I would float above my body and, while doing swimming strokes, I would move around the house we lived in. The sense of reality in those dreams was so intense that upon waking up I would still believe that I could float around the house. Of course that never happened, but to me it was my first experience.

The only exercises I tried to initially set off my adulthood OBEs were the tapes produced by the Monroe Institute (TMI). I have not been able to use the binaural beat tapes sold by TMI to initiate OBEs in a repetitive manner. In that regard, it was after my first adulthood OBE that I started looking for ways to promote them. The only other course I tried was the one offered by Silva Mind Control. Today the best means to initiate my OBEs is to stay late in bed in the mornings or after an afternoon stretch.

There are many questions that have been raised in my mind about OBEs. Perhaps this narrative is a way for me to express my questions and, with input from others, find my own answers.

There are many angles to the OBE phenomena and I only wish to present that which relates to bringing technical information from my OBEs into my physical realm. I would very much like to observe that to me is not important to prove that OBEs are what they seem to be (separation of consciousness from body location) in order to make use of the information that I could tap (with better preparation) from OBEs. I mention better preparation because current physical life demands tend to be very unsupportive of the OBE explorations.

My interest in this area sprung from one of my OBEs, other experiences that I have had while listening to TMI binaural beats, and from dream activity.

The OBE goes like this (dated approximately 1994):

“While sleeping in bed I suddenly find myself involved in the vibrations (vibes). The rate of the vibes goes up, and I detach from body. I sit above my body and stay there without having any visuals or perceptions other than floating above my body.”

“Suddenly my visual field lightens up and a hand brings me a book for me to look at. It seems like an old book with a leather cover. The hands starts to turn the pages. Seems like it wants to show me something. As it passes by some pages, a paragraph gets enlightened and I am told (not verbally, more like a vibration of knowing) this is what Tesla was given to read. The hand continues to browse through the pages and again it stops and enlightens another paragraph, this time it mentions the name of Einstein. So I am already interested in reading this book, yet the hand closes the book. Then I am given the book to keep. I am snapped back into the body and I wake up in my bed. I am very startled about this. What was the meaning of it?”

While I was doing my Masters degree, there was a time that a colleague of mine was having convergence problems with an algorithm. This time the experience came through a lucid dream (approximate date 1995).

” I woke up in my dream and started looking at my bedroom. It felt as if I were really awake. Then a group of cows shows up in my bedroom. It was more like a foggy vision that starts to get clearer and clearer until you can see what is happening. It startled me that such a group of cows could fit in my bedroom or even be in it. The cows started to talk to me in the dream as if they could speak any language. The cows said that the problem in the algorithm of my colleague was how the variable TREX was being calculated. Afterwards the cows went away the same way they came in. And I woke up from my sleep.”

The variable in fact was calculated to accelerate the convergence rate of the said algorithm by forcing mass and energy conservation on the outlet of the calculated boundary. Next morning I happen to mention to my colleague that I dreamed that the problem in the algorithm was the calculation of the mentioned variable. Out of any other option to debug his algorithm, he checks how he was calculating it and, to the surprise of both of us, there was an error in it.

On another time, while trying to use a tape made by TMI called Transcendence, (dated approx. 1998) the following happened:

“Before listening to the tape, I recall having trouble finding the batteries for it. So I had to take the batteries from some other appliance and I was somewhat mad that batteries could not last longer. I recall that upon doing initial tape setup I snapped to sleep (referred as click out by TMI.) I suddenly regain consciousness and I find myself again with some writing in front of me, while still with my eyes closed. This time the script contained a picture of a battery. I started reading the script, it started with something like ‘infinite duration batteries’. Upon reading this I got very excited and started to read some about how to build it. But then I snapped out of whatever state of mind it was that I had and the vision faded away.”

Contributor’s Comments on the Experience

In looking back at these experiences, there seems to be a thread about information being processed by our self in non-ordinary states of consciousness. It seems that the information is available through different means. Be it in an OBE, where you have a definite perception of separation from body, you are in control of your experience and able to move through around your consciousness using your thoughts; through lucid dreams, where you seem more like a spectator of a very detailed dream and the separation from the body is not apparent; or through visions, where you have body perception and the images, sounds or information seems to be played in your physical senses (feels a lot like hypnagogic images/echoes, but with coherence and meaning).

It is through these various means that information that is technical in nature can be received and could be of practical use in our everyday life. There are many implications if any such information can be received in it’s totality and be used in the physical. This is where my interest in trying to grasp information from the beyond and bringing it to the physical to be of use stems from. The main difficulty I have found is how to maintain the so called non-ordinary states of consciousness and to have a supportive physical and emotional environment.