ANSWERING LETTERS

"Dear DrT.Lobsang Rampa.

I've already read all of your books and I'm very interested to study hard everything you told us. But, like every student has some questions, I'd like you answer me the questions that I'll ask you.

'I'm sorry because I don't write (and speak) England well as I'm still learning it in the school and many of the words I saw in the dictionary. So, there are questions:

1. If I die, I'll find many people who I've known. I'll see them like I saw them in the Earth. But, what is my real aspect whether I've already been many persons in my existence circle? How a person who I had known in a before circle, would she see me?

2. Why just now, a ancient from Tibete, like you, came to tell us all of (everything) of the Oriental wisdom? Why just now?

3. How could I see the Akashico Registry in the astral?

4. What is the better position to meditate? I can't sit in the Lotus Position and I can't sit with the spine erect.

If you think some questions shouldn't be answered, don't answer them as I'll find them in the meditation (I hope so) as I've already found most of them just thinking myself.

'You are really a candle in the darkness and I thank you for everything.

'Thanks very much, Dr. Rampa.

'FABIO SERRA.'

And the answer from Rampa:

'Dear Fabio Serra,

'Oh lovely! You have sent me some questions, which are worthy of answering in a book I am now writing and which will have the title of "The Thirteenth Candle".

'As I propose to use your questions in this book I am going to repeat your questions and then give the answer. So, here they are:

1. "If I die I will find many people who I have known. I will see them like I saw them on the Earth. But what is my real aspect, and not just how I look on the Earth? How would a person who knew me before recognise me?"

'Well, the answer to that is when you die you first of all leave this Earth and you go into what many religions term "Purgatory"("renseriet"/skjærsilden). "Purgatory" is just a place where you purge away certain things. Suppose you have been out working in the garden and have possibly got some mud on your face or on your hair (if you have any hair!). Then you decide you want to come in and have dinner and perhaps listen to the radio. So what do you do first of all ? - you visit "Purgatory". In other words, you visit a place where you can wash your hands, wash your face, and - well - purge yourself of dirt or things which should not be on you.

'Many religions make fearful pictures of "Purgatory". I prefer to regard it as a celestial bathroom where you wash your astral, so to speak, so that you may appear in front of your fellows with your territorial integrity intact. You see, when you are in the astral then you will be showing your aura, and if you have too many "dirty marks" on your aura then it will show to those who look. Purgatory, then, is a place in the astral where you are greeted by your friends and never by your enemies, because when you get to the Other Side - you can only meet those with whom you are compatible. When you leave this Earth, then obviously you think of yourself, you think of your appearance, as you were on this Earth, and that is how you manifest in the astral - precisely as you were on this Earth. Because the people who meet you there want to be recognised, they also will appear to you just as you knew them on Earth.

'Many times one has the same sensation on Earth. You see a person and you are sure that that person has a mole (føflekk) on the left side of the cheek, but another person might tell you, "Oh no, that mole was removed about a year ago." You only see, in other words, what you want to see, what you expect to see, so when you get to the Other Side you will: see the people you want to see, and you will see them in the form and colour that you expect to see them in.

A simple illustration - suppose you had a Negro friend, that is, the person was a Negro on Earth when you knew him. But supposing on the Other Side he was a white man; if he approached you, you wouldn't recognise him, would you? So he appears as a Negro.

'As you progress upwards then your appearance changes. In the same way you can have an illiterate savage (vill analfabet) with hair all over the place and teeth stained with various berries, etc. But if you took that illiterate savage and scrubbed him several shades lighter and gave him a shave and a haircut and fixed him up in a modern civilised suit of clothes - he would look different, wouldn't he? Well, when you get to the Other Side and you progress, then you will find your appearance changing - for the better.

'The second part of that question? Well, of course, this lady whom you ask about - will see you when you get to the Other Side - as you are imagining yourself to be. She will see you as you were on earth, and you will see her as she was on Earth. Otherwise (to repeat myself) you would not recognise her.

2. "How did an ancient from Tibet, like me, come to tell 'Western people all about this sort of thing? Why should I come just at this time?"

'That is a fair enough question, and I will give you the answer.

'In the past there have been many people visiting Eastern areas of the world, and people from the West are material-minded. They dwell in the present, they dwell amid (midt i ) thoughts of money, material possessions, power and domination over others. It is part of the Western culture. Now, when they go to the East and find that many of the finest minds of the East are housed in bodies which are sick or poor or clad in rags (filler), they cannot understand it, and so they take the ancient Teachings and, not having been born to the language, not having been born to the culture, they distort the ancient Teachings to that which they (the Westerners) think should be meant. So it is that many translators, etc., do a definite disservice to humanity in propounding fallacious (misvisende) statements by distorting one's true religious beliefs.

'I was prepared for a very long time. I was given the ability to understand the West while still being of the East. I was given the ability to write and to get my points clearly over to a person who is worthy of knowing the answers. I have suffered more than any person should have to suffer, but that has given me a greater insight, that has given me a greater range of expressions, of understandings, and has made my sympathetic to the Western outlook, and able to tailor (tilpasse) my words to convey the true esoteric meaning to the Western reader.

'This is the Age of Kali, the Age of Disruption, the Age of Change when mankind truly stands at the crossroads deciding to evolve or devolve, deciding whether to go upwards or whether to sink down to the level of the chimpanzee. And in this, the Age of Kali, I have come in an attempt to give some knowledge and perhaps to weigh a decision to Western man and woman that it is best to study and climb upwards than to sit still and sink down into the slough of despond.(fortvilelsens sump).

'In your third question you ask how you can see the Akashic Record when in the astral. To answer:

'When you enter the astral plane after having left this life you will, of course, go to the Hall of Memories and you will see everything that has happened to you, not just in the life you have just left, but in other lives that you lived before. Then you will decide, possibly with the assistance of counsellors (rådgivere), what you want to do - to advance your evolution. You may decide that you, too, would like to help others coming from Earth. In that case, if it is definitely to your advantage to see the Akashic Record so that you may help others more genuinely, then you will be given the power to see the Akashic Record. But I must tell you that no one can see it just as a matter of curiosity.

'There are people nowadays in the West who advertise that for a fee (honorar) they will travel into the astral (complete with briefcase (dukumentmappe), I suppose!) and consult the Akashic Record and come back with all the information desired. Well, of course, this is entirely untrue. They do not consult the Akashic Record, and I doubt if they ever get into the astral consciously. The only spirits they consult are the ones that come in bottles. So, I repeat, you cannot see the Akashic Record of another person unless there is some definite gain to be derived therefrom FOR the Other PERSON.

'Your fourth question is, once again, a very sensible question, one which I am pleased to answer because so many people ask it, so many people are troubled. Your question is, "What is the best position to adopt for meditation? I cannot sit in the Lotus Position and I cannot sit with the spine (ryggsøyle) erect?"

'Precisely! Let me tell you this; if you breathe you do not have to adopt a special position, do you? If you want to read a newspaper or a book you do not have to adopt a special position. If you want to read you take a position which is comfortable for you. Perhaps you sit in an armchair, perhaps you lie down. It doesn't matter. The more comfortable you are, the more you enjoy, the more you can absorb that which you are going to read. The same applies to meditation. Now, read this carefully .'. It does not matter in the slightest degree how you sit. Sit in any way you wish. Lie down if you prefer. And if you want to lie down in a curled (sammenkrøllet) position, then do so. The whole purpose of resting is so that you can be free from strain. You must be free from strain and distraction if you are going to meditate successfully. So - any position that suits you suits meditation.

'There it is. you've got your answers. I hope you will find these answers of benefit to you.'

The Old Author leaned back with the satisfaction of a job well done. 'What a tremendous amount of misconception and misunderstanding there is,' he thought. Then he reached out and picked up another letter, this time all the way from Iran. One question in particular is applicable here, and that question is - What is the point of sleeping in the lotus posture? Apart from mortifying the flesh what good does it do?

This really is a most vexed subject. It really does not matter in the slightest degree whether one sits in the Lotus Position or lies flat on one's back. The only matter is that one shall be comfortable because if one is not comfortable - then there will be all manner of strains and stresses which will distract one from rest and distract one from meditation. Let us, look at this a bit closer, shall we?

In the West people sit on chairs. When they go to bed they rest on a soft contraption (innretning) which has springs or some device which lets portions of the anatomy sag so that if (to be unkind!) one's behind sticks out abit too much - the soft mattress or soft springs will permit one's behind to sink down in the mattress, and then the weight is more evenly distributed. The point is that in the Western world, people have a system which suits them, it is their system, the system to which they are born, and if a Westerner wants to sit he usually sits on some sort of platform supported on four legs and with a prop at the back to prevent him from tipping over. Almost from birth, then, he is conditioned to believe that he has to have his spine supported by something else, and so the muscles which normally would keep his spine erect become undeveloped or atrophied.

The same conditions apply in the matter of legs, their joints, etc. The Westerner is conditioned to have his legs stick out at a certain angle and bend down from the knees at a certain angle, and in any other position he is, naturally uncomfortable.

Now let us consider the East, Japan first. In Japan, before entering a house, one discards one's footwear and then enters the house, walks into a room, and sits on the floor. The only way you can sit comfortably on the floor is cross - legged, and one variation of that cross legged position is called the Lotus Position.

Throughout, many years of development the Japanese has found that if he grabs his ankles and nearly ties his legs in a knot he is very comfortable. He is propped up on a good solid foundation, and because he has been conditioned to it from birth he finds no strain, no discomfort, no unpleasantness. He finds, too, that his spine is naturally erect. It just has to be because of that posture.

Take a Japanese who has never seen Western appliances before, and drop the poor wretch on to a Western chair, and he will be acutely uncomfortable. It will give him aches and pains in all the best places, and as soon as he can decently do so he will slide off the chair and flop on the floor in the accustomed position.

If one takes a Westerner and puts him in a Japanese community so that he has to sit on the floor cross - legged he suffers agony. His joints have not been conditioned to that particular position, so, to start with, he thinks he is going to split and then when the time comes to get up he usually finds he cannot. It is a delightful sight to see a fat old German who has been sitting cross legged trying to get up. Usually he falls forward on his face and just saves himself with his hands. Then with many a hearty groan he gets his knees tucked under him somehow, and with painful creaks and gasps and guttural exclamations he gets to his feet at the same time clutching his back and wearing upon his face the most anguished of expressions.

In the Far East - sitting cross legged is an ordinary matter of everyday existence. In the West the culture is developed of making money and of having material possessions. The Westerner thinks more of "today' - thinks more of having possessions upon this Earth - and so whatever is a status symbol becomes desirable. In the days of long ago kings and emperors and pharaohs and all that type of person sat on thrones….(end or extract from this part).

So the end of the week came around as the end of the week always does. The Old Author heaved a sigh of relief to think there would be no mail on this day, for on a Saturday in Montreal there is no mail delivery. So while the highly paid mailmen were resting in their country cottages or going out fishing in their boats, the Old Author lay back in his bed and grumpily considered all the questions which still had to be answered. Here is a question which comes up time after time. It is:

To me it is most important to know where I am going. Once a man is born you state that it is somewhat like a mother giving birth to a child but with the Silver Cord still remaining attached. You state that the Overself is the nine - tenths of the subconscious of Man or, so to speak, the man behind the scenes. All right, if this be so - then let us get to the man. He starts out limited to his one - tenth, and thus runs round in the dark most of his life. The man dies (he has done his job for the Overself), the Silver Cord is severed and he is on his own. WHAT DOES the OVERSELF GIVE HIM FOR HIS EFFORTS?

Well, all right, let us get down to it. Yes, that is a question which can be answered. But you must remember that the Overself is the real you, and it is - as far as Earth terms are concerned - blind, deaf, and static, but of course only as far as this low Earth is concerned. The Overself wants to know what things are like on this Earth, it wants sensation fast because in the realm in which the Overself normally lives - things move at the rate of a thousand years, or so, instead of a day. That is why in one of the Christian hymns there is that piece about a thousand years being the twinkling of an eye. But anyway, the Overself can be likened to the brain of a human. The Overself causes a human, or more than one human, - to do certain things and to experience certain things, and all the sensations are relayed back to the "brain"- Overself, who then vicariously enjoys or suffers from those sensations.

We have difficulties, you know, because upon this Earth we are dealing with only three dimensions and only three dimensional terms, so how are we to get over concepts which demand perhaps nine dimensions?

You ask what sort of reward does the Overself give to the human for all the experiences which have been undergone, but there is a good question to ask in return; it is this - What reward do you give your fingers for turning a door - knob and opening a door for you? What payment do you give to your feet for conveying you along to another room in the house or to your car or for pushing you upstairs? How do you pay your eyes for sending your brain those beautiful pictures? Remember - if 'you' are the brain and you are dependent upon hands and feet and nose and eyes, all those organs are dependent upon you for their existence. If you did not exist - those hands, feet, nose, and eyes would not exist either. It is completely a cooperative effort. If your fingers light a cigarette, your fingers do not enjoy the smoke; possibly another part of 'you' does, but anyhow when your fingers light a cigarette other organs do not reward those fingers with kind words or expensive gifts by way of thanks. But even if 'you' wanted to reward those fingers, how would you do it? What could you give to fingers that would please them and reward them adequately? And if the real 'you' is the brain, then how can the brain, which is dependent upon those fingers, operate to reward those fingers? Do you make the left hand give a gift to the right hand and then the right hand give a reciprocal gift to the left hand, or what? Keep in mind always that the fingers are dependent on the brain for direction, the fingers are dependent upon 'you'. So there is no reward because just as the fingers and the toes are part of the whole body, so You are just part of the whole organism which constitutes extensions of the Overself. Here on this Earth you are just an extension -in the same way as you can thrust an arm through a window and feel things in a room beyond, a room beyond the range of your sight. So there you are. You are working for yourself. Anything you do here benefits your Overself and so benefits you -because you are the same thing, or a part of it.

The same querist has another question, which is applicable, and it is:

'If the said man must be reincarnated, does he go back to the same Overself or does he get a new one? Is he sort of a permanent part of the Overself? Is man suddenly endowed with the other nine - tenths of the consciousness, or what happens?'

The answer to this - Well, your question really is, does the same body or spirit come down from the Overself? Let - us suppose you get a cut on your hand. You don't get a fresh hand, do you? The hand, or rather, the cut heals because it is part of you, because it is directed by your brain to heal, it goes through the process of joining together. People are entities complete, so that your Overself can direct extensions to itself to come down to Earth, and those extensions - humans - are something like the tentacles of an octopus (blekksprut); cut off a tentacle and it will re - grow.

My oh my! What a lot of confusion there is about this Overself business! But in an earlier part of this book the matter should have been clarified somewhat. To add possibly a little more light - let us suppose that we have a big entity which has powers which we do not at present understand. This entity has the ability to think and thereby to cause extensions of itself to shoot out wherever desired - pseudopods, they are called. So our Overself, remaining in one place, has the ability to cause extensions to be sent away from the main body, but still attached to it, and at the end of the extensions there is a node (knutepunkt) of consciousness - which can be aware of things through touch or through sight or through sound, nodes of consciousness which merely receive on different frequencies.

Everything is vibration. There is nothing but vibration. If we think that an article is stationary, then it is merely vibrating at one particular rate. If a thing is moving, then it is vibrating at a faster rate. And even if a thing is dead, it is still vibrating and actually breaking up as the body, decomposes (spaltes) into different vibrations.

We feel a thing, no matter whether it is stationary or moving. We touch it and we feel it because it has a certain vibration, which can be received and interpreted by one of our nodes, attuned to that type of frequency. In other words, we are sensitive in the sense of touch.

Another article is vibrating much more rapidly. We cannot feel it with our fingers, but our ears pick up that vibration and we call it sound. It is vibrating in that range of frequencies which a higher - receiving node can receive as a high sound, an intermediate sound, or a low sound. Beyond that there is a range of frequencies, which are much higher, we cannot touch them, we cannot hear them, but even more sensitive nodes termed eyes can receive those frequencies or vibrations - and resolve them inside our brain into a definite pattern and so we get a picture of what the thing is.

We get much the same thing in radio. We can listen - in to the AM band - which is a fairly coarse vibration or frequency, or we can go to the short - wave bands which are much faster frequencies which an AM receiver will not receive. And we can also go down (or should it be up?) to the FM frequencies, or the UHF frequencies where we can pick up television - pictures. The radio receiver for television will not pick up AM or shortwaves, just as the AM or shortwave receiver will not pick up television pictures. SO there we have an everyday illustration of how we can put out extensions to receive vibrations of a special frequency. In just the same way the Overself puts out nodes - pseudopods - humans - to pick up something which the Overself wants to know about.

Horrid thought for you. Something to make your flesh creep before you go to bed; we have seen how humans make things to pick up AM radio or FM or shortwaves. Supposing your Overself regards this Earth as just AM, then the Overself can have pseudopods out in higher frequencies, eh? So sometimes you get a nightmare where the poor old Overself has got his lines crossed and you pick up impressions of bugeyed monsters, etc. Well, there are such things, you know.

The Author picked up another letter and shuddered (skjelver). He had no mirrors about, but had there been a mirror available it would have been observed that the Author turned very pale shockingly pale. And why? How about this for a question?

I have a question and it is this; if a puppet can enter either a male or a female body depending on what it wants to Learn, why is it always taken for granted that the entity which was the Dalai Lama will always incarnate as a man? Surely even this entity needs a change if it is to learn things generally rather than purely from the male viewpoint, and why can a woman never aspire to the highest level of Lamahood? In Tibet where I understand men and women are equal (or were before the Chinese arrived), why this discrimination?'

Once again a question can be partly answered by a question. Here is a question which may help; where in all history has there been a woman as a Supreme God? Can you readers tell of any single instance where a woman has been the Supreme God? Yes, there have been Goddesses, but they have been 'inferior' to the Gods. The Dalai Lama was a God on Earth according to Tibetan belief, and so, as a God on Earth being a Goddess on Earth would not suffice. He came in male form because the things he had to do necessitated (nødvendiggjorde) that he came in male form. But how do you know that the Overself of the Dalai Lama does not have female puppets elsewhere learning other things? As a matter of fact he did. As a matter of fact much was being learned on the female side also.

This particular Author has a screw loose about certain things. One is about the moronic press, and another is about the so - called Women's Liberation Movement. This particular Author firmly believes that women have a very important job in life, raising the future population. If women would only stop aping men - and they do definitely try to ape men and try to wear the pants, forgetting that they don't have the figure for it - then the world would be a better place. This Author believes that women are responsible for most of the troubles of the world through wanting to get out and be 'free', as they wrongly term it, instead of accepting their responsibilities as mothers. Women say they want to be equal, but are they not equal? Which is most important, a dog or a horse? They are different creatures. Men and women are different creatures, a man has never given birth without the assistance of a female, let us say, but a female can give birth without the assistance of a male by parthenogenesis. So if the Women's Lib Movement wants a boost (styrke), why not boast about that?

What greater proof of equality or even superiority can there be than that women have the task of providing and bringing up the future race? The male co-operation in the matter only takes a few minutes, but a woman - well, she should bring up children until they are able to get on by themselves, and how she brings them up, the example that she sets them, that is how the future race will be. But now women want to beetle off to the factory where they can talk scandal, they want to be a hash - slinger, or anything except to accept the responsibility for which she is so well qualified by Nature. Women's Liberation? I think the sponsors of the Women's Liberation Movement should be slapped across the backside - hard!

The question goes on to ask why women never aspire to the highest Lamahood. Because women are irrational, that is why, because women cannot think clearly, that is why. Because women let their emotions run away with reason, that is why. If women would only stop being such asses (fjols) and face up to their responsibilities, then the whole world, the whole Universe, would be a better place.

Women have the biggest task of all; women have the task of staying at home, making a home, and setting an example which future generations can follow. Are~women not big enough to do their task?

Another question, What is the best incense to use?

That is something which cannot be answered because it is much the same as saying, what is the best dress to wear? What is the best food to eat? One cannot say what is the best of anything until one knows for what purpose it is required. Briefly, so that this shall not be entirely negative, here are some comments; You should try different types, different brands of incense, and you should decide which is best type FOR YOU when you are peaceful or when you are irritated or when you want to meditate. Decide which is the best for You on those occasions, and lay in a good supply of those types.

Incense should always be thick sticks. The thin stuff is practically useless. It is like having a musical note; if you get a thin, reedy note it merely irritates, it merely aggravates one, but if you have a good, full - bodied note, then that can be peaceful, soothing, or stimulating. So - never be fobbed off with a thin stick of incense. If you use that you are wasting your money.

Actually astral travel is done by all of us Most people are unconscious of it, and when they have an experience, which they dimly remember in the morning - they put it down as a dream or imagination.

Astral travelling, or rather, learning to astral travel, is much the same as learning to ride a bicycle. Really it sounds quite impossible that anyone should ever learn to ride on two wheels, and as for those unicycle things! Well, people can learn to ride a bicycle or a unicycle. People can learn to walk a tightrope, and there is no set time for how long it will take one to become proficient. It is only a knack (knep). If you believe you can ride a cycle, then you can ride a cycle. If you believe you can walk a tightrope or a slack rope either, then you can do so. It is the same with astral travel. It is not possible to set out a list of exercises on how you start to astral travel. How would you tell a person the manner in which he should learn to ride a bicycle? How would you tell a person how he would learn to use roller skates? Besides the obvious one of tying a cushion to his posterior, that is. And again, how would you teach a person how to breathe so that he could live? Breathing is a natural thing, we just do it. We are not always conscious of doing it, are we? We are only conscious of breathing when there is some difficulty. We are not conscious of astral travelling, either, most of us, but it is just as easy as breathing, just as easy as riding a bicycle.

The main thing is that you should decide that you are going to astral travel consciously. The emphasis is on the word 'consciously'. Unfortunately the word 'imagination' has a bad name. People think that to imagine a; thing is to pretend something, which does not exist. Perhaps we should say 'visualise' instead. So to start astral travel you should go to bed - alone, of course, and in a room alone also. You should rest in any position whatever so long as it is comfortable. If you could stand on your head that would be quite all right if you found it comfortable. But if you want to lie on your back, on your side, on your front, so long as it is comfortable, that is all you need do. If you find it comfortable then it is all you need.

So - lying down comfortably, make sure that your breathing is complete, that is slow, and deep, and even, naturally, comfortably, not forced. Lie like that for a few moments, collecting your thoughts. Then with the light out visualise yourself as a body within a body, visualise you are in a body withdrawing from your outer body in much the same way as you would withdraw your hand from the glove which encompassed it.

Form a mental picture of your body just as you are lying on the bed. Do you have pyjamas on? Then visualise them, even to the stripes or patterns or flowers. Do you have a nightdress? Visualise that precisely as it is. Do you have pretty little bows and laces round the neck? Well be sure you visualise them. Or are you one of those hardy souls who sleeps like a peeled banana? Well, visualise yourself just as you are. And then go on with your visualisation to imagine (sorry! VISUALISE) your astral form to be absolutely identical with the outer form. Visualise this body sliding out of the flesh body and rising up so that it is about an inch or two above the flesh body. Hold it there, just concentrate on visualising what it is like. If you are a girl you will have long hair, but that is a mistake because boys, too, seem to have long hair nowadays. But, anyway, if you have long hair visualise it hanging down. Is it touching the face of the flesh body? Then push it up a few inches. Visualise that body as a solid creation. Look at it from the top - from the ends, and from underneath so that you get a complete picture, a solid picture of it. Then let yourself feel satisfaction. You are out of the body. Do you feel the astral body swaying up and down slightly? Be careful, if it sways too much you will have a dreadful feeling of falling, and then you will slam back into your flesh body again with a horrid 'bonk' which will jerk you back to being just in bed.

Be satisfied for the moment thinking of your body, your astral body. floating a little way just above your flesh body. Then gradually visualise the astral body sinking back inside the flesh body just as you would slide your hand into a glove.

Try that for a night or two until you can hold the visualisation strongly, and when you can do that go further.

You have got out of your body. You are floating just above your flesh body. Think - where do you want to go? Do you want to go and see Dr. Armand Legge, the doctor who gave you such a bad medical report, or something? All right, you know what he is like. Think of him, think of yourself travelling; think of yourself arriving. If you can do it like this you can just tickle him on the back of his neck. He will become frightfully uncomfortable! But perhaps it's a little unkind to tell you of a trick like that.

Do you want to think of your girl friend? Well, you can go and see your girl friend, too, if you want to. But remember if you have the wrong thoughts in your mind about what you are going to see you will find that until you've got an awful lot of practice you'll end up back in your body with a hearty slap. What happens is this; you get out of your body, you think you will go and see some girl friend or someone whom you would like to have as a girl friend. You know it's her bath time and you want to see if she has any moles on her birthday suit. You get there, but her aura detects your presence and alerts her subconscious. Her consciousness may feel uneasy, she may keep looking over her shoulder or something, she may wonder if the landlord is peeping through the keyhole. She won't see you, but her aura will sense you and the sub - conscious will rise and give you such a bonk, that you will forget all that you have seen and you will be chased back to your body with more of a shock than you thought possible. Only when your thoughts are pure can you intrude on a person's privacy like this, and to those people who write in and ask how they can peep (kikke) at their girlfriends at the wrong time - well, the answer is, for your own sake don't. You will get pretty rough treatment.

Practice this visualisation. It is an easy thing indeed. When you can visualise it, then you can do it, so how long it is going to take depends upon you, upon how quickly you can realise the truth. The truth is that you DO astral travel, but because of civilised conditioning, etc., you do not always realise it, you do not always remember it, and when you do remember it most times you pass it off as imagination, a dream, or as wishful thinking. As soon as you accept the reality of astral travel then you can sincerely visualise astral travel. And when you can sincerely visual astral travel, then, believe me, you can do it because it is far more simple than getting up off a chair, it is far more simple than picking up a book. Astral travel is basic, it is part of a living persons birthright, no matter whether it be a horse, a monkey, a human, or a cat - everyone does astral travel. But how quickly you do it - depends on you.

Curiouser (merkelige)and curiouser; the very next question is: you say that in the astral everything shimmers, thing shimmers always. Is it because I wear glasses?

When you are in the astral everything shimmers because it is full of life, full of vitality. If you are doing it properly, you can see little speckles of light around you. You see as if everything was in a shaft of sunlight. No doubt you have been on some grimy railroad station and had a shaft of sunlight peer in through a murky window. In the shaft of sunlight you have seen little specks floating about. Well, in the astral everything is like that, you are in perpetual sunlight, and everything shimmers with the vitality of life. It is the opposite of being in smog. In the astral, by the way, bad sight does not matter. It does not matter if you are blind. In the astral you have all your senses. You can hear and see, you can smell, and you can feel. A hundred per cent efficiency every time. So why not try astral travel? It is easy and it is natural.

And, finally - astral travel is utterly, utterly safe. You cannot get hurt, and so long as you are not afraid - no harm of any kind can ever happen to you. If you are afraid, well you are just wasting energy. There is nothing to it except that. The only thing is, if you are afraid you are dissipating your energy needlessly, and - you are slowing down your vibrations so much that you are making it difficult to stay in the astral - in the same way that an aeroplane that loses its forward speed sinks. You don't want to sink, do you? All right then, don't be afraid. There is nothing of which to be afraid!

So the questions come rolling in ad infinitum, add two and two together. The old typewriter goes clacking away and the pages come churning out - not churning out really because everything is thought out, but with a bit of practice typing comes fast. So the pages come out anyway, which means as there are more and more pages there is less and less room for further questions. So let us answer just one more question in this chapter. Here is a good one:

"…you tell us that when we are on Earth we are only onetenth conscious, but from what we read in your books it does appear that we are less conscious than are beings who inhabit other planets; the Gardeners of the Earth, as one example, either are in possession of one hundred per cent awareness or they must have greater power than Earth people, or is it that in their third dimensional state they could be more than onetenth conscious? Their intellect and technical knowledge seem to be so far beyond ours, not only their intellect but their compassion and understanding. Can you explain this, please?

Yes, sure, nothing to it. On this Earth we are upon one of the most measly of little dust spots in the Universe. You see, there are more planets, more worlds, than there are grains of sand upon all the seashores of the Earth, and you can throw in for good measure all the sand on the seabed too, because the number of universes is beyond human comprehension. If you get a bit of dirt beneath your nail and you look at it all beneath a microscope - you find there are thousands of bits of dirt. But then think of all the stuff on the surface of your body, think also that no matter how this 'dirt' appears to you, yet still it is formed of the basic carbon molecule. So, piece of dirt beneath a nail, how are you going to imagine how many molecules - how many worlds - there are in one human body? And having decided upon that, how about all the other human bodies, the animal bodies, the bodies on other worlds, etc.

Upon this world we are onetenth conscious, but upon other worlds people may be several more tenths conscious. But if they were even one - twentieth conscious they could still be far more intelligent than the people of Earth.

The Gardeners of the Earth are not just threedimensional people living somewhere out there in space ready to slap down (klaske ned) an intruding astronaut or cosmonaut. They are in a different dimension also, and of course their technical abilities are so far above that of humans that humans to them would be like a particularly scruffy (pjuskete) microbe sitting on a particularly scruffy piece of dirt.

The big difficulty is that upon this Earth we have to live and deal with three dimensional terms, so how is one to describe things which happen perhaps in nine or more dimensions?

So, to answer the question - yes, upon this Earth we are only onetenth conscious. And, yes, we are less conscious than are beings who inhabit superior planets, even if, by chance, they also should be only onetenth conscious. Yes, the Gardeners of the Earth are much more conscious, and they are also much more conscious in many more dimensions. They have worked their way up from what we are now, and yet above them there are higher beings and to them the Gardeners of the Earth are just as we appear to the Gardeners of the Earth. But if we adopt the correct law, and that law is that we should do that which we would have others do unto us, then we too can climb our way up to the state of the Gardeners of the Earth and from thence (derfra) onwards. The best way to explain it is to take the R.A.F. motto, 'Through Hardship to the Stars.'

Henrietta Bunn glowered gloomily as she looked at her friend. 'Can't understand this author,' she complained, 'here am I trying to study his books and there is no Index. How does he expect one to find a thing again - read all the books?' Her breath trailed off into a series of muttered fulminations as she flipped the pages as well as her lid.

Her friend, Freda Prizner, smiled indulgently, 'Well, you know, Hen,' she replied, 'I read his books for pleasure. The thought of STUDY turns me off and I want someone to Turn me On!' She sighed and added, 'But you got something there, girl, all books should have indexes so you can look up what you want to avoid.'

The poor wretched Author groaned as he wriggled in discomfort on his hard steel bed. What DO people want? he wondered - First, it is a 'sin' to use too many I's - and after all, am I not entitled to an I or two more than average? There is 'The Third Eye', you know! But now Readers (bless their hearts - one to each Reader!) want an Index!!! The Old Author felt his pangs and pains increase at the mere thought.

Deep in the Heart of the United States where the Buffaloes no longer roam (the elks having taken over instead) a most brilliant and talented woman was hard at work. With one husband - she says it is enough! - and two children - she says it is too many as they are boys ! - to look after, she STILL found time to compile An Index. Out of the blue it came, well no, this is a TRUE book. Out of a mailman's mail sack it came. A package. The Old Author's fumbling fingers easily unwrapped the parcel because it had already been opened by Canada Customs. Inside -INSIDE - yes, you guessed it there was An Index.

Mrs. Maria Pien is a brilliant woman, talented and capable. Yet no one is perfect; even she has a fault. Her writing is minute (liten), and the Old Author has rapidly failing sight. So to read Mrs. Pien's writing - a STRONG magnifying glass is used. She missed her vocation (kall); her natural work should be to write books on the head of a pin (knappenål).

Thank you;' Mrs. Pien, for your greatly - appreciated work. In the interest of space, the initials of the title are used, thus:

The Third Eye =TE

Doctor from Lhasa =DFL

The Saffron Robe = SR

The Hermit =TH (dansk EREMITTEN)

The Rampa Story = RS

(for the present - only extracts from these above in danish/norw.language)

Cave of the Ancients = CA

Living with the Lama = LWL

You - Forever = YF

Wisdom of the Ancients = WA

Chapters of Life = ChL

Beyond the Tenth = BT

Feeding the Flame = FTF

The Thirteenth Candle =TC

INDEX