Mental Projection

Mental Projection

Jose Silva was not convinced by Cannon’s research into astral projection. He had some ideas about astral projection. For instance, we know now that when we relax in deep meditation, we might sometimes experience some unexpected physiological sensations.

Some people report that they feel a little light headed during deep meditation. Some say they have a floating feeling. Others experience other things in the body.

Now, thanks to advances in the science of physiology, we know that when we relax, some muscles relax more rapidly than others.

If the muscles on one side of the head relax more rapidly than the muscles on the other side, then this could affect the inner ear, which regulates our sense of balance. In this case, a person might experience a very slight feeling of being dizzy, or perhaps feel a little bit like they are floating.

It is not difficult to imagine that people in ancient times, who did not know how the inner ear affects our sense of balance, might sit around and talk about the phenomenon and conclude that they floated away from their body. Couple this with vivid visualization and imagination, and they could feel like they were even looking back at their body.

Jose Silva had a theory about mental projection, and set out to demonstrate it with the following experiment. Here it is in his own words:

I was working with an assistant. I told him that I would stay at my house, and he could go to the shop, our television repair shop next door to the house. We could see each other through the windows, and could signal to each other.

We were working with two subjects, two young boys. I wanted to get my subject to level first, then have my assistant get his subject to check out my subject, to find out what was going on.

When we were ready, I told my subject to enter his level. Then I told him, “We want to create something.”

He said, “What’s that?”

I said, “To have something for the first time, you know, something that’s not around. Something that we don’t have around. For instance, I don’t want you to think about your father’s car, or your uncle’s car. I want you to create a car, any way you want to, in your mind, just like make believe.”

He said, “Just like make believe? Okay.” Then he continued, “I’m going to create a little toy truck. How’s that?”

I said, “That’s fine.”

“Now, where do I start?” he asked.

I said, “Wherever you want to start.”

He said, “Well, I’m going to start with the front wheels first. I’m imagining that here’s the front wheels, here’s the axle connecting one wheel to the other.” He kept on like that.

When he was doing this, I signaled to my assistant, through the window, to start. So he told the other boy, “Will you project to see what little Johnny is doing.”

“He is creating a little toy truck,” the second boy said. And he described it.

Now here is where we messed up. Johnny, the first boy, said he was going to paint his truck green with red wheels. We needed a time reference between the two youngsters, to see whether the other boy saw what he did after he had already done it, or whether he had in mind what Johnny was going to do.

The second youngster knew the first was creating the truck. We asked him to project and find out what the first youngster was doing. He told us he was creating a little toy truck. He didn’t say mentally, but he did say creating it.

He described it as green with red wheels, that he intends to paint it green with red wheels. We couldn’t tell whether the first one had done it yet.

When you create something in the subjective dimension, and someone detects it, you cannot tell the difference whether it is physical or mental. This is what we demonstrated with this research.

This could be what happened in Cannon’s research on astral projection. The man and the woman both imagined that their astral bodies were in the room with the other subjects.

They might have been creating images of their bodies, in another dimension, the same way little Johnny created the little toy truck in another dimension.

In other words, that is an alternate explanation for astral projection.

But we know that we can have mental projection, that you can create something with your mind in another dimension, and someone else who is functioning in that same dimension can detect it and describe it.

Bi-location is similar to that. The viewer at the second location would have to be at an altered state of consciousness to “see” the body, in that dimension.

Detecting information