Ophiel - Astral Projection Twelve Lesson Course

Ophiel’s CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION First Course Copyright (C) 1970 by Edward C. Peach. All rights reserved. No part of this course of lessons, in part nor in whole, may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the holder of these rights, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address the above. Lesson One ********************* END OF PAGE ********************* Astral Projection By Ophiel Lesson One Dear Student Welcome to the study of Astral Projection. No occult study offers you more opportunity for immediate growth, development, and results than this subject of Astral Projection. Even were you never to succeed in conscious projection, that is the memory of your Projections, this study would bring you knowledge and development that will aid you in all your other occult study. Note the emphasis in the above paragraph on memory! Without remembrance, you never really learn. I don't mean "fact and figure" memory, but remembrance of your experiences. Memory is dependent upon concentration, upon attention. Learn to observe yourself at all times, and you will learn a great deal. Become fully aware, fully conscious, at all times. There will come a time when you are fully aware when your body is asleep. If you are registered under the Automatic Plan, you will receive your lessons - without having to do anything about it - about the 1st or 15th of each month. If you have registered under the single lesson plan, then make a note memo on your calendar to send for the next lesson in about two weeks. You can use the order form at the end of the lesson. Now you are ready to begin. So begin! Study of the Occult is the study of life, of creation, of evolution, or consciousness. It is the most important study program you will ever undertake. Keep a diary of your experiments and exercises. You will never regret doing so. Sincerely, Director of Studies The Gnostic Institute. ********************* END OF PAGE ********************* 1

CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION By Ophiel Lesson One You should have read the book ART AND PRACTICE OF ASTRAL PROJECTION by now more than once, I hope, many times. I also hope you have attempted the projection work described, and achieved some degree of success in doing them. I also hope you have achieved a degree of understanding that will lead you to the realisation that there is more to this book, and to this work, than you first realised. (Please revalue this statement. After all the years of work I did I still have not formed a definite conclusion as to exactly what the possible depth of this work could be; and I am coming to the conclusion that there is no definite goal in sight, nor will there ever be!!! All the Universe lies out there" and there is no "End" in sight anywhere. I will confess here that the first ideas which prompted me into a study of Astral Projection, as it was always called by everyone then, was the idea that there might be a way that one could separate oneself from the physical body and roam around the "Physical" world plane and, unobserved, spy visually and listen audibly to all and sundry that goes on, etc. This idea, I repeat, was one that prevailed, everywhere, and still does, as one of the basic ideas about Astral Projection. I want to say here at this point now, that the above idea is completely wrong in connection with Astral Projection and the sooner this wrongness is understood, and gotten out of the way, the quicker can the student use, practice, and reap the benefits of trying projection, Astral or otherwise. Do not feel too disappointed at not being able to project on the Physical Plane. I agree the possible results thereby could be good; but it is impossible, as will be explained later more fully. I can say to you now, though, that any "results" you might have gotten from the Physical Plane Projections you can achieve through clairvoyance for which see the book “THE ART AND PRACTICE OF CLAIRVOYANCE” by ‘Ophiel.” Please ponder on this statement; it is very important. We are all on the Physical Plane and, as of late; I have been saying that the Physical Plane is the tail end of a whole bunch-group of other Inner Planes. These Inner Planes have been explored by teachers and psychics and others of such like in past ages, and most of these people discovered these planes by themselves without being much in communication with other people who were also working along these lines. Accordingly, in this way, and as many other ways as are in the Occult, there is a curious phenomenon of these different explorers, as it were, exploring these Inner Planes and discovering things and then giving them different names - all kinds of names - This name business has, of course, given a great deal of confusion to the Occult Movement. A new Occult student will read many different kinds of books and discover therein references to all kinds of different names' but, however, as he progresses in the knowledge and study of the Occult he will discover that these teachers are all more or less describing the same (different) things. I will repeat again that this is a very common occurrence in the Occult. A late Renaissance writer and teacher Occultist named Parecelsus had a great tendency to do this. If you will read his works you will find references to all kinds of different names you probably never hear of before. But if you will study all the things he is describing you will find that it has a common name, and that you will recognise it. 2

I am going to use a simple set of names. The names I am going to use are, of course, 1) Physical Plane. 2) Etheric Plane. 3) Astral Plane, and now I want to say, at this point, that there seems to be some idea, backed by strong evidence, that the Astral Plane is divided into two rather distinct parts. For the time being I guess we can call it the Lower Astral Plane and the higher Astral. Next above the Higher Astral is a plane called the Mental Plane, and the one above that is called the, ‘Buddic Plane,’ which I don't quite really understand, and then the Casual Plane. These roughly will be the names that we will use in these lessons. In regard to projection into these Inner Planes, you actually will not progress or project much above the Lower Astral. The reason for this is that at about this "place" all forms begin to die away, and " Forces" begin to become "Visible." After all, you do consist of somewhat of a form and, as I said above, the Higher Astral everything is practically all Forces only and then it gets "thinner" and "thinner" until you reach the final something or other, which is actually No-thing. "All" appears to be, more or less one ("Essence.") You are, however, always in touch with these Higher Planes, right up to the outer limit, but by means other than projection and even by means other than force. I hate to keep saying that there isn't a great deal of material on these things, but that is true and I am going, in these lessons, to outline about what the limits are. After all this is somewhat a beginning course, and you are just starting your work on this great art of projection. The plane most immediately above the Physical Plane, and to which you will do a great deal of you’re projecting to, is the Etheric Plane. In fact there seems to be some evidence that we are often in and out of the Etheric Plane quite frequently, especially when we are sleeping, although much work has been done on this, nothing truly valid has come to light to prove it, and I have an idea that everybody is different from everybody else, and their cognitions of the Inner Planes are different enough so that they think they are dreaming and just let it go at that. In the more advanced course, we then learn to recognise the descriptions of these various planes, that are described by these various teachers, and we learn that they are practically all the same thing, all the same things, just given different names; again, I repeat, and this has led to a beautiful amount of confusion in the Occult. The Occult student and writer who was, named Paracelsus, was a great one to explore the Inner Planes and to give all kinds of names to the different things he found there and learned about. You should gat all the books you can about Paracelsus - there are a couple of good ones on the market, one by Franz Hartmann - and take note of his vocabulary. Then note the general description of these things, and then see if you can find some other names for them that other people have used. The designation that I use is, I think, the one used by the Theosophical Society. It is quite ordinary and does not present any great amount of trouble. Note, however, I would not recommend using the Hindu names for the planes, unless you fully understand them. Actually, as I said before, you are not going to project to the very highest plane. The reasons for this are readily understood. The higher you go the less there is. In fact, as said before, around the so-called, "higher" Astral all forms begin to fade out and nothing but the force re "visible," and only in the "form" of colours. Here is just about as high as you can go and survive, as a form, because after all you do possess a sort of a form about you. You are connected with these higher planes, however by a creative thought process, but you can't project to them so just take this into your calculations accordingly. So you readily understand then that the most common type of projection is going to be to the first plane which as, as I said, the Etheric Plane. A great deal of description is given in my book about the Etheric Plane. You should, in time, come to know the Etheric Plane as well as you know is the Physical Plane. I suggest that for a very long time you do not plan on any kind of a projection further than the Etheric Plane. 3

There is a concept that I would like to insert here at this point and I want to call your attention to the fact that it is through the agency of the Etheric Plane that you receive Clairvoyance, intuitional "impressions," and "mind reading," and all those other things that are called ESP, I repeat, all ESP material comes through the Etheric Plane. In a sense this is not really anything remarkable as the Etheric Plane is the point of contact we have with all the other Inner Planes. I suppose you could say it is the "last" Inner Plane on the "way down," Therefore, in view of the above, it be-hooves you to develop your Etheric contactsprojections in a solid, dependable manner, I hope I will not be accused of having an obsession along these lines, but my whole idea of work in the Occult has been one of self-development. I just simply don't regard it in any other light than self-development. I would go as fat to say that this was the highest type of personal development that was possible through a human being. My idea is that you and I should develop our Occult contacts, or call them Occult powers is you want to, to enable us to live this physical life better. There seems to be a truth that Occultists say, that one cannot control ant plane or rule any plane unless one can operate from the plane "above" that one. And this would seem to indicate that you cannot, rule or control the Physical Plane until you can operate from the Etheric Plane. This does seem to be true: I have found it to be reasonably true in my own work but much control seems automatic. Now, as to developing the personal ability to project, I have written this book and I have received many letters from all over the world from many people who have told me that they have projected all their lives quite naturally and did not know what it was. In fact, it has frightened them to death in many cases - well, not really to death, but it had given them bad frights because they didn't know what it was until they got my book and recognised the descriptions of various types of projections experiences and sensations. From my experience, and from the experiences of these many other people, I concluded a long time ago that we all project more or less. Some do it quite consciously but the vast majority do it unconsciously. I don't know about you, but I myself do not care much to hear about what other people can or cannot do. When we are talking about natural gifts or natural abilities, that is, I can admire paintings, but I know that I will never be a, ‘Leonardo da Vinci,’ as I said in my book. However, I do dabble a little bit in painting sometimes, and even drawing sometimes, and I do enjoy it, and I do as much as I can to develop my ability along these lines. Although I know, as I said, I will never be a great painter. Still someday I may go and take a few lessons and see just how far I really can develop my ability along that line. This then is the attitude we should follow in our Astral Projection work. With the exception though that we all project now and then, apparently, the only differences that I can really seem to find in people is that certain people remember their projections while the vast majority of the people do not. Actually, as I said before, the art of projection does not really consist in "projection," although I have to speak of it in that manner due because of the peculiarities of our language. 1 can't seem to say it in any other way, but actually nothing is really projected: All you do is transfer your consciousness, your centre of consciousness, your centre of awareness from one plane to another. I again repeat that you are functioning on all these planes now, at all times, and always did, and even in the Casual Plane. You are going to attempt to learn the art of projection by a graduated series of exercises. If you will look at a large dictionary, you will find that the definition of exercise is "means to shut up," in a sense, or "enclosing." Also another word that is used in this connection is the word train, not the train we ride on though that word evidently comes from the fact that the cars in the train are coupled together and they travel along on in a Train line. The word train in this connection seems to be a repetition of exercises and each time you repeat something, theoretically, it should be then easier to repeat the next time. So then this is the meaning of the word exercise and it is the meaning we will use in these lessons. All these exercises 4

were given in the book but I am going to repeat them here, maybe with a little more elaboration. Now whatever you do, don't get discouraged in your studies because we can all learn to project in some degree, and many of us can learn in a very high degree. Then too, remember that we are all different from each other, and particularly so in the occult, and each of us seems to have some ability in this way. There is another matter in regard to the idea of training or exercising that I want to bring out at this time also. For the sake of understanding this matter a little clearer you can consider that the Etheric Plane and Etheric Matter has become a little "thick." There is something very funny about, (I mean in the sense strange and not amusing), the consideration of the Etheric Matter in that repeated movements, or the repetition of exercises, does seem to ware some kind of path in this Etheric Matter, and each repetition makes it easier and easier to follow. Although this is getting a little but away from Astral Projection, still you can understand by this how it is possible that we do learn things on the Physical Plane, it is through the agency of the Etheric Plane. This is part of what I said before about controlling the plane lower by mastering the plane above. You are going to learn by means of a number of guided exercises, and you will also learn by doing. Much to do has been made in occult studies by talking about a diary, keeping some kind of record, or an accurate record, or a very complete record, of your works and experiences. Well, I, myself, did never like this very much. I found it rather boring to keep a diary and it never seemed to help me very much. However, if you find that keeping a record of your experiences in the Occult, even from day to day, if you want to, helps you, then by all means do it, and if ever I see you in person we can go over your diary and see if there is anything outstanding in it that you have overlooked Also, much to do has been made in the Occult about the dangers of the Occult, especially the dangers of Astral Projection. Well, you know that I told you already that you actually do not project anything. You simply transfer your consciousness from one level to a different level. It has nothing to do with projection in the sense of leaving the body at all. Especially as they often say about leaving the body unguarded and then something will come along and grab it. Well, there just is no such thing. So don't get carried away by any fears and anxieties along those lines, and if you hear some teacher talking that way, you had better take another look at them because it is almost certain that they don't know what they are talking about. However, be guided with your own ideas in all ways and don't do anything because I say it. To those of you who know something about the Tarot Cards there is a little additional work that we have to do. You will find among your papers a large black and white reproduction of the 18th Tarot Card. This card is called the Moon, and it is a scene, and in this scene at the base of the picture, front of the picture, there is a pool, and out of this pool there is a path coming that goes clear across the picture, and ends up in the top of some mountains, which are seen in the middle picture in the far distance. On each side of the path is an animal, one is a, ‘Dog,’ and one is a, ‘Wolf.’ The, ‘Dog’ represents art, and the ‘Wolf’ represents nature. In the middle distance are two large towers. The land in front of the towers represents the Physical Plane, our everyday world. The land beyond the towers represents the Inner Planes, or as commonly called, the Astral Planes, even when they are speaking about the Etheric Plane. Out of the pool is coming a crayfish. Well, the crayfish is us: you and/or all of humanity. We are surrounded by, a hard shell of all our conventional options and ideas. We are starting to make this journey to the peaks of those mountains in the background. Now, this card plainly tells you that your journey through the Physical Plane, and then through the Astral Planes, and practically gives you instructions to learn to project to those Inner Planes. We are planning on inserting in these lessons an enlarged black and white reproduction of the Moon Card, the Tarot Card. taken from the Astral Projection book. It will be for your benefit to paint this card according to the colours that are in the book. 5

The card will probably come as a page, so please get a heavy piece of cardboard, or even a light piece of plywood, and paste or glue the black and white picture to the cardboard. Try to get it the same size and make a very neat job out of it. When it is dry, paint it those colours. If you have any trouble with it, and spoil it, then just send for another one, probably it will be a very nominal charge. Try to get a perfect copy. If you don't get a copy than keep on trying until you do. I have often painted some of these things six or seven times before I got one that completely suited me. When you have the card done than keep it near you in your room somewhere, and study it, look at it, quite often. Don't strain your eyes, don't strain your eyes at anytime in this work, or any other kind of Occult work, but look at it and meditate on it. There is another terrific concept that I must introduce to you, sooner or later, so I will now. Also, this concept is so large, so big, so startling, that I don't know just how I can put it over, as it is even too much for me to fully grasp in all its aspects. I will do the best I can but will probably have to introduce this subject a piece at a time and come back to it repeatedly, which process I hope will not bore you too much. So here goes. (The following is the most profound concept I have ever come across in my years of Occult work, and it is so big that I have refrained from looking at it too much because I felt a complete incapability of comprehending it ever to even its simplest extent. However, we must all face it someday, sometime, so here is a start!) IT APPEARS THAT THE PHYSICAL PLANE WORLD DOES NOT, ‘EXIST,’ ‘AS SUCH,’ that is, as it appears to be. (Enough for now.) One curious outstanding fact regarding the above statement is that, ‘THIS NEWLY DISCOVERED FACT, THAT THE PHYSICAL PLANE DOES NOT EXIST AS SUCH, CANNOT BE COGNISED BY YOU, OR BY ANY MAN OR WOMAN, UNTIL YOU LEARN TO ‘ENTER’ THE ‘INNER PLANES’ YOURSELF AND ‘LOOK BACK!!!’ I am no expert psychologist on dreams, nor a psychologist at all, but I do suggest that the action-appearance of dreams, being what they are, has all the "appearance"-"actions" one would expect IF THE "OUTER PLANE WORLD" WAS OUR OWN SELF-MAGIC-CREATEDCREATION. (I don't see how it could be any different in any great respect otherwise.) "The kind of stiff that dreams are made of" I am sorry to introduce this kind of material here in a Course on Astral Projection, but all material evidence points the way it does and the possible end results are too big to be overlooked. Besides, once this unexpected new development is understood in some of even its minor aspects, great possibilities open up - again too big for our casual comprehension - I don't know if I can handle it in my lifetime, but you should know about it, and make a start on understanding it and using it. Would it be asking too much of you to accept the above hypothesis for the time being and ACT - FEEL - in the following lessons - as if it were true and see where this acceptance leads us? So to proceed according to the above tentative mental acceptance, you are now to look and feel for this idea, the basic end of the Physical Plane as a desired end result of your development of an Astral Projection Method - in addition to your exploration of the Inner Plane of Forces. I want to add a sideline word here - I suggest you - do not look forward, in any degree of your Astral Projection work, to a communication with those who have passed on. While I have found, in my work, some contacts/results, which seemed suspiciously like contacts with the dead I am not sure and the results were not satisfactory from a communication standpoint. There are many strange and unknown factors which given here and, so far, are beyond my ken, and probably always will be. So be careful in your projection work and avoid the idea of deceased persons contacts unless you are VERY sure and, in that case, let me know about your work. Some p e o p l e might have that contacting ability, but I don't seem to have. ********************* END OF PAGE ********************* 6

Ophiel’s CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION First Course Copyright (C) 1970 by Edward C. Peach. All rights reserved. No part of this course of lessons, in part nor in whole, may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the holder of these rights, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address the above. Lesson Two ********************* END OF PAGE *********************

Dear Student, In this lesson Ophiel gets into some of the characteristics of the Inner Planes, particularly of the Etheric Planes, and we ask you some "think" questions. Now I hope that you realise that any kind of a Course of study is no better than reading a book if you don't do your "home work". You will be given exercises to do in future lessons, you are asked to colour the Moon Card in Lesson 1, and you are being asked some really "heavy" questions in this lesson. If you are not willing to do your homework, then you might just as well forget right now - about studying the Occult! No mere reading is going to do much for you! No touch of teacher is going to do much for you! There really is no progress possible - in any field, much less the Occult, without WORK! In fact, you will often find the ancient writers and teachers, the magickians, the alchemists, the Yogis, the Mystics, all describing the study of the Occult as "the GREAT WORK." So, let's truly get to work and not be dilettantes or occult fakers (not "fakirs.") Sincerely, Director of Studies The Gnostic Institute. ********************* END OF PAGE *********************

1

CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION

By Ophiel Lesson Two In these lessons we intend to introduce other additional material of a not-somuch-projection as we found, as was said before, that there was more to this Astral Projection 'stuff' than we first suspected and we know that you will want it all or as much as we can give in these lessons. However, the real problem for students and what was always the real problem is to make a safe and sane basic entrance into the Inner Planes and their-in learn to live more and to function, and return to this "outer" plane properly and correctly, with all your acquired Knowledge intact and usable. To this end the "Little System" was given to me with this definite idea in view. I probably should explain first that the "Little System" to be exact, is not an Astral Projection System, but is really an, Etheric Projection System. You may have read the book THE ART AND PRACTICE OF ASTRAL PROJECTION and in this book I have given some Knowledge of the different planes and how they differ from one another, and they do differ. I trust you read and assimilated all this basic Physical Plane Knowledge, as it is most vital that you completely understand the planes, and their differences, from each other. (They have some similarities too, but it is their differences that are important in projection work.) There is one simple word that can be said to differentiate - describe all the Planes from each other and that word is "heaviness." The Physical Plane is "heavy" (est) in comparison with all the others. The "others" are not only "lighter" but also, "Inner". We, "LIVING HERE" AS WE SO "NOW" HAVE GROWN ACCUSTOMED TO "LIVING," "MOVING," "ACTING," IN A CERTAIN DEFINITE CORPOREAL FASHION – MANNER. IF WE ACCIDENTALLY MAKE AN INNER PLANE PROJECTION, WE FIND OURSELVES IN A COMPLETELY STRANGE, AND EVEN APPARENTLY HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT - SITUATION BUT ACTUALLY THE ENVIRONMENT IS NOT HOSTILE, MERELY, "DIFFERENT." And one of the most immediate important things that your first necessary work should, and must be, is to become accustomed to the unusualness of the Inner Planes; and once this is done, progress on entering the Inner Planes should then be easy and fast. I might add, in passing, that there is a passage in the New testament that refers to this "entrance" matter in that the so-called Jesus is reported to have said (in reference to something else which is obscure because of the changes and alterations made by its forgers over the centuries.) that you must be "born again." become like "little children." He was, in all probability, referring to the/a natural evolutionary development of a man as he, after reaching this outer most plane, now turns back from whence he came, urged on by the driving spirit of inquiry as to what it is all about. Therefore, it is only when you first re-enter the/an Inner Plane that you experience the intense feelings of "lost-ness" due to the extreme strangeness of the lack of all ordinary responses to the surroundings environment. As I said before, and in other places, it was to overcome these feelings of extreme strangeness that the Little System was invented; as I early recognised these "wrenching" experiences that followed my first work along these Inner Plane lines, when I was completely lost for many years before I could make any sense out of the whole business. 2

In the following lesson we will take up the "Little System" in more detail as to actual workings and I will devote the rest of this lesson to explaining more basics for this time and maybe come more basics later as the "Deeper" ones come up. At this point I will speak of Time - We all know that in dreams much times seems to pass and yet when you wake no time to speak of has happened. In many cases dreams are like projections and, really are projections and in many cases they are not projections, Too much, is as yet, unknown about dreams, as such, for me to venture an exact opinion about them in connection with Astral Projection and neither can anyone else. But there are connections and you have to learn, by rule of thumb, to make a differentiation between them, between ordinary dreams and projections. The one difference seems to be that dreams are undirected and projections are directed. Please think this difference over in your mind until ‘YOU’ understand it. Regarding Time in projections - it seems that the nearer one is to the upper physical plane, the more Time has any effect. This means then, as will be given later, that on an Etheric Plane projection you will be closely followed by Time - while on an Astral, or Mental, or Casual plane projection "passage" Time gradually seems to disappear and no Time effect comes into being. I now want to speak of another matter. The Inner Planes are full of Light. In fact, the Inner Planes consists almost wholly of light. This is one of the first things you will notice when you begin to get flashes of the Inner Plane. In fact, although you probably won 't ever go this high, all that the Inner Planes, especially the higher Inner Planes, consist of is light. This has got something to do with those words in the Bible wherein it says, "And God said, let there be light." What it did not say in the Bible was that everything was to be made out of this light. As high as I have ever gone I have seen nothing then but a blinding flash of white light. In fact, many people have said this to me, that they have seen these blinding flashes of white light. I have already mentioned by the time this light reaches the upper astral and the lower astral (on its way "down") it begins to differentiate into colours and these colours represent the different forces, in the light, which were always part of the light. When the light reaches the Etheric Plane it is just a sort of glow. But when you do project to the Inner Plane, that is, the Astral Plane, and you stop and examine this light closely you will see that it consists of tiny little points of colours, and they are gently moving and flowing, although, at first Inner Planes glance the "matter" of this plane seems to be solid, like physical. There is a mystery here, which I am not able to tell you the full meaning. I don't know it myself, but then neither does anyone else that I know of in the world. You will have to keep these things in mind and do your own examining-exploring. I can see though that this light, as it comes closer and closer to the "frozen" physical plane, still does seem to act, yet, like water. Down here, where is beginning to get heavier as I said, it still acts as if it is flowing, (yet) I repeat, like water flows. There are currents in it. There are sorts of whirlpools in it. (Now because I used the word whirlpools don't get alarmed, there is nothing in these etheric-astral whirlpools that can harm you physically.) Etheric/astral currents also have some kind of a connection with mental connections and mind. Thoughts can influence these currents to move or to flow in directions that you set up, as I said before, you can freeze, or etherically solidify, some of this etheric-astral material. You will do some of this later on in your work on the "body of light" method. There is a whole new tremendous world of power and progress, which is opening up to you in these lessons, and I cannot repeat this often enough. I hope that you are beginning to understand that much of the, well, let's call it what it is, what it is called then, witchcraft, sorcery, wizardry, and the black arts, especially when it is used for questionable purposes. I hope you now begin to 3

understand how these things can be brought about. But for God's sake, don 't start out to use these things wrongly. Do remember that the other guy has powers too, and he might be able to work a few things himself, I suggest, respectfully, that you use these powers for your own benefit and development. I still do not know exactly what good and bad are. Neither does anyone else, again, that I know of. But there is something funny about these etheric-astral currents. Apparently there is a direction that is "good". And there does appear to be a direction that is "bad", or shall we say "negative. " I, frankly, do not understand this. I know that we are getting into mighty trite grounds when we say: "hold a good thought." I never liked the sound of that because I didn't understand what it meant. But now, I know about the ebb and the flow of these astral currents, it does begin to make some sense. And, strange as it does sound, if you go around expecting good things to happen to you, you do greatly increase the chances for them to happen to you. And this expectation is born out of our knowledge of the flow of these etheric inner plane currents. There does seem to be something basic about these inner currents that are progressive, and their action is "upward" and "outward" and "ever-expanding" and leads to more GOOD (whatever that is!) You are going to see these currents in action soon, actually see them other than just feel them or hear about them. So for heaven's sake do keep all these things in mind. And always look upon these things, as a progressive power for good. The other day I was reading in a newspaper, which article I do not save, as if I saved all these articles that interest me I would soon have no room in the house. So all I can do is remember them as best I may. The article I read in the newspaper or magazine, I don't remember which it was, said that an experiment was carried out somewhere in a psychological setting in which some teachers in a school that were studying backward children, or children that did not seem to be overly bright, and thus were not doing so well in their school work. It seemed that these teachers were taken aside and told, in a confidential undertone, that such and such children were tested and were found to be quite intelligent contrary to the opinion about them that was current at the time. These teachers were then told that these children were, so-called, late bloomers and to expect that they would do better in the future. Actually no special attention was given to the children other than this information to their teachers. Well, strangely enough, it developed in a relatively medium that these teachers, having these ideas in their minds about students, did begin to notice that they were improving in their work, and the children's work actually did begin to improve!!! Now none of this is tremendously conclusive but it is indicative with what I have found and what, I hope you will find, to be the result of this work, the manipulation and use of these currents in the inner planes (Currents of Light.) after you learn to do some degree of projection to them, but even then just thinking about it often does work and not necessarily -projecting to it, although you are going to make every effort to develop some degree of projection into and onto the Inner Planes. I have never thought that learning any subject was worth a damn unless you knew what the basics of the subject were. Of course, in all matters it is not absolutely necessary that you should know everything about a subject before you can use it or do it; for example, you don't really have to be an automobile engineer in order to drive an automobile or understand something about its workings. 4

(But, in case it stops dead, you should have some idea of what to look for as to what might be wrong.) But, it seems certain to me, that in occult matters, the use and power use of occult knowledge, forces, and truths, that is absolutely necessary that you should know a great deal about the fundamentals that lie behind these things. In this connection I do remember many years ago seeing a moving picture. It wasn't exactly a "B" picture because there weren 't any "B" pictures in those days, about a waitress who was one of those types that was completely effervescent and was joyous and expected good from everything and different people took advantage of her, such as selling her a lottery ticket that they thought was no good and here the lottery ticket wins a huge sum of money. Whereupon the same people unload an old broken down racehorse on her that she expressed an interest in, and then it turns out that the racehorse won a huge race and so forth and so on. It was a funky moving picture but of course not a probably one. But in general please try to remember and act in a sort of a general expectation of good, whatever that is. Do look for it, do think of it and put the other out of your mind. Didn't ‘Bing Crosby’ used to sing an old song "accentuate the positives" and, what was it, "eliminate the negative." There is another things that I will speak about here I don't know what to say about diets. Many people in the occult and outside the occult will go on wild rampages of diets, don't eat this, don't eat that. I found that there was nothing to it either one way or the other. But if you want to try a diet, go ahead and do it. Don't do anything to stop doing anything because I say so, follow your own ideas. I don't know how much effect alcohol and tobacco have on you at all. It seems that the effects vary from person to person. The effects of drugs or diets on projections, well, there do seem to be some evidence for it. If you really want to project and not have to practice and study for it well then just starve yourself for about 20 days and you'll project. (You might project yourself right out!) There is no doubt at all that drugs make a person project but I don't know anything about them, I don't think they're safe, and everybody days it's no good, and furthermore, many of them are against the law. You don't need drugs to project with, if you are going to do that I can't help you. I know nothing about it and I am a complete blank as far as drugs go. I have heard that there were some natural herbs and a thing called a sacred mushroom, which is found in Mexico, some years ago. Under proper supervision I might even try one of those little mushrooms sometime, though it is not very likely that I will do so as I am no where near where they grow nor have I any connection with it one way or another. But as I said some natural drugs do have some kind of effects on the body. By natural drugs I am talking about raw drugs, things that you pull right out of the ground and nothing that is refined or concentrated. But then again I know nothing about those things so I can't tell you anything about them. I don't seem to find that the time of day has anything to do with projections. When I was projecting, when I first wrote the book, I used to do it many times in the afternoon when I lay down to relax. The dream type of projection, which is to be studied later on, naturally will occur during your night hours of sleep.

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From the Director of Studies Questions 1.

What does it mean, to be born again!?

2.

Describe some differences between ordinary dreams and dream projections. Use your own ideas in addition to the material in the lesson?

3.

Think about the sentence And God said, let there be light," and relate this to the nature of the Inner Planes as you have learned about them, and also of your knowledge of the nature of the Physical Plane.

4. What have you learned, in this lesson, about witchcraft? What about thinking "good thoughts?" Why do you think that some drugs, starvation, and restricted diets, certain breathing exercises, etc. seem to bring about projections, and how do these induced projections differ from the natural one you will learn in this Course? Practices Donate at least a page in your notebook to each of the above questions. Do not send your answers in. These questions are designed to make you think. You should make up additional questions for each lesson as you go along, and write out your answers in your notebook. Go back over your questions and answers from time to time and add to them as you gain knowledge. Suggested Reading Ophiel: The Art and Practice of Getting Material Things Through Creative Visualization. This book is basically of The Etheric and Astral Plane materials and forces. *********************END OF PAGE*********************

6

Ophiel’s

CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION

First Course

Copyright (C) 1970 by Edward C. Peach All rights reserved. No part of this course of lessons, in part nor in whole, may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the holder of these rights, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address the above

********************* END OF PAGE ********************* Dear Student Now we really find out if you have the stuff of which Occult Students are made. In this lesson, you are given detailed exercises to work, and you will be working this exercise every day for the next month. It may get boring, it may seem a waste of time and effort; it may seem silly to keep repeating it - but your real success or failure in learning to control occult forces probably will depend more on this exercise than anything else you ever do! Are you going to be a real student? Only you have the power to decide. No teacher can make you into a student only you can do that. It is for you to determine that you are going to follow through on your initial step on the way. I know you can do it. I have confidence that you can do it. Do you have the necessary will power to go ahead and prove me right? Find out for yourself and get with it. Sincerely, Director of Studies The Gnostic Institute. ********************* END OF LETTER *******************

1

CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION

By Ophiel Lesson Three Dear Student: This is the third lesson on the course on Astral Projection. I suppose I'm always going to keep saying how difficult it is to express and teach occult truths. Unlike physical knowledge and physical science, occult knowtedg4onsists of one set of basic truths There just of nothing else. You see, material science, material knowledge, consists of a continual series of discoveries about unknown things. Occult knowledge is rather basic. But I don't mean that it has all been discovered. What I mean is that the basic occult truth is there and I have already given a great deal of it to you and it is not changing. What we are doing in the occult is making up the endless ramifications that come from this one basic occult knowledge. This basic occult knowledge is, as I have said before many times, the Qabalah, the basic pattern, knowledge, set up. So strange as it may seem, and this is about the only way I know how to say it, there is one basic set of occult truths and our work is to make endless modifications and adaptive uses of that basic knowledge. And again I will repeat that this is quite different from material knowledge and material science. Please don't confuse the two, as there doesn't appear to be any similarity. You are given the knowledge now and what is needed is to make endless adaptations of that knowledge and in fact that is what the material scientists are finding is endless adaptations of that basic knowledge, although it is not so clearly connected, and seen by us in all its entirety. I really just don't know what to do. I try best to give out this knowledge and I feel so inadequate about it. I can't give it all at once; all I can do is give you pieces of it. I trust you are going to keep that in mind now and fit these pieces together. The pieces I give you are material that can be used. And not just something to ponder on, as so much of religious stuff is about. I know the above sounds very tangled and mixed up but please read it over ten times if you have to, and try to understand what I am saying that there appears to be one basic knowledge and everything else is a ramification of that knowledge, which ramifications of course are eternally endless. All through the occult you are going to run into teachers that are forever screaming about some sort of a thing that they got going. Now, I am not going to tell you, like so many other "teachers" do, don't have anything to do with these other schools or these other teachers. I think that is just plain silly and you go out and examine anything you want to examine. You take any courses from any school you want to take. And, dear student, if you find some truth, some great truth, something, I don't mean to be pedantic, but if you find something better than mine for heaven's sake tell me and I will go there myself. Believe me I hunted around for years to find something before I was forced to do all the work myself and I covered about every place there was in existence and I contacted almost every occultist in existence; that is, that was alive and I didn't really find anything very much. I found a few things but it was really nothing that I wanted. None of them, none of the books, none of the schools, none of the teachers could ever really explain anything basic to me. I may have mentioned before, and you may have 2

read it in one of my other books that I am an unfortunate person, that I can't learn anything or do anything unless I know about the basic principles of it. And that is the way I approach the occult all the way through with the fact, the basic principles, and then when you have got the basic principles you can then work it, and build on it, any time, any place, anywhere. If you don't have these basic principles, if all you have is some prophet giving out utterances, then when he kicks the bucket what have you got left? Well, in my opinion you have got nothing left. There is a man that was supposed to have made a lot of prophecies some years ago, I am not going to mention his name, I don't want to get into any argument with anything, his books are referred to all round, but I've read some of them and I've talked to some of the people and? But what does it amount to; I mean that there is nothing for you there. He doesn't teach you how to go and do likewise as near as I can make out. All he does is tell you all the wonderful things he has, so what good does that do you, and I have said this stuff before and I hope I'm not boring you with it So in the following material I am going to hit the highlights again in a different way. I've said some of these things before and I am saying then again now in perhaps a little different way. For heaven's sake try and follow it, I mean I know you can follow it, study it and assimilate the basics. Once you do this you are in a position to build upon this basic knowledge. Now in regard to Astral Projection, and to other powers that are coexistent with it, I am going to say that there appears to be in the universe (I am going to say it in a different way) two creations, an "inner" and "outer." This conception of an inner and outer creation was called in Gnostic Literature a half world a demi-world. Now this is another kind of a conception but please follow it as carefully as you can. Try and picture these two creations existing in the universe. (You see I have to use English words and they really don't express the ideas really very clearly.) By "universe" I mean all that appears to exist, certainly the outer physical and I’m telling this to you now but you'll have to accept it that way for the time being, which is that there is an inner world, which world of course is not physical. You can say, or it could be said, that most basic actions that govern or, affect the physical plane, come originally from the inner plane world "to" this outer physical plane. This is a large engrossing concept but I just don't see how I can place it any clearer at the moment. Please read my other books, the ones I have written and the ones to come. I will repeat part of this again in a little different way. We live on a physical plane. Let's call that the "outer" plane. That much seems evident. Now you want to project yourself into these inner planes. This means incidentally, that you must have some fair idea that there is an inner plane. The inner planes, the Astral planes, is the inner world creation. I would be surprised if it turned out that the goal of all occult knowledge, research, practice, was to function equally well in both of these planes at will, or at once, as you might say. For some reason unknown to me, it seems like we, our centre of consciousness, is now centred onto and into the physical plane. I don't know what the reason for this is and neither does anyone else. I have heard different ideas expressed that we are doing this willing, and that we deliberately forget our inner plane existence when we come through to the outer plane, but I have no real conviction on that, look at that idea and see what you have come up with. There is a play called THE BLUEBIRD by Morris Maeterlinck. There are a lot of second hand books around with the play in them and I would respectfully suggest that you get a copy of it and read it over. 3

There is also another little book that I have in front of me called AN INTERPRETATION OF MAETERLINCK'S BLUEBIRD IN THE LIGHT OF INITIATION and I'm going to see if we can carry this book for you. I have an address here but it might be out of print. It appears to be a dollar. Maybe more now because I got this a couple of years ago but I would suggest that you get these two books and that you have them in your library as part of your research work. All I can say at the moment is that it appears that this man did get some ideas. I mean this man Maeterlinck, he appears to be a sort of occultist of some kind, at least he was a sensitive, and he's got an awful lot of occult ideas in his play, and this play is about the only one I can put my hands on this minute that has anything about this idea of why we are here and that is all I was trying to mention so I will return to the text now. But write in about the two books if you are interested and I will see what we can do about it. Now getting back to our somewhat basic ideas that I have just outlined previously, I'll partly repeat again that most basic actions that effect the physical plane, or cause effects on the physical plane, or do something on the physical plane, come from the inner plane world "to" this plane. But, coincidentally, "actions" can go from this outer world to that "inner" world, too, and set up "causes" that can alter back down to here again, and make changes on the physical plane also. Well, that is about all the additional information I can give you on those lines now. There is more to come and that by no means ends it, of course, so we'll have to get on with the material in this third lesson. Now the nearest plane to this outer physical plane, the first plane of this inner world creation that I told you about, is the Etheric Plane, is called the Etheric Plane, of course. As I said these three planes have different names with different teachings but the name we will use is Etheric. To "enter" the inner planes "from" the outer physical plane, you must develop "tools" of some kind, and become proficient in their uses. In point of fact it could also be said that all Inner Plane work of all kinds and types; all kinds of Magickal work, and anything pertaining to Metaphysical Apparitions of any kind has for its basic-basics the tool-function called IMAGINATION. (The above statement has been made by me be before in other places and in other writings. I repeat this statement because of its so called, important - that you must know and understand it fully ALL MAGICAL OPERATIONS ARE BASED ON IMAGINATION.) I will start out by saying images are the "material" objects of the inner planes and in using imagination you are functioning on the inner planes. I will have to stop here and make a little more explanation. Images, it is true, are the objects of the inner planes. What I should have said before is that they are the objects of the planes nearest to the earth. Now, I hope this does not confuse you. I am going to repeat part of it again in another way. Images, made by imagination, that is images are ideas, which is a sort of a picture-like idea, pictured in your mind's imagination, are the objects "physical" of the Inner Planes. However, it is true, that these images exist only on the inner planes nearest to the physical plane. Now, don't let that bit of knowledge confuse you too much. Just accept it as it is and I'll try to cover the rest of it either here or later. Actually what happens is that the "deeper" you go into the inner planes the more images die away and become forces or I should say the more images die away and become vibrations. Or I can say it another way, the more that forms die out and vibratory forces take their place. The more you advance into inner planes the more these forms become forces and these forces are coloured. You will encounter these 4

colours then upon the lower and higher Astral Planes, but that is still the material of the inner plane. Finally, real deep into the Inner Planes, you encounter nothing but forces, but again I say, these forces are still the "material" of the Inner Planes. All you have to do now is to accept this idea and to use images to the best of your ability. The use of images and imagination is laid out quite thoroughly in my book called THE ART AND PRACTICE OF GETTING MATERIAL THINGS THROUGH CREATIVE VISUALIZATION by Ophiel. You will find tremendous amount of material in there about imagination and its uses. I trust that you will read this book and assimilate it, as every bit of this knowledge is needed to handle physical life daily. This is about all we can talk about imagination in this lesson and we will therefore return to the object of this course and that is Astral Projection. IMAGINATION is, indeed, the basis for all "future" type of work done in this Physical Plane. You can readily comprehend this fact if you will consider the process involved in the creation of any kind of a new creation. The thing (to be creative) exists already in the mental pattern make-up of the person who is doing the desired creative work. I also call your attention to the fact that a proposed Astral Projection is of a creative future type action to be made and, as you will be shown later, definitely use imagination as its basis for all being. However, even though imagination is used and is the all in all of both our Physical Plane existence and our Inner Plane existence, very few people ever learn how to USE IMAGINATION. It will not be possible in this little lesson to treat to treat of imagination in all its, entirety although everything cries for such a book, and I may have to turn one out someday. But the principles governing the USE of imagination are somewhat basic and if you will study carefully the following examples to be given you should acquire an idea as to how imagination is, and can be, USED in other operations as they are, I repeat, closely basic all round. Therefore, your first use of the Power of Imagination will be its use and application to the first system of Astral Projection called the "Little System." I gave some of the reasons for the existence of the Little System previously so I may repeat some of them as I go along. The essence/idea behind the "Little System" is to accustom the student to the feelings attendant first upon entering the Inner Planes, as these feelings are definite and, in many ways, startling (but not dangerous). I will probably treat of these things in more detail in later descriptions of other projection systems so look for them in their due place. The first work/operations of the Little System will consist of a rather easy short journey, to be made by you, in familiar surroundings. For example, you will "go"/travel from your bedroom to the basement of your home and then back again. Now to make a "trip" like this is possible without any preparation to many people who may possess great natural powers; and if you are one of those lucky people, then these lessons are not necessary for you; but many others are not so lucky, so hence these lessons. Also, I trust you will move slowly and exactly in this your first occult "work". Do this first work good, and successfully, and all your occult work should be a success as the principles given in here are basic. Also, I mention, in all my books, that there was an occult book, which you should get, read, and digest, and I trust you have done so by now. This book is THE SECRET SCIENCE BEHIND MIRACLES by Max Freedom Long. This book is a MUST. It contains much information of natural magick from the standpoint of primitive people who perceived nature in its natural state, as it were, and gave their 5

descriptions of it; and this description you can use consciously, and will use in the following basic work; and you can see this for yourself with a little study. To return to the lesson: As I said you are going to make a small Journey along a path, which is already familiar to you and connected already to you by "sticky threads” described in Mr. Long's book. What we are going to do is to reinforce these "threads". (Pay close attention to this process as to all other Magick works of all kinds and endure.) All work that is of the nature of learned, or mastered work, consists, in basic, of establishing and reinforcing these Astral material threads. I want to repeat here again that these Astral threads are closely connected with your imagination powers, so please note. I believe I will leave the actual forming of the Astral thread connections to the next lesson and fill out the remainder of this lesson with additional knowledge in connection with the Little System. After all I do not want to repeat just what was in the book, but it was my intention here to expand and elaborate upon the material given in the book. You can see these over and start planning how you are going to handle the coming projections, which you have probably done some work in my now already. To proceed, I am not a healer myself and I am not teaching or advocating any kind of a "spiritual healing" system in my books. Medical Science has now advanced so far that many doctors and research scientists in these lines have developed great powers of insight, almost clairvoyance itself; and are constantly coming up with new and startling adaptations of surgery. Here in the San Francisco newspapers just a few days ago it was announced that the physicians and surgeons at Stanford Medical Hospital, I believe, were ready to TRANSPLANT A HUMAN HEART!!!! (1967) You can aid these people, and all people, by setting up Astral Threads connecting then and your wishes for their success by thinking of them and devising other ways of making Astral Thread connections with them. The obverse is equally true but please use caution in setting up obverse currents or reverse threads as this kind of work is very tricky and has a slippery way of getting out of hand AND DOING MORE THAN YOU WANT TO DO which is the reason for all the screaming about Black Magick. Much basic mystery surrounds the phenomena of "MENTAL HEALING" by Christian Scientists, Unity, and others. Frankly, sometimes mental treatments "work" and sometimes they don't. I do not know all the reasons why these working and non-working phenomena happen but I suggest it has some connection with the Astrological Forces and their flux and reflux. Also, there is some subtle connection with and to the person involved; his attitude and feelings, even willpower, has some bearing on the matter. In the rest of my lessons, and in all my books, give some thought to this subject. Throw out questions in meditations and contemplations, as directed by the other books, as to the answers to these questions. This is the first lesson of a course on Astral Projection - so called. It is my intention to give to you in these lessons the latest and most accurate knowledge information that is available on this subject - stripped of all the commonly gossip type nonsense that is so prevalent in Occult Circles. In other words, to give you as much true Truth as is available in this tricky, non-material subject which is so full of inaccuracies as to be almost incomprehensible; an din this mixture we will strive for as much truth as we can grasp AND USE.

6

Therefore, we introduced in this first lesson, an entirely new concept of the outer Physical World and the Inner Non-Physical Planes. This concept will be developed as we proceed and as new angles develop. We will make links to other material in other books and to the end that you can become a power in this World if you master, and apply, this different concept Knowledge. ********************* END OF PAGE ******************** From the Director of Studies Questions 1. Ophiel says, "Occult knowledge is rather basic." How does this differ from what you have thought and heard before? Do you see the sense of it? 2. What does Ophiel say, in this lesson, the good of all occult knowledge and practice to be? Try to find examples of this in your life, or at least expand on how the idea can fit into your life. 3.

What is the basic took of all Magickal work? How do you think it works?

4. How do you think Mental Healing works? Describe with an example that you make up. Practices 1. Answer the above questions, and others you think of, in your notebook as mentioned in the lesson. Pick out a route for your first Etheric Projection. Write it down as a series of detailed steps in your notebook. Preferably, start with your bedroom step No. 1 so that you can do your projection work as you fall asleep in addition to the other times you will practice it. Starting with the sleeping area, pick out some naturally prominent place in your home, or apartment, or sleeping area, as Station No. 2. Then pick out a third, a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth station in a route that starts from your bed, goes to the furthest place in your dwelling, and then returns along the same route. Now, at least once every day, walk along this route and memorise the details of each of the stations you have selected. This is the first lesson of a course on Astral Projection - so called. It is my intention to give to you in these lessons the latest and most accurate knowledge information that is available on this subject - stripped of all the commonly gossip type nonsense that is so prevalent in Occult Circles. In other words, to give you as much true Truth as is available in this tricky, non-material subject which is so full of inaccuracies as to be almost incomprehensible; an din this mixture we will strive for as much truth as we can grasp AND USE. Therefore, we introduced in this first lesson, an entirely new concept of the outer Physical World and the Inner Non-Physical Planes. This concept will be developed as we proceed and as new angles develop. We will make links to other material in other books and to the end that you can become a power in this World if you master, and apply, this different concept Knowledge.

7

********************* END OF PAGE *********************

From The Director of Studies Questions 1.

Have you read Ophiel’s books on Astral Projection?

2.

Since you are taking this Course, we presume you are having difficulties in Projection. Please describe your experiences and difficulties in summary form.

3.

What does Ophiel mean when he says you cannot project on the Physical Plane?

4.

Why is Projection largely limited to the Lower Astral Plane and the Etheric Plane?

5.

Explain the importance of concentrating your initial occult development on the Etheric.

6.

What will you answer to someone who warns you about the "dangers" of Astral Projection?

Suggested Reading. Freedom Long, Max, “The Secret Science Behind Miracles.” ********************* END OF PAGE *********************

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Ophiel’s CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION First Course Copyright (C) 1970 by Edward C. Peach. All rights reserved. No part of this course of lessons, in part nor in whole, may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the holder of these rights, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address the above. Lesson Four ********************* END OF PAGE ********************* Dear Student, When you receive this lesson you will already have covered a quarter of the course. It is time for you to sit down and think: "Am I really doing the work called for in these lessons?” Go back and review your work so far, and decide if you are really studying, or only reading the lessons. Are you answering the questions at the end of each lesson, and writing them down in your diary or notebook? Are you doing the practices called for and are you making a note of them, and how successful are you in putting them in your diary/notebook? If you are not doing the work called for, ask yourself if you really want to study the Occult. If you are going to be an Occult Student, you have to decide to devote your life to it - Because that is really what the Occult is all about! - It is conscious and purposeful living and self-development. Everything you do must become more meaningful, and you must become aware of how much everything you do fits in your Occult Work. And everything does! The most mundane housework, the most menial job, the most boring work, all is a part of your Occult Work! Give them the attention that Occult Work deserves, and you will find your whole life suavely transformed. When you have a job - particularly when you work for someone else or for a corporation or for government, realise that your employer is not your enemy. Don't try to put the least effort you can into the job. Instead, make that job a part of you - and put your best effort into it. You will never be an Occultist until your learn to give your best effort to whatever you do - whether it is Occult study, housework, a job, making love, or just walking down the street enjoying the scenery. Put yourself into it! Live fully all the time. So you must put effort into your study, and you must be honest with your Self! Answer the question in the first paragraph of this letter truthfully; a good portion of Occult Development lies in developing this honest relationship between yourself and your activities. Put effort into everything you do, and you will find everything becomes meaningful - and not until then can you expect happiness. Sincerely, Director of Studies The Gnostic Institute. ********************* END OF LETTER *******************

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CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION By Ophiel Lesson Four I said, in this lesson, we would proceed with the description of the mechanical set up of the Little System, and so we will; but these lessons are to include more material than just the material as given in the ART AND PRACTICE OF ASTRAL PROJECTION book, as there wouldn't be much point in putting then out; and so, I believe, I will digress for a moment and clear up some Occult material that is rather unknown in general, but which you will actually use in your advanced work to come. That is, you did the same work already according to the book - now, after reading these lessons, you will have a more intense idea and grasp of details than before, I trust. So proceed with some "side" material. When I first started in the Occult there was much glib talk about the "third eye" etc. What the devil is the/a third eye? The third eye is an Occult concept. There is, actually, no real third eye, but there is an Inner Sight or Inner Seeing; and this Inner Seeing is connected with imagination, and this imagination/image-make-up is what you are going to use in your next work and, in fact, will use in all your future Occult Work-Operations, so it is very important that you should know and understand it fully. There have been whole books written about the "Third Eye," there was one about ten years ago. However, like so much "chatter" Occult I found, after I had bought it and read it eagerly, that it contained little knowledge of value about the Third Eye at all. This much I do remember without having to read it again. Now, actually, of course, there is no Third Eye consisting of an eyeball, nerves, etc. There is, it is true, a gland in the head which many Occultists and Teachers have equated to and with the Third Eye but that is as far as they go - they say it and then give no proof of any kind. Paul Foster Case, in one of this writings, did liken the Pineal Gland to the Third Eye, as I said, and he went further and claimed the physical body of the gland was full of material granules which he also claimed likened the gland to an old type wireless detector of the crystal type, etc. I will here write out the WEBSTER'S NEW COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY definition of the Pineal Gland - Pineal - designation, or pertaining to, an appendage of the brain, the Pineal body of Pineal Gland in crane-ate vertebrates and evidently a remnant of an important sense organ in ancestral forms. In some reptiles it has the structure of an eye and is called the, ‘Pineal Eye’ (!!!) We all have a Pineal Gland, a Third Eye, however, I don't find that imagemakeup development has any direct connection with the physical development of this gland so don't be led off this path. You have the basic image-making ability and the following lessons/work can and will develop it to probably all you will ever need. What I do want you to do is to keep this in mind, at all times, that when you are doing visualisation work, you are using the/your Third Eye. AND ALSO USING THE STICKY THREADS OF ELUSIVE ETHERICASTRAL MATTER HERETOFORE REFERRED TO.

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Now there is another subject that should be brought up here at this time as it seems so auspicious at this point and that is the subject of counterparts. These are all parts of Astral Projection so do not be dismayed at the introduction of new Knowledge as it is all of great value to your Start of Occult Knowledge. Everything exists on all planes at once, although not in the "form" - the same form - as it does on the Physical Plane. All these Inner Plane forms or the outer Physical Plane forms are called counterparts. I am only giving out this much knowledge at this point as counterparts is a big subject by itself and I may feel it necessary to return to it later on in this course. If not, I may try to do a whole series of lessons on the subject of counterparts themselves so important is it. So what you are going to do in the "Little System" is to establish a connection with a series of counterparts from the Physical Plane to the Ethereal Plane by means of the “sticky threads” of Astral Matter through the use of Spiritual imagination and Physical work looking. We will now treat with a few common things that really don't have to do with projecting but they keep popping up all the time so I have got to put them in somewhere and this seems as good a place as any. Strangely enough there seems to be people who question the ethics of projection. Well, I haven't the faintest idea what's the matter with them or what they are talking about. I had a discussion with Manley P. Hall some years ago, and I have been trying to see him at the times I do go, to Los Angeles on my trips, but I don't have much success in seeing him because I guess he, like me, is getting old and doesn't give out these interviews anymore. I really don't know any reason why you shouldn't do Occult Work of any kind. The work is open to everyone. It is all down in books. If you seek, you will find. I do know, and I hesitate even to say this, that it is possible to injure some people by means of this metaphysical work. I don't want anything to do with that and I advise you not to have anything to do with that. I don't think that any god is going to reach down and give you a slap, but there does seem to be some kind of definite reaction to it and I don't want to involve myself in anything like that and I, respectfully, suggest that none of you do it either. However, I will say something else, that as you progress in the study of the Occult, and as you progress in Occult training, and as you progress in Occult imagination training, and as you progress in the acquirement of basic Occult basics, it does seem that your thoughts become more powerful even when you are not actually willing them to be. I don't know exactly what the reason for this is but I suspect it's because your thoughts become more single or singular or more definite, and of course the more definite they become the more potent they become. I will also say that it is easier to influence single people. You can take that for what it is worth. The basic needs that we have in all our Occult work, whether it be Astral Projection or Creative Imagination, or what have you, is that we must learn to conquer the Physical Plane. And you can only conquer the Physical Plane by entering the plane above it and mastering that plane and then you work back down to master the Physical Plane. This appears to be an Occult Law, I have mentioned it before, and I may mention it again, but take it now for what it is worth. I may write a book sometime explaining this more fully but for now take it for what it is worth. There is another matter, which I should mention here in relation to the Etheric Plane, there is Ectoplasm there is Séance Phenomena, there is Telekinesis, there is Haunting, and there are Incubi and Succubae, and all sorts of other things.

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Well I myself do not do any of those things, however, all those things can be explained on the basis of what I have already told you about the sticky threads of Astral matter and the influencing one plane from the other plane. And it could be that in the future something along these lines may be developed scientifically. In fact, I have been in touch with a professor at the university of California at Davis, I have his letter here now and I haven't answered it, and he is doing some work on Astral Projection. Now, apparently they have found a natural projector. As I say, I haven't read the report; I have been too engrossed in other things. Now the thing to do next is to do some development along those lines. We will now resume the main thread of this lesson, which is the establishment of your "path" for your "Little System" projection work. You can also use the word "station" in place of path if it helps make the matter clearer to you. As I said previously, some of these lessons and more in the book, you are going to learn to follow a path, a familiar path, through your house and "back" again. You now know the Occult theory behind this path travel and in more detail than given before. You should now work with more accuracy and exactness. To start, go through your house and decide on the path you are going to use/follow. I suggest you start and finish in a bedroom. I also suggest you go to a spot as far as you can in your house. A path from a second floor to the basement would be good. I suggest you plan on five or six spots or stations along this route. Let us suppose, for example, you have selected a route like the following, - out of the bedroom, down the hall, to a stair, down the stair to where it makes a turn, then down to the bottom of the stairs, then across a hall to the kitchen, across the kitchen to the cellar door, down cellar steps to a special spot in the cellar; then turn around and reverse travel back up the same route to the bedroom and end there. Now I do realise that many students are not situated in a place like this and for this situation I'm afraid I have no good answer. You'll just have to improvise. If all you have is two rooms that is what you'll have to use, at least at first while you are learning. Also, I do not suggest that you put your path where it crosses somewhere outside where other people are passing by or using it. Even before you know you are doing it, you might become visible to them and scare the wits out of them, thinking they had seen a ghost!! I can tell you here how one student solved space difficulty. She had only a one-bedroom home. So she bought herself a dolls house!!! She pictured herself in the bedroom of the dolls house - that is starting there - set up a route the same as a "real" house (and it was a real house) and she developed accordingly very well. Later she acquired a "real" house but by that time she was well along in Astral Projection. I see I have covered some side issues here and the space allotted to this lesson is about filled. I will put over the actual formation of the connecting links with each station until the next lesson in order to give it the space attention it deserves. You can spend this time in a more careful consideration of your stations. You can make these stations as elaborate as you please. ********************* END OF PAGE *********************

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From the Director of Studies, Questions What is the Third Eye? Why do your thoughts become more powerful as you undertake real Occult Study and Work? How do you conquer the Physical Plane? Based on your knowledge from these lessons so far, write at least a page in your notebook giving your thoughts on Séance phenomena, including ectoplasm. Why was it possible for the girl mentioned in the lesson to use a dolls house for her projection route in place of a real house? This is a real think question, so give it all you have. Practices Try to become more aware of your dreams. Everyone dreams to some extent, but most of us have difficulty remembering dreams. Try to cultivate a dream memory. Continue your preliminary work on the proposed projection route. When you are physically checking out each station, close your eyes and visualise the details of the station, then open your eyes and see how well you have done. Try to get the "feel" of each station as you stand there - both when your eyes are open and when they are closed - and you are looking at the imagination counterpart of the station. If you can, but don't struggle to do it, see if you can incorporate any of the stations into your dreams. Take a different station each night and say to yourself that you are going to dream about going there. Recommended Reading Ophiel: "The Art and Practice of Clairvoyance". Here is a great deal of background information that will increase in value as you work with the Inner Planes. ********************* END OF PAGE *********************

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Ophiel’s CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION First Course Copyright (C) 1970 by Edward C. Peach. All rights reserved. No part of this course of lessons, in part nor in whole, may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the holder of these rights, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address the above. Lesson Five ********************* END OF PAGE *********************

Dear Student In this lesson we have introduced still more detail into your exercises, but you can be rest assured that you have not reached the maximum we ask of you. Now, if you haven't already realised the value of doing so, you had better make up your schedule for your Occult Work. In the morning you are going to jot down your dreams; sometimes around noon or at a coffee-break time, you should do the imagining trip along your proposed projection route; when you come home in the evening you should go over this route physically and make note of your accuracy of memory; at bedtime you should go over the route again in your imagination as you fall asleep. Sometimes that is really most suitable for you - before bedtime, after dinner, at lunchtime, or whatever - set aside as study time. Work on your lesson, your occult reading, and writing in your notebook, etc., at this time everyday. Your diligence will be rewarded by success! Sincerely, Director of Studies The Gnostic Institute.

********************* END OF LETTER *********************

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CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION By Ophiel Lesson Five In this lesson we will start our actual work, which should lead to the successful operation of the Little System projections. Better read over the preceding lesson each time to refresh the connection between each of these lessons. You know you are going to set up five or six "stations" along a "route" and travel this route by means of the stations, moving from one to the other, in this Little System. In each of these Correspondence Lessons, I will repeat some of the instructions as given in my book, but I aim to add more details, at one point or another, which, of course, is the objects of these lessons. You are told, in the book, to establish connections with each of these stations by getting down in front of the station, and looking, studying the station until the time comes when you can shut your eyes anytime and bring "back" any and all details of the station to your memory recall. You should be beginning, by now, to realise, somewhat, what you are doing, but I will repeat - by the above described actions you are reinforcing the/a link between planes, between the Physical Plane and the Etheric Plane by means of the "sticky" threads of Astral Matter. We will digress here for a moment and go into a little Occult Knowledge background. Of which, again you cannot have too much of. To the best of my/our knowledge, of the moment, we "beings" are here" and we come from "there" which is "somewhere" else, elsewhere. What we are doing here, whether we came here of our own basic free will, or were forced, I have no real idea. As to where we are going after this "vale of tears" I again have no idea, but it does seem to be "up" or inner. Now as to whether we have to "repeat" this Physical Incarnation again I don't know, (and neither does anyone else.) ALL I DO KNOW, AND I PASS IT ON TO YOU, IS THAT YOU CAN TURN AND RE-ENTER THE INNER PLANES, WHILE YOU ARE STILL LIVING HERE, AND MAKE SOME EXPLORATIONS UNDER YOUR OWN POWER AND DIRECTION, AND THAT IS A LOT. A LOT OF ACHIEVEMENT, IT CERTAINLY GIVES YOU A GLIMPSE INTO THE INNER PLANES, OPENS A WINDOW AS IT WERE. Another close idea to the above is - we are "here" possibly to conquer and master Matter by – first understanding it - you can do nothing until you understand it or what you are doing, and to know something or do something you have to be "alone." As you want to control Physical Matter and its attendant Physical Circumstances, you will have to work from the Plane above the Plane you are trying to control - each Plane is the Plane of Causes to the Plane below it which id the Plane of Effects to the one above it. Even in the most common case of simple prayers, the prayer that "works" is probably the prayer that is most deeply from "inward" to "outward." So, therefore, I hope you now see what your motives should be for studying and practising, and mastering Astral Projection. It is your gateway to knowledge of profound mysteries not given to the ordinary person. I trust you see the difference in the above between "fighting " matter by trying to test it on its own Plane or by sneaking up on it from the Plane above from which Plane it is helpless when "attacked" properly. I repeat, Physical Matter is all-powerful on its own Plane and trying to meet it there, head on, is sheerest folly. You can readily understand this when you stop and reflect that most of the accomplished work in this Physical Plane is done by planning - thinking which is of the essence of the Inner Planes. 2

So now do you see what is the real deep reason for your desire to learn how to project, actually your subconscious desires this, even unknown to you? We will return now to the Little System for a time, I found that the more careful the planning that went into the creation of the stations was the more successful the projecting operations were afterwards. In my own work operations, I had access to a number of art objects that were of profound inspiration to me and this helped in making the working connections, which followed. I used a vase or a picture, or something like that as the centre motif for each station and built each of them up carefully. As said in the book, you can add other things to the stations, anything that will aid you in making the/a connection. I added some perfumes at one or two places, but you use what appeals to you and works for you. The secret of the whole thing, the basic projection of the Little System, is in good concentrated preparation, and, in fact, the success formula for all Occult work is in basic preparation. If you will read over almost all descriptions of Magical Operations, you will find that preparation takes up the most space and the actual working takes up very little space. While you are working on making these preparations, you are also working on the basic forces even without concentration. So let us assume that the basics are done and you have prepared your "chain" of stations and they are satisfactory - you then start your memory attachment work as directed in the book, which I will repeat here as it is not necessary to add anything more to this now. The question has some up several times about seeing on the Inner Planes. Some information about the Third Eye was given. We will go into this a little more now. As to "seeing" in and on the Inner Planes, the Inner Planes are full of light. In fact, the Inner Planes consist of Light almost inclusively and it can be considered that the Outer Physical Planes consist of "frozen light" in a sense. In your Occult Development Work, it can be considered that you are making progress when you begin to "see" Light "inside your head". This is one of the earliest evidences of progress as aforesaid. Therefore, give some attention to this idea of Light. In the Little System work, you "see" the counterpart station objects by the Inner Light or Astral Light, as it is called. To those of you who are interested in a bit of science - this inner viewing is not actually bifocal, or two overlapping round fields of vision, as is possible with physical sight because of our two eyes, yet as well as I can recall there is a depth to the vision and a perspective, and this I am unable to account for. Try your experiment and see what you come up with. To sum this idea up - the whole of the Inner Planes are filled with Light, which is the only way I know to say it simply. There is more to this Light-than just that, Light. I can say, with fair certainty, that the Light becomes like a liquid and flows the farther "down" or "inner" you go (come.) This Light is treated a little more fully, and in a different way in my third book, “THE ART AND PRACTICE OF THE OCCULT.” Also, I may give out some more in this course as it comes to a place in these lessons. The object of the Little System is to prepare you for the sensations and movements you will meet, which are, of course, entirely different from Physical Plane movements. The Astral Light is also called the Ether and also called the Reflecting Ether, which means that it is supposed to record every event here on Earth and then "give it back" in the form of a reflection. Which, of course sounds backward. The correct name should be the, ‘Recording Ether’ and then Reproducing a, "play-back" Ether. Handling the recording – playback - Ether-fluid material is an operation that belongs to a higher type of occult Work but I am introducing it to you now at this point. Pay some attention to what I have said and study it your self with my words always in mind. In addition to the above material I am now going to add some more of the sideline material. I am going to go a little bit off the subject now but I hope you will bear with me as 3

it is some kind of information that you should have though it doesn't have quite to do with this Astral Projection but please attend Dear Student. Students, every now and then some nut around the country jumps up and starts screaming that God is talking to him personally and telling him that all kinds of things are going to happen. Here in California we have had quite a few of those nuts here, and I have even got one in my own household, and they have this talk about earthquakes. God has told them that we are going to have an earthquake as if God takes anybody into his confidence, or as if he goes around causing earthquakes. Now I beg of you, use your heads and don't get carried away by this sort of stuff, will you? We had a case here just a month ago where somebody moved from near Santa Barbara, California back to Murfreeboro, Tennessee because God told him that there was going to be an earthquake in California. As a matter of fact he was back there in Murfreeboro about six weeks and one of the biggest earthquakes of all hit the Midwest. So you can judge about what kind of a God is giving him information. As I said this is a little out of place in this course but I am going to have to put it in my books and this is the first time I have had a chance to say something about it but you should really be on the alert about these things. Also, please look out for people that are talking about healings and all kinds of stuff like that, and herbs, and more prophecies, and all sorts of wild and incoherent stuff. The object of any Occult Teacher, or any God directed teacher should be to teach you to develop your own powers, as I have said a million times before, and that, believe me, is the only damn thing that should be of any interest to any Occult Student in the world. So, for Heaven's sake, strengthen yourself and don't get carded away by talks of prophets and masters and this and that. Remember you are the only important thing there is, and if the whole message is not toward you developing yourself then throw it in the trash can, or don't do it, just as you please, but I strongly advise you to do it. Now I believe I will give you a little more information about the Etheric Plane here and its importance. As you know, the Etheric Plane is the plane next to us and the plane that we are most closely associated with. This, of course, is the plane that you are going to use the Little System on and as you use the Little System and progress in it why you may find yourself someday suddenly becoming awake, right in the middle of one of your trips and you will be in your Etheric Body-consciousness. And you are going to be surprised and pleased, but the object of this whole Little System is to train you to get used to the funny feeling that you are going to have when you enter an Inner Plane and realise it for the first time. This is the object of the Little System. I met a man the other day, and as a matter of fact he's one of the playwrights of the musical production called HAIR. I admit I don't care much for the name but it's got something to do with the modem way of living and maybe I'm a little out of touch with it. He had read the book THE ART AND PRACTICE OF ASTRAL PROJECTION and even makes some references to it in his play, but when I met him I asked him if he had tried any of the things, any of the systems, and he said he hadn't because he was afraid. I was a little surprised but I let it go at the time. I expect to see him again and maybe I'll be able to give him a little personal training. They are supposed to be here in San Francisco sometime this year and I saw him in 1969. There's nothing dangerous about the Little System. It was designed to be absolutely safe and in addition to that, there just aren't any real aggressive energies of any kind on the Little System so you won't even be bothered by those. Actually the worst thing that can happen is that for you to become visible to somebody else when you are making one of your journeys and they will think that are seeing a ghost and they will start screaming bloody murder. So again I say that is about the worse that can happen but of course if that happens you know you are making some progress. 4

The Etheric Plane, of course, is very important in all magickal work. It is, of course, the door to the other planes. You have to pass through the Etheric Plane to get to the other planes. But there is a great deal of Magickal Work that is done on this plane. This Etheric Plane, and you should be beginning to understand some of that by now. I certainly don't want to be responsible for teaching you a lot of magick stuff that you might use for "wrong" purposes, then again, of course, when you acquire knowledge, which you could have done not even from my lessons; all this stuff is in other books and libraries, you could have guessed at it, anybody that wants it bad enough can find it, always could find it. You might start using this stuff adversely, that's really none of my business. Any more than a man who sells you an automobile and you take the automobile and run somebody down with it. The salesman is not responsible for that. There's always been some kind of "teachers" in the Occult that have said, I can't teach you this or that because you might misuse it. I have strongly suspected that it was because they never knew anything themselves, good or bad, worth teaching. I wouldn't be "surprised” that it was the case with much of this talk. I read all kinds of books and I am continually amazed at the things that people do or have done. There is a book called MRS. EDDY by a man called Dakan and right in the middle of the book he tells about a Christian Science woman that went to New York. I don't know the exact date; you'll have to check it up yourself; way back around 1900. She went there penniless and in only a few years, eight or nine years later she built a church, a two million dollar church, somewhere near Central Park, that was all paid for even before it opened its doors. Now that was Magick! That was done by magick, only thing is the Christian Scientists called it "demonstrating supply." It was done through magick and it was done through the Etheric Plane Magick. But, also in there, is another story, a rather terrifying story about what she and her circle did to some people who disagreed with her. I'm not even going to tell you about it. I have already told you too much now but anybody can read it for them selves and work it out. Now, finally remember that Occult Work presupposes purpose and meaning to the Universe and to life. That means, too, that there is meaning and purpose to your Life. You are here on this earth at this time for a reason that can only be known by living your life fully and well always with honesty to your Inner self You are here to study, to work, to love, to suffer even (although your acceptance of your obligations to life will mitigate this suffering). The World is not evil; life is not ugly; there is no - "divil" - there is only your relationship to the Universe, to life, and your Inner Self. Sincerely, Director of Studies The Gnostic Institute. ********************* END OF PAGE *********************

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Ophiel's CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION First Course Copyright (C) 1970 by Edward C. Peach All rights reserved. No part of this course of lessons, in part nor in whole, may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the holder of these rights, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address the above

********************* END OF PAGE ********************* CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION By Ophiel Lesson Six

Dear Students As your studies progress, you should realise more and more that your Occult Work permeates your entire life. It must, however, also be just as clear to you that you cannot just abandon all ordinary activities in honour of all Occult Studies and Work. There are many reasons for this, even if you are rich and don't have to work for a living, or can manage to live on so very little that you don't need a regular job. The first reason is that of balance: life involves growth in many directions, and your life is an opportunity for Your Inner Self to experience many things. Very many people who enter the Occult give up their ordinary life, and soon become mentally unbalanced, or as the British used to say "queer", without any homosexual connotation. It is not the fault of the occult Work, but of the unbalance, the neglect of the other aspects of living. The second reason is one we have mentioned earlier - the Occult - is a way of living and underlying way of looking at life and the universe. It is part of your Occult Work to make everything you do become part of your self-development - to do everything you do with awareness of an inner purpose and meaning in terms of your Occult Work and Studies. When you do your daily, Work ‘f o r a living,’ well you are demonstrating disciplines that is essential to Occult Progress, and you are becoming more honest when you do well what you have contracted to do when you took a job. The third reason is a metaphysical one that most Occult Teachers overlook, particularly those with Eastern backgrounds. Work is divine! I'm doing work in the material world, you are actually engaging in part of an evolutionary process of the transformation of Nature. Whatever you do consciously and deliberately alters, the material you are working with and the atmosphere within which you work. It adds a dimension of consciousness that was not present before.

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You should have, by now, selected and built up your route; and also embarked upon the work of "connecting" yourself to the route by means of the memory threads of Astral Matter. Just how much work you must do on making connections is really up to you and your personal abilities. I, myself; am not a "natural" of any kind - I have to learn everything and, many times, the hard way; but I hope you will do better than I did/do. The method outlined in these lessons is a true Occult method, the key of which was revealed to me because I followed some hints I noticed in Occult Writings. These methods do work and they will work for you. Some of you may have to do them, practice them more than others; in my mind, that is good as your results are more permanent and more secure lasting that way, than through flash-in-the-pan sensitivity - so don't be discouraged if you don't get an immediate terrific result - never react like that to anything. Practice the directions and some results are bound to follow. Results that will please you, You! are started in the right way. I think that I had better mention here on my own experiences to give you some additional ideas as to what to expect to experience. When I first experimented along these lines, I noted a curious phenomenon, which may or may not become noticeable to you also. In the matter of the following directions to be given you are to start your "route" (I always started from the bed) in the Etheric body I mean, I found that after first starting the route operation work and watching the route pass along as I progressed, I found that, I, ANOTHER I, WAS ALSO OFF THE SIDE WATCHING THE WATCHING!!!! I was never able to understand this double, dual, watching very much nor was I ever able to get any definite information about it I mention it here because if you notice it, I mean for you to study it as best you can, and give me some kind of report on it. When it happened to me I returned to the "first watcher" and ignored the double/dualness but later, upon its repetition, began to study it with surprising ideas developing. I arrived at the rather unexpected conclusion that another name for these phenomena of projection could be called, in a word, "Dualness," a sense of being double. This is your first introduction to this idea and may not be the last. But in your first work you can follow the main ideas but note these side issues if they come up; for later study work by you. We can now resume the main idea of these lessons. I am not sure just from where you might want to start your "Little System" Projection work. As I said, I always started from a relaxed position on the/a bed, and at all times of the day or night. Many people want to work only at night or found that they worked best at night, but I found no great differences daytimes present some distractions, people coming and going etc., but that is all. In proceeding to "work" your "Little System" you should run a gamut of "feelings" of one, duality, already mentioned - others of watching your self-moving about. This you should become quite conscious of after watching your dual/double, you make the route journey many times, you should have a very strong picture recall of the route and a clear picture of your "you" on the route. Your next step is to concentrate on stopping and watching and unite yourself with your other "you". See the route stations, through the eyes of the other "you" make yourself one with your projected you. You will do more of this kind of work later on, but master this phase of it for now. Keep up the exercises and you must attain a degree of success. One day you will open another kind of eye, an, ‘Inner Eye,’ and that will be it. There are many other applications of this type of "Little System" work - in fact, there is just no end to it- you can count endless other applications which will help you through life living in many ways. For example, it is possible, by an extension of these same principles, to travel over and across a city or town by building up stations and then fixing them, by viewing image-making, as aforesaid, and then travelling across the city by going from one to another by recall images of the stations. Another extension of this same idea is to "plant" a small object station in a place, house, or wherever you should want to be present or visit for some reason and you should be able to go there at will. Now be careful. Don't go wild invading private places.

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I am giving you an old Occult Secret here, with more to come from now on in these lessons; and I expect you to see these secrets with enlightenment and care. I am not going to give you any further details, you'll have to work those out for yourself and if you cannot do it, you will have to study more and deeper. Do you know, and remember, that these harmless little "secrets" can be very powerful if used correctly; but I won't ‘give’ you full directions - that you must work out for yourself from the few hints I do give you. Thus, as I said, if you have a place you want to visit frequently, you leave there an object which you have rooted in your imagination and when you want to visit the place, you picture your object and you are there. This should grow in proficiency and you could achieve a high degree of transference, even so that others can see you there. This point appears to be as good a point as any to speak of Time Travel. We cannot, here, go into all the theories about Time Traveller mention all the books about this subject, which, I am sorry to say I have never got very much out of them. We will deal here with the Time Travel you can know and handle here and now, and this is the way you go about doing it. After you have attained some practice in travelling across a town to a city, you should be beginning to realise that the town or city you are "using" is not the/a real town or city BUT ITS ETHERIC COUNTERPART (I'd better repeat this). EACH TOWN OR CITY HAS A DUPLICATE ON THE OTHER SIDE. (It can be said that this duplicate is the real city or town and the real city or town is not really real.) (See my other books.) You, therefore, "travel" to the reflecting Etheric Plane, travel this plane, in your imagination, and when you reach the designated "spot" in your memory "above" where you placed the station object - you then pause, and will yourself to "descend" to the "read" station object "below." Then the rest follows as said before. Many people and many schools of thought have tried to influence matter directly and what they are doing was to attempt to influence the matter's counterpart, which can be done easily - you can more the counterparts around like anything, but this does not influence the material object (except under extreme long range conditions and this not too successfully or accurately.) So, therefore, you must remember in this preliminary mental projection work that you are dealing with Etheric counterparts, which exist on the Etheric Plane and it is through these counterparts that you operate in the Physical Plane below. I am adding all this additional material about the possibilities of influencing "matter through Mind" to show you that ordinary projection work and, indeed, all Occult operations have more to them that is first suspected, and this is especially true of Occult practices which deal with The Planes. All physical Life existence made up of the interactions between the different Planes and when you have mastered a degree of this work along with sound understanding of what you are doing, you are well along the Path and don't let anyone tell you different. So I repeat again - your "Little System" practices contain the seeds of great possibilities because they are correct in Occult Principles, and these principles pertain to all Occult Work of any degree. So keep these ideas in mind as you do and perfect yourself in your "Little System" work. Keep up the "Little System" until you achieve a high degree of proficiency in performing the operation. You will find quite accurate directions in my book, THE ART AND PRACTICE OF ASTRAL PROJECTION, which is to be studied along with these lessons. I do not intend to cover exactly the same ground as in the book but to give additional information and directions for your benefit. This is the main object for these lessons.

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From the Director of Studies.

Questions 1. Why should you not be discouraged if the results of your Occult Work are slow in coming? Write at least a page in your notebook on this - and really think! 2. Write at least a page in your notebook summing up your experiences and observations from your preliminary projection exercises so far. What have you noticed besides dualness that Ophiel mentions in these lessons? 3.

Why would the "planting" of an object/station in some distant location help you project to the location? Write a long answer to this question and see if you can fill in the details of the method that Ophiel omits in this lesson.

4.

What is an "etheric counterpart?" How does it relate to magick? Describe a simple experiment in Psycho kinesis (the ability to move small physical objects by nonphysical means) that you can undertake now that you know about etheric counterparts.

5.

Why is this "Little System" so valuable for all your future Occult Work? Write at least a page in your notebook of your thoughts now, and return to this page every couple of weeks and see if you can add to it.

Practices. Continue your dream diary - but try to concentrate even more in describing the scenes of your dream. Try to actually stop in your dreams so that you can observe the details of a room, or outdoors scenes, etc. Continue your work with the projection route. Many of you will have already experienced true etheric projection. When you realise that you are actually there and not merely remembering the details of each station. The secret is, as Ophiel describes in the lesson, to so concentrate on the details of your imagination trip that you ‘wake-up!’ in your etheric counterpart, i.e., your etheric body. Try to feel your etheric body inside your physical body when you go to bed and before you start the night projection practice. Lie on your back and realise that you have an etheric counterpart Coinciding with your physical body. Remember that the etheric material is more "fluid" that physical material and feel your etheric counterpart moving/flowing (sort of with a tide-like motion) in your physical body as you breathe. Always relax. Relax the physical body, and breathe evenly and comfortable after you go to bed, and before you do any projection or Occult Work. Learn to relax the physical body and use it as a vehicle. Feel that you are the driver of this physical body/vehicle, and keep it in good shape as you would an automobile that cost you a million US. Dollars. When you are in bed, realise that you are putting your physical body/vehicle in the garage, so to speak for the night, and let it relax while you go about your nightly affairs. When your physical body is relaxed, you will readily feel your etheric body flowing within, and you will soon realise that your consciousness can identify with this etheric body and forget the physical. Now, when you feel this, start your projection route. And memorising the details of the half-dozen stations, or stops, you have designated.

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Now I want you to add something new to each of these stations, something different for each one, but preferably something simple with outstanding characteristics. For example, colour a piece of cardboard with a bright design or symbol, and put it at one station. Do a different symbol in another colour for the next one. Put a small piece of cloth saturated with a distinctive perfume at another, and so on. The more personal these things are, the better - that is, they will function better if you make them, or if they are something you have worn or owned for a long time. Now, when you go over your route, let these objects dominate your awareness at each station, let them seem to draw you from one station to the next. See the colours of the symbols vividly; smell that perfume; note with fondness the object you have owned so long. Keep up this exercise of physically travelling the route every day, but also do it at least once each day in your imagination and check your memory against the actual physical reality. Go back and see if you missed anything, assume yourself that you did remember this or that. Do this imaginary trip again and again after you have gone to bed, before falling asleep.

3. Start a Dream Diary. Note down the details of your dreams first thing in the morning. Some people, in fact most people find it difficult to remember their dreams, and even may believe that they do not dream. Don't believe it! You do dream, every night! Determine, when you go to bed, that you will remember your dreams when you awaken. Sometimes it helps to write the dream down in notes, first, backwards from the last thing in the dream. Try to break your dream up into sections, or acts as in a play. Try, in particular, to note the physical details of the scene of action in your dreams, and write them down in detail. For example, if your dream takes place in a room, then note the wallpaper design, the colour of the furniture, and kind of carpets, whether there are curtains on the windows. etc. If you are artistic, you might even make a sketch of the scene as seen in the dream

Recommended Reading Ophiel: "THE ART AND PRACTICE OF THE OCCULT." Here is a basic text of the nature of the Occult. ********************* END OF PAGE *********************

5

CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION

First Course Copyright (C) 1970 by Edward C. Peach All rights reserved. No part of this course of lessons, in part nor in whole, may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the holder of these rights, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address the above ********************* END OF PAGE ********************* Dear Student, With the receipt of this lesson you have now completed half the entire course. Actually, if you have done the Work called for you will have completed 90% of the Course Work. It is always the foundation practices and studies of any course that is the most important, and that determine your real success or failure. If you do not feel that you are making progress at this point, then the fault can be none other than your failure to carry out the preliminary work called for. Go back and work out a new schedule that will include all the preliminary practices, and continue them, and continue your Dream Diary, until success is yours. You can still go on with the course, but be sure to continue these preliminary practices. Many students fail because they are interested only in what seems exciting and easy. Give them the nittygritty of Occult Work, and they lack the discipline and drive to follow through. Are you one of those who expected that Magick was easy? It isn't, but it is worth every ounce, every pound and every ton, of effort you put into it.

Sincerely, Director of Studies The Gnostic Institute.

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CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION

By Ophiel Lesson Seven We will now leave the section dealing with the "Little System" and proceed to the next logical step/development, as given in the textbook, titled, ‘THE ART AND PRACTICE OF ASTRAL PROJECTION,’ the kind/type of Astral Projection called, and known, as The -Dream Method (of Astral Projection.) This Dream Method, to my knowledge, first appeared in a book written by and Occultist author named Mr. Oliver Fox, in, or about, the early 1920's. I said, in my first book, that, apparently, this book was a one-edition affair and was never reprinted; but in saying that I was wrong and mistaken as, since then. (1961) The book has been reprinted. I am again today (1968) not sure of its present status so I won't say anything except to say contact the Gnostic Institute, and if it is in print, they will probably have it in stock. If it is in print, you should have it in your library for study and reference. Also, you can try the second-hand book market and see what comes up. In this book, called Astral Projection. Mr. Fox teachers a distinct system of a type of (Astral) Projection, which he named the Dream Method of (Astral) Projection. I want to digress here for a few lines and discuss some of these names, projections. In other places in your textbook, and in other books, I continually speak about the "Planes" and the differences between them. Generally speaking form "projections" are made to the lower planes only, not to the "higher" planes because on the "higher" planes no forms can, and do, "exist". On those "higher" planes all forms "fade" out and become only emotions or even "exist" in a dreamlike idea state/stage, and, I repeat no "forms." Keep this in mind. So now even though Mr. Fox speaks of Astral Projection, and so does Mr. Muldoon, they are really talking about "Etheric" and lower Astral Plane Projections and not much else higher. Ponder on this. Mr. Fox's system is a very good system and is easily followed and used I am very much indebted to Mr. Fox's work as his system was the first that I found that was halfway useable. In fact it appears, on second thought, to have been the first do-it-yourself-system ever given out to the Occult Public. I gained much through this Dream Method system and you should too. It was through this basic system's work that I was enabled to discover many other basic things, which I pass on to you, including the "Little System." THE BASIC IDEA OF MR. FOX'S SYSTEM IS THAT YOU LEARN TO "WAKE UP" IN THE MIDDLE OF A DREAM AND, BY ASSUMING CONTROL OF THE DREAM, DEVELOP A KIND OF PROJECTION. The only drawback and confusion to this system is the big question mark about dreams, Dreams, what are they??? We will not get bogged down into this Dream Morass. No two psychologists or schools in the world apparently agree upon the exact shades of meanings about dreams. And this is true because there are all kinds of dreams and all kinds of dreamers, and many different kinds of dreams mean many different kinds of Things. So we will discard all of that and deal with only simple dreams, per se. So to proceed: I said in the textbook, on page 38, that IT SEEMS TO BE TRUE THAT THERE IS ANOTHER LIFE "OVER THERE" THAT YOU "LIVE" WHEN YOU SLEEP "HERE". There is an Occultist by the name of Neville Goddard who has mentioned this idea some few times in his lectures. He even calls the "other side" place Woodland. No! Wait a minute: here is Woodland! I forget now what he calls the "other Place". I mention this because he is the only Occultist

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who has advanced this kind of idea that I am aware of. I have tried to interview him to expand this idea but he has turned distant in the last few years, and I couldn't get through. However, it is better that you test these things for yourself and never depend on the idea of some expert, or some Master helping you, as there are no Masters who will help. When this "other side" idea popped up, I thought, at first, the "life" "over there" was automatic or, rather, I didn't know what to think. Now I have come around to the idea that you have to, and can, build a life over there - another life, to complement/supplement this life. On each of the inner planes on "up" a ways, you have a sort of organised "body" to which you can transfer your centre of consciousness, (as I said elsewhere in my textbook.) (Also remember I said all bodies and forms pass out away "on up.") I note that in much of the material given so far, and in much of the material to come, there will be a noticeable amount of overlapping, and a great many different applications of Astral-Etheric projections will become manifest and obvious; and this is as it should be and is what your Occult Training consists of. I can see now, after the passage of some years since I first wrote the book, that the key to a vast section of the Occult lies in the learned/developed ability to enter the Inner Planes and operate there or, in other words, in first developing personal Astral Projection, you begin to acquire "Occult Powers." I said, also on page 38, that it appears that a great many things can be done "over there" that can greatly effect "here". This, of course, is now more obvious to me than ever, and I marvel that I didn't see it before. I suggest that you ponder on this until you absorb its full and complete meaning. I suggest, also, that the Creative Visualisations work given in my second book is also a definite type of projection work. In your Creative Visualisation work you undoubtedly project your consciousness to the Plane of the Reflecting Ether and operate there. And, also, imagination is some kind of a projection, too. Please consider this point, too. This is about the limit I can state for reasonable sureness at this point/time. It seems clear though that before you can enter into and develop the desirable possibilities of this "second" inner life, you should learn, and practice, all the basic work such as is given in this textbook, and the material as given in my other books, those written and look for those to come (I hope). Also some various little essays on certain definite Occult subjects have been written and are available and you should look for them and get them and study and practice them, and make them a part of your life processes. There is a matter that is important to you as a presumably developing student that I had better insert here at this point. I mentioned the matter in the textbook, but I think I will go over it again and re-emphasise the whole thing. To the best of my recollection, Mr. Fox did not mention this subject very emphatically; but recently several student persons have mentioned this subject to me again so I will go into it here and now. I said in the textbook, page 45, "As you make your FIRST ENTRANCE into these Inner Planes --- a lot of very funny things happen, the reasons for which I will explain later." (I never did explain "later" there, as it was a little advanced.) During the dream just enough to KNOW that you are dreaming! For example, I just woke from a nap in which I had a vivid dream, which I now remember as a mish-mash. I had made no attempt to awake during this dream! Mr. Fox calls the part awakening/arousal the critical facility, and he meant by this, in detail, that you are awake enough, just enough, to seize upon some appearance, some circumstance, in the dream picture and by analysing that circumstance, come to KNOW that you are dreaming! Of course, if you arouse too much, you awake; if you arouse too little, you drop back to sleep, deep sleep, and this is where the crux of the whole matter lies. In the textbook I gave the dream example of light green horses pulling a little auto down a street. Now you know this sight would bring you to a dead halt if you saw it in a real street. In a "dream street" you "look" at it with indifference just as if it were real.

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The actual development of your critical dream facility comes in an old fashioned enough way, just wanting to develop it. I found that thinking repeatedly during the daytime for several successive days in succession could bring on a dream session during the night that would be satisfactory in all ways - one in which you would have a good dream in which you would arouse enough to say, Hey! I’m dreaming, so let's go!" And then follow the textbook's instructions - I cannot give them better here. Please read the textbook part carefully on pages 47-48. As far as I can find, this section is an original with me, no one else mentions it except possibly Yram in slight - detail. The simple truth seems to be that once you are on the/an Inner Plane, you progress along on up. Hence, the noted changes are, "walking". Etheric walking is easy - Astral walking is non-existent; you think-glide. The chapter on the Dream Method is jam-packed with profound Occult Knowledge, and many sidelines are covered Study it hard.

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From the Director of Studies.

Questions 1. Why do you think that the ability to Astral Projection leads to the development of other Occult Powers? 2. What is the meaning of the various loud noises, voices, visions, and peculiar feelings that you may experience on first entering the Inner Planes? 3. What is the important faculty you must develop to make the Dream Projection method work well? 4. What would be an obvious difference between and experience of etheric projection on a higher astral or mental projection? 5.

What do you think about the idea of a life "over there?' Practices

1. The Etheric Projection work, and the preliminary Dream Work, including your dream diary, is really all that you need to prepare for the Dream Method of Projection. The Etheric Projection preparation will have cultivated your faculty of observing the memory, and the examination of dream scenery should have awakened your critical faculty and should automatically result in your being able to take control of your dream. You have already started the practice of attempting to dream about the Etheric Projections stations, and to fall asleep while practising the Etheric Projection route. The next

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step is obvious - determine to dream that you are projecting to some place specific, some place you know well, and especially some place you do visit in the physical body often enough to verify any unusual details you note down in your dream/astral trip. One day (night) you will realise that you have taken conscious control over your dreams and cam make your day and night life one continuous stream of Occult activity. Recommended Reading 1. Fox, Oliver: "ASTRAL PROJECTION". The classic book on Astral Projection, and especially in the Dream Method. The author also covers a conscious system involving the "Pineal Door".

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Ophiel's CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION First Course

Copyright (C) 1970 by Edward C. Peach All rights reserved. No part of this course of lessons, in part nor in whole, may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the holder of these rights, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address the above

Lesson Eight

********************* END OF PAGE ****************** Dear Student Up to this point I have guided you through these lessons step-by-step. We have taken a great deal of time and effort over preliminary foundation work. Now the pace increases, but I no longer give you the step-by-step guidance. I will point out what must be done, but you will have to lay out the details yourself. You should see now how you must study and practice, and you should know how to pace your self! These practices are to be continued until you are a master of Astral Projection! Let me tell you something about the "Master" that you have heard about. The truth is that if you ever meet such an advanced person, you won't know about it. The only real Master there is and will ever be in your life is your own Inner Self You probably don't yet know this Inner Self, but you will - if you continue your Occult Work. That is your real goal - to yourself become a Master, and that means a "master of your own life." Sincerely, Director of Studies The Gnostic Institute. ********************* END OF LETTER *******************

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CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION

By Ophiel Lesson Eight Now we come to the section in the textbook called The Body of Light Method of Astral Projection. As you know, the textbook is divided into four sections, roughly, the "Little System" the Dream Method, The Body of Light Method (this one), and the Symbol Method (to come.) Later on after you have examined all these methods thoroughly, you will find that, putting the Dream Method first, each of these systems increases the positive-ness from one to four. The Dream Method, certainly being the most positive or non-passive: This arrangement is as all Occult is supposed to be increasing in complexity as you go on up "higher" in the "Planes." I call your attention to this arrangement again; and I beg you to so regulate both your daily life and your occult life through the material in my books. Attempt to take hold of your life and regulate them to your benefit. Do not, for example, go to "Fortune Tellers" to find out what your Fortune is to be; but find out, from my books. HOW TO MAKE YOUR FORTUNE THE WAY YOU DESIRE IT TO BE; and so go and DO IT. (Refer to my forthcoming book THE ORACLE OF FORTUNA, which answers questions about the future but doesn't tell Fortunes.) So now return to the Body of Light Method. This method is again, very well covered and described in the textbook. So I will not repeat here the exact directions; but I shall try here, in these lessons to fill in more additional advanced ideas and directions. Also, I introduced in the textbook, the Occult operation known as the Ritual of the Cabalistic Cross (for want of a better name). I introduced several expanded versions of this Ritual. You will find the latest expanded version in my books called THE ART AND PRACTICE OF THE OCCULT, which you should by all means read and absorb, as it contains some real occult dynamite. Dion Fortune and Israel Regardie gave some few words about this Ritual in their books but not as elaborate or expanded as I give. Whether they know of this expanded version but could not give it out because they received it under oaths of secrecy, I'm not sure. But anyhow you have it in all its power and as I receive more, so shall you. I put the Ritual in the Body of Light Method section so you could use it as a vehicle for the working of this method for which it is perfectly suited. Most of the work on the Body of Light Method consists of labour - not hard but time consuming and necessary persistence. You must create your Inner Plane body your self; no one can do it for you. But when you get it created, you'll have a powerful instrument to help you through this life. You will recall I said, in another previous lesson that everything on the Physical Plane had a counterpart on the Inner Planes; and I said that the Outer Plane objects could be moved or influenced from the Inner Planes. Remember I said that those who knew could go behind the scenes and "tweak" the cords that influence this plane? Well, the Inner Planes and the cords are of the same material as your own Body of Light will be made of, and this is the reason you can do this work. Do you understand this? In addition to helping your self along in this hard life, I found, much to my dismay, that it was possible to do many other things, which it could be said, were not so nice. Perhaps I should not even mention this side of the Occult at all except it crops up all the time. I will certainly answer no questions of Adverse Occult matters, but I'm afraid that after you reach a certain point, certain things become clear to you; and then I advise you not to proceed!!! Do not attempt to injure anyone. Be very careful about how you act and react towards people. If you are injured, try not to strike back.

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I assure you as you develop in the knowledge and understanding of the Occult, you assume an aura of natural powers which automatically protect you, and automatically defend you in some mysterious manner; but I mean you should try and make yourself quite loveable so no one will react against you or want to. To illustrate what I mean more clearly, I have a friend who runs a bookstore in Hollywood and is, herself, quite reasonably advanced in the Occult, and in ordinary knowledge wisdom. She said to me one day, "You know I never worry about how people treat me, everyone who pulls something underhanded on me gets it in the neck! (Automatically.) Another very important matter that you must learn to take care of is to protect yourself in ordinary ways. The world is full of less advanced people who think it is something wonderful if they can drive hard bargains and cheat others. And then you will find out about the cheating, and if you are an advanced person, the automatic reaction takes place, as stated above, and things happen. I assure you the above is much more common than you think, but you should try to be above it as who knows what is on the other side of life? So, therefore, concentrate on being loving, AND/BUT protect yourself at all times and in all ways, (and come out on the alert, fighting.) You are at liberty to use Occult Powers and Occult Knowledge at all times to better yourself and try to keep it that way. On page 71 in the textbook, I mentioned some advanced instructions regarding your Body of Light in feeling. In the textbook, I spoke of advancing a hand, a Body of Light hand and touching a counterpart object. There is another method, a more advanced method, which you will find a valuable adjutant in your future occult work. In order to use this operation there are a few things I will have to partly go over again concerning the qualities of the Physical Plane? Remember again that ‘Inner Plane’ work is not the same as ‘Outer Plane’ work, as you will learn in time/practice - remember what I told you about the newborn baby - well, you are like a newborn baby to these Inner Planes. So instead of reaching out a "Hand" and "Feeling" an outer object - you make the outer object, "feel you" by becoming you! Which is the exact part I left out of the textbook, although I came quite close to it. So instead of "you" being influenced by the feel of an object - the object is influenced by your feel!!!!! Just the opposite from "real" life!! Now in regard to "seeing" on the Inner Planes by and through your Body of Light, I have, in the textbook and in these lessons, written as if you were seeing as on the Physical Plane. I didn't want to be too advanced/confusing in the beginning textbook. Also, it is true that on the very lower Etheric, almost on the dividing line between Physical and Etheric, seeing is almost physically normal. However, the deeper you go on "up" the planes, the more the Elementals Force of "Seeing" becomes like the Elemental Force hearing. YOU "SEE" WHAT YOU WANT TO "SEE" IT THE WAY YOU WANT TO "SEE" IT. The above truism is the main reason for the lack of understanding of the world, the outer world, for Inner Plane work. Can you understand this idea? There now exists, at this point in your development, a chance for a big, nice error in your Occult development work. Many students reach this point, in their Occult development, where the two previously described "new" hearing and seeing come about, and due to their lack of knowledge development, (having not grown into it as you did in these lessons) violently mistake and misunderstand the Occult meaning of the "different" hearing and seeing and imagine all sorts of wild things - that there are world saving Christ's and Gods and all sorts of crazy things. Do you see how this can happen? So look out - coming up the way you do, you should understand this clearly and not be fooled. I will repeat a little differently. Many Occult dabblers having acquired a degree of Occult perception penetrated to some Inner Planes and there found a higher-to-fore unknown freedom in the, to them, strange reversal of the sense perceptions, you could say every suppressed wish was fulfilled, and were thereby led into all sorts of strange mistaken errors. Now you have been warned, so don't be fooled.

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Some of this material was treated in the textbook, but I mention it again for your benefit. As we are nearing the end of this section, I find that I have covered the ground fairly good, especially in the summery made on page 63. I can add a few more details here to make the matter clearer. In the matter of a Familiar, As I said before, the Roman Catholic Church made a great hullabaloo about witches and witchcraft in the middle ages some of which, of course, was true and along the lines you have been studying so far, part of which I warned you against. Part of the equipment of any authentic witch was a familiar. If you don't know by now you should have reliably guessed that the witches’ familiar was the same as a Body of Light extension of herself. Now I will go a little deeper into the Occult and tell you, again, that almost any kind of sincere, devout work of any kind creates a sort of automatic Body of Light, but not as clear and distinct as the Body of Light you make consciously.

Questions I. Why do you think that your increasing knowledge and understanding of the Occult gives automatic protection against others who might seek to use the occult power to injure you? 2.

Why must you still protect yourself against harm in ordinary ways?

3. What is the best single defence that you can adapt against harm coming from either the Outer or Inner Planes? 4. What is a Witches Familiar? How does it differ from an "Artificial Elemental?" What is a Watcher? Practices 1.

Start the practice of the Cabalistic Cross Ritual as described on pages 54 and 55 in The Art and Practice of Astral Projection. After one week, add the complete material given on pages 55 to 57. If you have already been doing this Ritual through having read Ophiel's books or the Foundation Course in Occult Knowledge, then just continue it. In any case, it is a Ritual to become a part of your daily life.

2. Start the practice described on page 59 of the text, and continue it, and expand it along the lines indicated on pages 60 to 74. Ophiel says that this work should take about six months, but if you have done your preliminary work up to this point, you will find you progress must faster. Note: I did not lay these practices out for you in the step-by-step procedures used in earlier lessons. You now should be able to do this yourself, and all the material you need is in the lesson, and in the textbook. What you must do, however, is to layout, the material; from the text in the form of exercises that seem most practical to you, step-by-step, and put yourself into a daily schedule of practising them. This type of Body of Light is generally called an Elemental, or even more explicitly, as artificial Elemental. Study the main textbook again.

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You can use a Body of Light Familiar as a watcher. I note I said, in the textbook, that this requires some special knowledge and by now some of this special knowledge has been given to you. We do this kind of watching with extension of ourselves all the time. They operate through the medium of "sticky" Astral Matter Threads to which I referred you in Max Freedom Long's book, THE SECRET SCIENCE BEHIND MIRACLES, which is also recommended in the textbook. It is a good book, get it and study it. As I said I will devote a whole lesson to the subject of all kinds of Elementals in or at the end of this lesson series. Meanwhile, do some work on this subject yourself and see what you come up with.

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Ophiel’s CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION First Course Copyright (C) 1970 by Edward C. Peach. All rights reserved. No part of this course of lessons, in part nor in whole, may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the holder of these rights, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address the above. Lesson Nine ********************* END OF PAGE *********************

Dear Student You have now entered into the final, and most important phase of this course. If you have done your work well, you will have no real trouble with this final Method of Projection, and you will open up an entire new world of Occult study and a lifetime of work. Throughout the earlier lessons I have attempted to show you - in the questions I ask and the practices and questions - just how to study. You should have learned that in answering the questions - any questions dealing with the occult - not to limit your answers to the material at hand, but to call forth all your reading knowledge and your intuitive knowledge, and answer the questions as broadly and thoroughly as you can. You should also have learned to take what you read, and frame your own questions, and to answer them too. We are not testing you in asking these questions - they are designed to make you integrate what you have read with all your previous knowledge, and then to go one step further and open the way to intuitional knowledge. And, you should also have learned that is it practice that counts, and you should have learned to layout any new knowledge into a step-by-step exercise so that you gain true mastery. Knowledge does not in itself give ability, but it is the starting-point, most people know something of the principles upon which hypnotism is based, but not why many can actually hypnotise another person until they have undertaken a step-by-step training programme. A training programme is nothing more, and nothing less, than a set of graduated practices undertaken in some order by which the practitioner becomes adept at the Work. You can do all this yourself - and the more you do for yourself, the greater will be your growth toward real Occult Adept-ship. Sincerely, Director of Studies The Gnostic Institute.

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CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION By Ophiel Lesson Nine The, ‘Symbol Method’ of ‘Astral Projection’ plus, the ‘Solar Fire.’ We now come to the last method given in the book - the method called the Symbol Method. I read my own book over again for the preparation of this lesson. This subject - The Symbol Method - is really a terrific subject and "terrific" is the only way I can describe it. As I said before, I gave a pretty concise account of the technique in the textbook; and, at this point, I cannot add much more to the technique until we both have advanced more and are ready for advanced work techniques. As I said, however, you have all you can use for the time being so USE IT. The subject matter of the "plane" is so profound that ten of our lifetimes would never cover the subject adequately. However, we will do the best we can; and I feel sure that if you gain even a little Inner Plane Knowledge, you will be delighted and benefited thereby. To proceed - you are given directions on how to make, draw, and paint, the five Tattva or Basic Elemental Force Card Symbols. I not you were given a 4" x 5" dimension, however, I now prefer a 4" x 4" better, or even a 6" x 6" for some work. These symbols can, and should, form a very important part of your daily life as soon as you become aware of them. In passing I would suggest an operation for your personal benefit - make up the five Tattva cards on large backgrounds, whether cardboards or even plywood 3/8" thick, I suggest 12" x 12". Do a good job on them using brilliant oil enamel paints. When done and dry, place them in a private room, one at each of the Cardinal directions, North, South, East, and West. Put (hang) the Yellow Square with blue background in/on the North Quarter of the room. Put/hang the Blue Circle with orange background, in/on the East Quarter of the room. Put/hang the Red Triangle with green background, in/on the South Quarter of the room, and put/hang the, White Crescent with black background, in/on the West Quarter of the room. You then place the fifth Symbol, the Symbol of the Element of Akasha overhead, in the middle of the room or as near the middle of the room as you can. Now I do realise that you might not be able to withhold an entire room for your private use in which case visitors with ensuing questions and comments might notice these Symbols. So, therefore, if such is the case, make the symbols look like ornaments and admire accordingly or make them smaller and not readily noticeable. However, you know they are there and you remain constantly conscious of them at all times and it is the constant consciousness that is their value to you. The whole of your Occult Knowledge and Occult Training will consist now, and forever more in the future of increasing Knowledge of, and about, the Elemental Forces; and there is nothing else to the "Occult," believe me; and this is what you are doing here, and in all my other lessons and books. However, these lessons are about Astral Projection's four systems, of which this one you are now studying is, to repeat, projection by means of the Elemental Force Symbols. This section is not really so much Astral Projection as the other sections were. In fact, I hope you are beginning to understand that there is no true Astral Projection per se. You know there are forms of projection, not only to the Astral Plane, but also to ALL planes; and you learned many other queer things. I am giving you more Knowledge now, as I said I would in the book, and this is to fill in the additional missing things I couldn't put in the first beginning book.

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Also, I hope you are beginning to understand more fully that you do not project OUTWARD but project INWARDLY!!! All these "planes" we are talking about are all inward - Inner Planes and there are no "outward Planes." So in the projection work you are learning about now, and if and when you do practice it you will be also projecting inward as all these Elemental Force Planes are also within "you" and there are no "outer" planes (you.) Occult "thinking" Knowledge requires, many times, a complete reversal of ordinary Thinking and this is definitely one of those times. So, therefore, in the textbook, you were given the ordinary symbol card making directions, and you were also given the directions for projecting "through" these symbols to the "plane" of the Elemental Forces they represent - so none of these directions need be repeated. We will therefore confine ourselves, in these lessons, to allied subjects/information/Knowledge, which could not be given in the textbook. I have before me now, as I write, a quite extraordinary Occult book called (THE) COMTE DE GABALIS. There appears to be only this one edition of this book, or at least, I have never seen it in any other edition than this one; and I have seen many Occult books in my lifetime. The book was copyrighted in 1914 and evidently printed at the same time/date.The full title, as given on the title page is COMTE DE GABALIS by the Abbe N. de Montfaucon de Villars, rendered out of French into English with a commentary. Then follows a quotation, which I may, was well give. “When a thing is hidden away with so much pains, merely revealing it is to destroy it." Tertullan. Below the quotation is the colophon, which is oval, shaped and has an upper ring like it was to be a pendant attachment. Inside the oval are three figures, one male and two female; the male holding a sword. Over the figures are the words The Brothers, and below are the worlds Truth is Justice. Then below are the words "Published by the Brothers." I have never found out who the brothers were. Now this book is a very remarkable book and is crammed with occult Philosophy. You should have a copy of it for your Occult research. It is, of course, long out of print, but a new printing has recently been made. I am going to speak more about this book and also Israel Regardie's book on somewhat the same lines, touching the same subjects to be discussed, THE GOLDEN DAWN books, Volume #4, which book you should also have in your library, and this Volume #4 is still, at this date, 1968, available in print. In the COMTE DE GABALIS (and the Regardie book) there is a mystery hinted at but never revealed openly. The mystery is this, in the COMTE DE GABALIS book, it is said that the Elemental Planes are filled with inhabitants!!! Now here is a startling idea indeed!!!! I do admit fully that I, myself, have not, as yet, seen an inhabitant of one of these Elemental Planes. As you know, all the Occult work I gave you up to now has been aimed with mastering the Physical Plane, and like things. This work, which you are now starting, is of a higher type than formerly and could lead to real Occult achievements. Also, this book keeps harping continually on something it calls the Solar Flame and how this "Flame" is supposed to enter into a person and "rise" up and "rejuvenate" him or her, etc. Many Occult Students have been misled by the idea and many other like ideas, of something entering the physical body, and changing the physical body in some way, and making it different that it was before, etc. As witness the garbled account of the Pentecostal fire number as given in the "new" testament. I have a pretty good idea that this "solar rejuvenation" is mental, inner, and not outer at all. Most possibly, the all "spiritual" rejuvenation in an, ‘inner’ and not ‘outer.’

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Probably this distinction was well understood in the original writings but lost in the ensuing re-writings and re-re-writings. Therefore, if and when you get the COMTE DE GABALIS and read it (if you can find it) please keep, this distinction in mind between the physical "outer" and the non-physical "inner" in considering the "Solar Fire." And you had also better begin to think always, from now on, in terms of Inner, Mental, and never of Outer, Physical. We are mostly, outer now, as I said in my other lessons and books, the outer and the inner operate on two entirely different types and Kinds of Laws, and the two don't overlap in effects on each other constantly. HOWEVER, the Inner does "rule" the outer but only in an indirect manner. You might say that most church people and especially metaphysical churches and movements, also many Occult movements, are still attempting the feat of mentally working directly on Matter, Physical Matter, and it just isn't done that way. In my lessons and in my books, you are given the correct directions, although not always labelled as such, for dealing with Material Physical Matter in the correct and proper way according to the best Knowledge/Inspiration I have received. Especially in my second book THE ART AND PRACTICE OF GETTING MATERIAL THINGS THROUGH CREATIVE VISUALIZATION, which you should get and read first-hand hard-study. So much for those things, I will try to say a few words more about the inhabitants of these Elemental Force Planes later on, but for now I'll return to the Solar Fire. I have a good idea of what the Solar Fire really is. As I said before, in my other books and lessons I have detailed descriptions of the Elemental Forces and their workings. I also want to repeat that I said these Forces made up all there was to the Physical Plane, that the Physical Plane was just the "frozen" outer manifestation of these Inner Forces. (Does this statement ‘suggest’ any ideas to you as to changing and controlling the "outer" from the "inner.") After all the preliminary point are considered it could become plane to you that the Solar Fire was, and is, a combination of fusion, of all these Five Elemental Forces into one Force/Form. To the inner sight this fused Force would appear as light/fire flowing liquid form. As you can understand, this would be part of each Elemental Force. The, Inner seeing, and mental assimilation of this fused combined Forces would constitute a "spiritual" rejuvenation. Correct? ********************* END OF PAGE ********************* From the Director of Studies Questions 1. Can you name and describe the five Elemental Forces? I' asking this question of yourself, please be honest, and review the entire subject in the textbook, and also in Ophiel's "ART AND PRACTICE OF THE OCCULT" and/or his "Correspondence Course in the Foundations of Occult Knowledge. 2.

Where are the various Planes?

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What is the "Solar Flame" and "Spiritual rejuvenation"? Practices 4

1. Make the large coloured cards for each of the-five elements, and place them in a room in the manner recommended by Ophiel. If you need further information on this, consult "THE ART AND PRACTICE OF THE OCCULT." 2. Continue the Cabalistic Cross Ritual, and do it in the room you have set up with symbols. Stand under the Akasha symbol when working the Ritual. 3. Layout in you notebook a step-by-step schedule for mastering the Symbol Method of Projection as described in the text.

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Ophiel’s CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION

First Course Copyright (C) 1970 by Edward C. Peach

All rights reserved. No part of this course of lessons, in part nor in whole, may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the holder of these rights, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address the above Lesson Ten ********************* END OF PAGE ********************* Dear Student, There is ultimately only one real way to learn something, and this is by doing! ARE YOU DOING THE GREAT WORK? That is the question. If you were here with me in person I could only ask you the same question. The practices given to you in this course, and the ones you must have developed for yourself, are all inner practice I can't do them for you. I can't lead you through them. They are for you to do, and if you do them you will "pass" this course. It's as simple, and as demanding as that. Occult progress depends on your efforts. You can spend a million dollars on books and courses, visit a thousand teachers and masters, diet and chant sacred words, and all will mean nothing unless you really practice these few things. Really do these practices, and you won't need the million dollars worth of books. etc. So ask your self, "AM I, DOING THE GREAT WORK?" Sincerely, Director of Studies The Gnostic Institute.

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CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION By Ophiel Lesson Ten The Symbol Method of Astral Projection We are now coming to an end of this course of lessons, three away as it were. I am not sure how I will divide up these last three lessons - I think I shall make the last three lessons a general Occult lesson with the projection backgrounds. As aforesaid we will now consider the Symbol Method of Astral Projection. I don't find my large dictionary at hand this instant, so I think I will make you do a little work; yes, maybe that would be good for you! So look up the etymological meaning of the word "Symbol". (Also look up the etymological meaning of the word "etymological"). Study the etymological meaning carefully and deeply until you understand the meaning fully. You should find and understand fully, that the There is some more information in another book - THE GOLDEN DAWN by Israel Regardie. This information is again not too sound or clear, as if much was left out with no connecting links, or any kind of intelligent preliminary build-up, so the student can discover what it is all about. However, some definite directions are given out, and, if and when, you get the book, or get one to read, you should pay close attention to all the details given therein, but do remember that this material dates from 1860-1870 and their ideas were different than now. Maybe we will see and understand more today than they did. The idea behind the title of this lesson, THE SYMBOL METHOD OF ASTRAL PROJECTION, is that the Occult Student uses the Elemental Symbol cards in a way so they become "doors" to the planes represented by that particular symbol card being used. Now, of course, in point of fact, everything, EVERYTHING, in and on the Physical Plane is sort of Symbolic of something up "higher" and the symbol is the Physical "Tail End" of a path that leads on up through the different "layers" of Planes, to some supernal creative first cause (as I said before, I will treat this aspect of symbol projection in either the next lesson or the last.) Also I had better add here now, at this point, that the following process I am going to describe as a physical process, can, after practice and mastery, be done mentally, because, as I said before, before and elsewhere, the Mental Processes of people today are more educated and advanced than they were a hundred years ago and can deal more subjectively with these metaphysical subjects than in previous times. The basic manner in which the/a symbol drawn and painted on a card becomes a "door" or "window," is as follows: A student - you - takes the selected card, which in the case of a beginner, I suggest is the Symbol of the Elemental Force of Elemental Earth. After selecting the Symbol card you want to use, you make your basic arrangements as to seating arrangements, proper lighting, comfort, and freedom from interruptions, etc. This all done, you start by looking at the card quietly and intently for some minutes without having allowed any strain to the eyes to develop. After looking quietly at the Symbol for a time, you look away at a white card and you will see, against the white card background the Symbol in complementary colour. Then shut the eyes

and you will see the complementary coloured Symbol against your eyelids, and if you continue to "watch" it, it will come and go and then gradually fade away. However, before it fades away completely, you seize it, partly by will and partly by imagination and endeavour to expand it in "front" of you, "up" to the size of a large door. Now this may take some time and effort, but work on it hard, no one can do it for you, this is your own special work. Remember, this work is an Occult Art in which you are now engaged and the work is harder for some persons than others, so allow for this fact always. When you have gained control of this Inner Plane image so you can expand it and contract it at will, you are ready for the next step. (It would have been good at this point to have, done some work, on the Body of Light Method so you have some control over this method by now.) The next step is to, ‘Expand’ the inner image to a full door size image. Then stop, project yourself through the "door", feel yourself going on through, and "be" through. Now the first time I tried this process I encountered a most complete blank, and being as I am a little impatient, I turned ‘away’ in short time and returned. Later it occurred to me that I had not given myself enough time and I repeated the operation. This time I waited for a period and gradually the blankness began to resolve itself into a vague outline of a landscape scene. I viewed this scene for a while. I then "returned." I repeated this process several times. I did not venture into the landscape, nor do I order you to do so without further instructions, which I am not prepared to give out at this time. All I suggest you do at this point, and time, is to perfect the technique as given and just to "stand " outside the door and view the landscape scene. To enter the plane is another matter entirely and I urge you to postpone this for a while until you develop further knowledge and techniques. You won't lose anything by waiting. There are a few more things which can be added here- you should be aware that there are compound symbols and you should have made some, or all, of them by now! Projection into a compound symbol is done exactly the same way as already given, but each "scene" is, of course, different, as each plane is different from each other. The sources from which I received my information do not give much more knowledge and absolutely no comment, and hence I suppose again it is another of those intentional blind omissions. However, my idea and feeling is that in the application and use of these techniques, a tremendous amount of Occult Knowledge could be gained if this Knowledge could be interpreted properly and then used properly. However, I have a further idea that this technique and Knowledge is pretty well guarded and concealed in that no one, but one, with correct motives, and I mean mechanically correct motives, would be able to understand it enough to be able to "get" it properly and “use” it properly It occurs to me that except to the right person, this knowledge wouldn't mean anything. ********************* END OF PAGE ********************* From the Director of Studies Questions 1. What is the meaning of the word "etymological"? 2. What is the meaning of the word "symbol"?

3. How does a symbol relate to an Occult Force? 4. What is a "compound symbol", as Ophiel uses it in this lesson? (If you need further information. 5. Who is your ultimate Teacher? Your Master? (Refer to "THE ART AND PRACTICE OF THE OCCULT", by Ophiel, or to his "Correspondence Course in the Foundations of Occult Knowledge")5. Who is your ultimate Teacher? Your Master? Practices 1. Continue the Symbol Method practices you have formulated based on the textbook and lessons 9 and 10. Recommended Reading. Regardie, Israel. "THE MIDDLE PILLAR." Here is an exposition of the practical Qabalah, with important rituals you should put to use in gaining spiritual power. In addition, this book brings together the practices of ceremonial magick and modem psychotherapy to enrich your life.

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Ophiel’s CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION First Course Copyright (C) 1970 by Edward C. Peach. All rights reserved. No part of this course of lessons, in part nor in whole, may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the holder of these rights, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address the above. Lesson Eleven ********************* END OF PAGE ********************* Dear Student, Do you realise that you are a truly unique person? For one thing, not many people, even to this day, when the Occult is more popular than ever, really study and practice the Occult. Very few really have the self-discipline, the determination and the courage to actually do something with their Inner Life. For another thing, science tells us that the Earth is perhaps 8 billion years old. Do you realise that you must also be 8 billion years old? At least! For you are part of a continuing stream of Evolution, that had its earthly beginnings that long ago. As such a unique person don't you also see that you have an obligation to do something worthy of a person 8 billion years old? That something is to take charge of your own destiny, and make something enduring out of your life. That something is your own maximum growth and selfdevelopment. Nothing else honours the effort and history that has already gone into making you the person you are. That's what Occult Study is for. Sincerely, Director of Studies The Gnostic Institute. ********************* END OF LETTER *******************

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CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION By Ophiel Lesson Eleven As I said before, we are nearing the end of this course, and when I think of the millions of things I did not say, and cannot say, I am appalled. But what you have been given is a start and if you learn to use this well, you will have a fine foundation to build and continue your Occult career on. The idea of Projection, Astral Projection, is a great basic conception that really underlies the entire material world Plane. You might say, to make it clearer, that the whole Physical Universe Plane is a reverse projection from somewhere out there" to down here, here which is the "tail" end from out there. So what should be more natural than that we should learn how to project on up, in upwards to the first cause? And this is what you are starting to do, even in your work on the "Little System." I do want to go over a certain mental conception with you again at this point, in these lessons. I did say to you in the book, that you really didn't project anything out from yourself actually, all you did is to change - shift - your centre of consciousness, shift your centre of consciousness, from one Plane to another. Also, in the case of the Dream Method, to build up a memory chain - connecting over from one Plane to another. You live and exist on all the planes NOW at once, and always did. However, in speaking of "projection," we have to speak the way we do - as if something "went out" something detached and went out - as that is the way we thing physically of our existence on the Physical Plane. In your future work keep this second idea always in mind and watch for its workings in your existence. Therefore, it follows, as afore suggested, that ALL OUR PHYSICAL EXISTENCE is a REVERSE projection into HERE from OUT THERE. I will repeat this in a slightly different manner. We are projecting from "out there" into here. “ALSO,” all Physical Plane objects are companioning PROJECTIONS into/onto this Physical Plane from "out there." This is a conception that you can begin to study, use now here at this point, in your present and future work. I have not found this conception in any book or Occult lessons, and in no Occult Teachings openly anywhere. If after reading, studying, and meditating on this conception, you will go back over your Occult work, you should begin to FEEL this conception coming on through, underneath, as it were, all Occult Teachings. I have done some work on these ideas but they have proven to be extraordinarily elusive and evasively, “ephemeral” however, I know that ‘IT’ is there, and I hope you start this search soon, and see what you come up with. The only traces I have found of this conception have been references in some fragments of Cosmic Literature, in which they refer to a demi-world, demi-mode, and demiurgos. Both words refer to something that is a half thing, a half world, and a half God. The next references you can check are the opening verses of the Good-Spell (gospel) of St. John. Read this over and see if you can get some sense out of it. You might focus your inner attention on the world Logos, which is a Greek word meaning THE WORD, which seems to be a Creative Force Word, which seems to operate on both the Inner and the Outer Planes (?). It could mean something about an inner type God speaking creative word thoughts which start out as "thoughts" "up there" and "end" as "things" down here.

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Also, apparently, all these Gnostic ideas were destroyed by some of the later following Christians (except for the opening verses of St. John, which were spared for two reasons. John was a supposed apostle of Jesus and no one understood what the verses meant.) And this would account for the absence of any more material than scraps and fragments. From the foregoing pages, you can begin to understand that the composition of this world is not such a simple matter, as the religions of the world would have you believe. They would have you think that the Physical Heaven type idea Earth plus Heaven was all, and that you jumped from one to the other at death, and that was that. Whereas the Truth, as can be shown by you by a simple bit of Astral Projection, is quite different: There are layers of Planes and they all act and react with each other in some definite way during our life times, and probably also after our deaths; although I have no information about that and neither does anyone else. Therefore, it seems obvious that you should develop the Art of Astral Projection, all the systems as herein given, to the best of your ability so as to explore and find out all you can about what lies beyond the "Veil" (the entrance into the next plane.) I really must apologise for being unable to give you more accurate information throughout all these books and lessons but this subject is vase. And again I say, the growing Christianity and also Muslim religions destroyed much of what was discovered in early times and written down, so there is not much to build on now. So the Knowledge I can give you is going to be of the nature of much basic stuff of which you will have to build into your life and that is the way it should be anyhow. Just reading about what wonderful powers so and so had had, and what he did etc., and of which powers he can teach you nothing whatsoever so you can do something for yourself is just not my idea of Occult Teaching, Training, and if you want to be bunked by somebody that way, then you'll have to look elsewhere. I want to open up a past subject again at this point, and expend it a little bit. I mentioned elsewhere the subject of Counter Parts also called doubles. Basically, a Counterpart is a double, or a spiritual duplicate extension of something Physical, on the "Inner" Planes. The point I want to make here is that, naturally, if you could "react" on up and into the Inner Planes and manipulate these counterpart doubles before they "arrived" at this Physical Plane, you should be able to accomplish many interesting changes in material things - objects – events - on this Outer Physical Plane at will. In fact, I have a pretty good idea that just about all the events, and changes, and things that happen on this Physical Plane now are the results of unconscious Inner Plane manipulations done ignorantly by, ourselves. It does seem, depending on how true the above is, that we should learn to do this manipulation ourselves consciously and constructively, and herein probably lies a greater possibility for us. We should take every opportunity to develop along these lines. If the foregoing sounds a little ragged, then excuse me, because in dealing with this subject we are on the edge of the great unknown. Millions of people never give this subject a second thought, but you do not belong to that class. Even those of you who are not so well equipped, as others are to do this work can achieve some degree of success anyhow as the basic work of correct and will work. What I am trying to say, in this round about way, is that there is a terrific lot more to projection, Astral or otherwise, than appears to the surface, and that you are to start to prepare yourself for greater things than just mere projection. Since writing the first book in which was contained the first presentation of the Ritual some new material additions were made and were put in following books especially the book called, “THE ART AND PRACTICE OF THE OCCULT.” In the past the Ritual involved looking into the stars, and the four Cardinal points, and visualising the Elemental scene in each star.

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After visualising then project yourself into the interior of the Star and then move away from the "door" star, which you should see behind you outlined in blue flame. These Ritual Stars are not really "gates" into the Elemental Planes like the Symbols of the Elementals were, but you should get a great deal of good practice by doing this. These star gates are connected to the Elemental Planes in many ways, however, and you could come upon one of these paths and follow it on up and see where it leads. Proceed cautiously and make complete notes of all you see and learn. There is another projection exercise of which there is much mystery and much speculation going on, because it was introduced in Dion Fortune's books, it was mentioned but no directions as to how to do it were given. This projection exercise was called "Rising on the Planes." I know I was much bewildered at it the first time I read about it and thought and wondered all sorts of things. However, I didn't write and ask what it meant or how to do it as, in those days, all such enquiries were met with a statement as "That is a secret and you are not worthy to be told!!" (And not even adding a "yet"!!!) So if you are interested, Rising on the Planes means to visualise a Tree of Life and to visualise, project yourself on up the paths and through the various Sephirohts one by one. (No doubt claims will be made that the above is not what is meant, by Rising on the Planes, but you can give what I give you until a better one comes along.) The Tree of Life diagrams are given in my book on the cover backs of THE ART AND PRACTICE OF ASTRAL PROJECTION. You will note that two scales are given, a King scale and a Queen Scale. I will admit that the subject of correct colours as given in the various Occult Schools is confusion compounded upon confusion. Different schools will give the same colour for exactly opposite purposes and fight to the death to maintain it! The idea that comes out of all this could be that different colours could mean different things to different people at different times. So discard all this colour stuff until a higher power gives out the truth. Follow the ordinary idea of colours. Therefore, I suggest for your work that you select the Queen scale. Now don't get the idea that the job is going to be easy. You will have to do a lot of work. You will have to prepare a diagram of a suitable size that you can work with. But first I suggest you make a number of diagrams the size in the book, and colour them. I made many mistakes myself and had many accidents with the inks and paints and this may happen to you too, so you'll get the practice anyhow. When you feel reasonably ready then take your compass and double the sizes as given in the book, and later you can triple the sizes if you want, make and paint a large Tree of Life in the Queen scale. Treat this large diagram the same as you did the Symbol Cards. Look at it under a good light and then close your eyes and look at the Tree in complementary colours. Start at the "bottom" of the Tree and enter into the first division of the Sephiroth. Then by thinking of the various colours that you "see" in your imagination, follow around the form divisions. When this is completed, then go up the path that leads to the Moon and enter there. Next time choose one of the other paths and go up that path to Venus or Mercury and then cover the whole Tree in this same method. The above directions are rather simple but do them and get the feel of it all. There are some more advanced directions in Gareth Knight's books and you should get them and give them some study. I hope to give more advanced lesson in this subject later on but I'll have to do some more research on different methods. ********************* END OF PAGE *********************

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From the Director of Studies Questions 1. Ophiel says "just about all the events, and changes, and things that happen on this Physical Plane now are the results of unconscious Inner Plane manipulations done ignorantly by ourselves." What do you think of this statement? 2.

What do you now think that the Occult is all about? 3. What is the "Tree of Life"? Practices 1.

Continue as before.

2.

Paint a large Tree of Life as directed.

Recommended Reading.

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Ophiel’s CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION First Course Copyright (C) 1970 by Edward C. Peach. All rights reserved. No part of this course of lessons, in part nor in whole, may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the holder of these rights, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address the above. Lesson Twelve ********************* END OF PAGE ********************* Dear Student, This is it! The last lesson! But, do you think you are done? Have you finished the study of Astral Projection? Are you really satisfied with the efforts you have put into this work? I hope you can answer, "yes" to the last question, and "no" to the first two. I expect that you, may have to answer the last question with only a qualified "yes", and that you will look back over the Course and work it over again until you are really and honestly satisfied. I hope no one answered the first two questions with a "yes." If you did - then I can tell you that you are not a real student, for a real student is never finished learning. And an Occult Student knows that he does not know everything, nor anywhere near enough. I hope you are a real Occult Student. Sincerely, Director of Studies The Gnostic Institute. ********************* END OF LETTER *******************

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CORRESPONDENCE COURSE IN ASTRAL PROJECTION By Ophiel Lesson Twelve This is the last lesson of the course on Astral Projection. Before going into review of the four systems I am impelled to write some general words on the general Occult and make a sort of tie-in with Astral Projection. I find myself repeating almost endlessly the same Occult ideas and concepts over and over. Now, in the case of the storyteller or novelist, it is almost fatal to repeat the same ideas in different stories or books. The only one I know who got away with it was Jack London who, in almost every story and book he wrote, mentioned the Noon whistle at the brick yard in Glen Ellen. He always worked it in somewhere no matter where the story was set. However, in the case of Occult Knowledge I find the situation somewhat different. As far as the Occult goes, there appears to be only ONE TRUTH at least a definite set of basic truths all connected together or all a part of each other, and to the ramifications of which there is not end, hence the apparently endless repetitions. The ramifications SOUND ALIKE BUT THEY ARE NOT ALIKE, and it will be up to you to listen, and differentiate and team and apply these ramifications NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES I REPEAT THEM. So now here I will repeat some material again - so I ask what use it is to read, hear, about how John Doe Can do some wonderful ESP things, and what wonderful gifts he has (and you have none.) NOW IF HE CAN'T TEACH YOU HOW TO DO IT (or do some of it.) this is to me, isn't worth a tinker’s dam, but if you find a need to reading that stuff, then by all means be guided by your desires, or feelings and not by anything I say. Then another thing that keeps popping up all the time and that is the matter of Prophecies. (Of the future.) There are two Prophecies. One is about some great natural cataclysm or cataclysms, which are about to “happen” “somewhere”, and the other is something going to happen in your personal life. As to the first of these great natural cataclysms, such as great earthquakes in some specific location -just at the date of this writing 1968-69 we are going through an epidemic of prophecies about coming earthquakes that are to come to California in some, more or less, future time. I have heard this stuff since I was a child and not one of the dam things "came about" ever, to say nothing about the time sequence. I am pretty darn sure that God does not cause earthquakes or by whim order them and, even if he did, I do not believe he takes anyone into his confidence in advance. Other kinds of Prophecies or those of a personal nature - concern something about the persons "fortune" which is also "coming." Very few of us have any "fortune" "coming" to us, and while, in some cases, some idea can be gotten about the future it is by no means accurate or complete and it is in direct conflict with other Occult Teachings which say you can alter/change your future by Creative Visualisation to some degree. Even idle thoughts do some work, and do project unconsciously - being attracted back to the "Plane" which they came from automatically, as fast as they are "thought." I do want to mention in passing again, that there is in the Occult World, endless chatter, about mental "spiritual healing" and all that sort of thing. If you take my advice on this subject you listen all you want to, and think all the healing thoughts you want to, but when it comes down to the basics you had better depend in medical sciences for your physical well being, and not depend/trust any kind of metaphysical healing.

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Of course, it has been said, tritely, for many a long time that "thoughts are things" and what this really means is that "thoughts" are "things" on the Inner Plane, and being things on the Inner Plane they can do certain jobs and/or cause certain effects to take place there which effects would reach "here" eventually, and altered, in some way to suit is, "down here." To get back to the idle thought idea, as I mentioned before, it is very true that idle thinking, and all kinds of thinking, or a routine thinking nature, are powerful and effective because of the mechanism of Mental (Astral) Projection, which exists at all times and is quite automatic, and now I am speaking of automatic and routine Astral Projection rather than of the deliberate and controlled Astral Projection as I gave in the four systems referred to previously. I must admit that when I first wrote the book, “THE ART AND PRACTICE OF ASTRAL PROJECTION” I had not realised that depth of projection and how they entered into our lives, and all this routine referred to above has opened up, and been connected up, since the book was presented to the Occult Public. Them of course, all this leads back into - the old worn out trite stuff such as "Power of Positive Thinking," "Thinking Good Thoughts," "Hold Good Thoughts," "Good is better than evil because it is never!" etc., which is right back where we started!!! However, we should now have something additional to go on. You should now know, from the study of my book, the reasons why things acts, work, (project), as they do and be governed accordingly. There is a man I know of that teaches a sort of different kind/type of Metaphysics here in California and elsewhere. He comes through here about once a year and gives a week of lectures, more or less. The man's name is Neville Goddard, perhaps you have heard of him or know of him. He has written a number of books which you might enjoy reading and they do contain some valuable Metaphysical Material of an empirical nature. Neville, in one of his lectures, told a story of how a novelist, in creating a situation for a book, checked and looked up, in scientific works, the exact meteorological conditions that would have been necessary to bring about a definite, terrific storm, which he used in the story he was creating. This imaginary delineation was laid out in detail exactly in his book. A few years later the exact conditions did come about and such a storm did occur. This storm trapped some trains in the High Sierras and caused a great deal of commotion in many circles. It can never be known for sure whether the storm came about because of the creative prework done by the author in creating imaginary meteorological conditions, as a sort of pattern vacuum into which Nature Rushed to fill, or whether it was just an accident in general, but anyway, do give these ideas some thought/consideration, and do a little testing yourself and see what results you can find. Don't be afraid to experiment with thoughts and thinking. However, I will say here that the Great Secret of using thoughts to accomplish Physical Plane results is a very delicate one. I will have to do more work on this subject some of these days. It is definitely not a Will Power type of thought, trying to bring about Physical Plane results by sheer force of Will Power thinking; it will never do/work something in the personal Will Power kills the whole thing. Then again Physical Plane Thought Accomplishment is not brought about by wishful dream-like type of daydream thinking either. There appears to be one kind of exact "wave length" type thought that does the Physical Plane work and you have to find it for yourself as it may vary from person to person; BUT THERE IS A KIND OF THOUGHT THAT DOES WORK, and you must learn to do/work it if you are to have a happy successful life.

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This type of Astral Projection is the highest projection that you can do; and this connection did not occur to me when I first wrote the book on Astral Projection, but it has since popped up. Now I will repeat a little again and say/warn you about the, “Time sequence.” Outer Physical Plane Time has absolutely no relation to Inner Plane Time "stuff' at all and you might just as well put any “Time sequence,” ideas out of your mind completely. You cannot operate Inner Plane operations to synchronise with Outer Physical Plane Operations. The two just do not jive and you must take this into consideration at all times. It is this lack of understanding about the differences between the Planes, especially the time hang ups, that makes all the misunderstandings and doubts about the existence of Occult Forces. Occult training is nothing else but a personal reconciliation and adaptation of the idea of a Cause, starting here on the Lower Physical and penetrating on up into the "higher" planes and then coming back down and bringing with it altered circumstances which should be to ones benefit but, unfortunately, could be the opposite. This operation is possible through the mechanism of Projection, which exists automatically; and the existence of which I did not suspect when I first wrote the book about conscious Astral Projection. (The projection I am referring to alone is more a projection of "thoughts" rather than your ego.) However, we will now leave the fascinating subject of automatic projection and return to the subject of conscious Ego projection. You were given four different methods of Ego projection, (Which work, I am not using to differentiate the automatic and conscious types of projection.) It is my intention to review these four systems and then close this series of lessons. I will try to write more. I hope you get much form these lessons. They have cost me a great deal of my life. For some reason I seem to have been forced into an unnatural sort of life-path which led to this receptive/development recording of Occult material which otherwise I would have paid no attention to, and lived a "normal" life. The actual act of leaving the body and "going out" is, of course, a very difficult thing to learn and master. Then, again, of course, as you know you don't actually "go out" but you merely change your "layer" of consciousness from one plane to another. But, as you know, even this conscious shift sometimes involved a jolt or a shock of some like and can be very upsetting to the student in some cases, and then in other cases there is no jolt at all. So it was to alleviate this transference that I developed the "Little System." One time in the past I imported some knitting machines from Japan and in teaching people to use them I hit upon the idea of showing them all of the common mistakes FIRST and HOW TO REPAIR THE MISTAKES before teaching them how to use the machine! This was the same idea I used in developing the "Little System." In the use of the "Little System" you make use of all the standard Occult techniques that exist, and under controlled conditions; and thus become conversant with them so that you meet them later in more advanced systems, you already have a solid background of practice/experience to back you up, and you can move on confidently to higher and higher experiences. In the next Astral Projection Method, the Dream Method, you were introduced to a type of projection that is largely automatic after it once started. In this method you learn to become half wake while half asleep and you learn to move about, first on the edge of the/an Inner Plane and then to enter them. You should get Oliver Fox's book called ASTRAL PROJECTION. I used this method a great deal myself as it comes most naturally and is very time saving as it is quite automatic when once you get it working. Remember the different effects I mentioned, the noises and other phenomenon. Once these things are past all is smooth sailing afterwards, and this is also true for other kinds of projection.

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The third system was called the Body of Light Method and is really a very powerful advanced Projection method. There are usually no limits to what can be accomplished by adaptations of this method. I have not explored them myself; or even touched on it much, nor is there a great deal of knowledge available this method. This method requires a careful application based on a careful study of all aspects of the system. The last system is the Symbol Method System. Again this system has a tremendous potential, as I said about the others, but in a different way/manner. (Each of these systems has their own uses in their own way, and each has its own limitations too.) I want again to call your attention to the apparent fact that every material "thing" of the Physical Plane is a Symbol, in that "it" stands in place of a some-thing else, which something else is Inner Plane Forces/Ideas. I don't want to sound like an, “Occult faker” and be telling you all these things and no more directions, but all I can give you in the basic knowledge and you must learn to take it from there on. That is all any teacher can do and certainly a hell of a lot more than any others give/do. I also want to call your attention, in line with the above statement, to the fact that we ourselves are also Symbols!! Because our physical being is a representation of something "other" which "other" is on the Inner Planes!!! I hope you read over the above again and again until you understand it fully. There is a very potent/pregnant suggestion in the above idea and you should be able to cash in on it to your benefit if you follow the idea up fully!! Now we have come to the end of these lessons. Being what I am, I am worried about the Universe of things that I was not able to put into these lessons, will be in other lessons.

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You have to do a new kind of locomotion. And that locomotion consists of thinking or willing your way along. You will have to give this some attention sooner or later so you can practice it any time that this happens. In your dreams realise that you have crossed over and then you stop until you get control of yourself and then try willing yourself or thinking yourself forward or wherever you want to go. You may recall in your previous dreams, when you didn't know what you were doing, that you could sometimes have a sort of locomotion by a sort of swimming, but remember that it was a sort of an error, which would have tipped you off, if you had been awake, that you had been in the Dream Method. A sort of a “thinking,” forward, accompanies this swimming motion and it sometimes works. Don't go through any swimming motions, or any waving the arms, or trying to flay like flying or something like that. Changing to "thinking forward " and this is the way that you will have to make your transition into the Inner Planes and that is part of your education. You can try returning back to the Etheric Plane after you reach this place where you can no longer walk or make physical motions. Try going back and forth two or three times. You will have to practice and practice because you are like a newborn child just coming into the world. You can't recall your first physical efforts to walk or move in this plane but you see children doing it all the time. That's what you are, a sort of reborn child, and that is what the words of what the so-called Jesus meant, probably, when he said that you must be born again as a little child.

********************* END OF PAGE ********************* From the Director of Studies Questions 1. What are the "sticky threads", and what connection do you see between their use and the practices of "voodoo?" 2. What is the main value to this study of Astral Projection? Think this out in detail 3. What principle is involved in making prayer work? 4. What is the "secret" of occult operations? Explain, at length and in your own words, why you think this is so. 5. Why is it difficult to "walk" in the Astral? Practices 1.

Usual notebook work.

2. Continuation of work on the stations of trip to your proposed Etheric Projection. Up to now, you have been studying the route of your proposed projection Feel your etheric body getting out of

bed just as if it were your physical body. Stand beside the bed in your imagination, feeling your etheric body, and slowly walk to station No. 1, observing all the details in your imagination in exactly the same way as you would be doing in your physical body. Don't hurry. Try to match your progress exactly with what your physical trips were like. Feel always that you are there, on your imagination trips, in the body - but realise that it is your etheric body, and not your physical. The Physical body is lying back there, safe, secure and relaxed in bed. No harm can come to it, because it is fully relaxed. It is the relaxation process that makes your physical body healthy and safe. Remember what Ophiel said about light being the material of the Inner Planes? Expect to see everything in your imagination trip glowing safely in a light of its own. Even though it is physically dark you can see perfectly well with your etheric sight because you are seeing the etheric counterparts of the physical world in their own natural, soft glow. Keep this up every night. You can stop doing the actual physical trip that you have been doing each day, and you can also stop doing the exercise of merely remembering the details of each station that you were doing during your break at midday. Instead, at the time you set aside for these two exercises each day, sit down or lie down and relax the physical body, and feel the etheric within. You will find this a most energising and health giving experience. Do it whatever the body feels exhausted, and you will be refreshed. It is through the etheric that cosmic energies come to you, and hence this physical relaxation allows the etheric energies to revitalise your physical vehicle. Keep the physical body free of tension, and you will gain health, and also gain in your natural occult capacity.

Recommended Reading

1. Regardie: "Be Yourself; the Art of Relaxation." This book describes the details of physical relaxation, and the relationships to physical, emotional and spiritual well-being.