The Dreamer of Muscoy and Astral Projection -- Part IV

Last time out when we talked about astral projection and Douglas Q. McMasters, the Dreamer of Muscoy, we covered the silver thread that Jack noticed connected his astral body to his physical body and Doug talked about the properties of the thread and how if it were to be broken an astral body would not be able to return to its physical body. Jack found this concept more than a little bothersome. As Jack began to explore being out of his body, he became more aware of his limitations.

"When I left my body and went out into the bowling pin, Doug wanted to know all about it. Through his questioning, I was able to describe being a point of consciousness. I assumed I was in the bowling pin, but had no sensation of being there except the angle and distance were right for it being where 'I' was.

"I was aware, but did not seem to have thought. I did not think, 'I’ve done it! I’m out of my body!' I just looked at my body sitting on a stool, eyes closed as if asleep, and it freaked me out and just like that I was back. I returned to my body with a start, a jerk, as if waking up from dozing off when you weren’t supposed to be dozing – like when driving. I jerked back and pulled the bowling pin over." This was only a temporary condition, "Later, on subsequent journeys outside, I was not startled unless presented something completely alien and unexpected. If I had done it before or it seemed natural, I just accepted it."

Jack began to take inventory of his senses while in his astral body, "I could hear, but what I heard did not have any meaning to me. Or rather it had meaning but I did not care. I could hear the bowling balls knocking down the pins outside the room we were in, but I didn’t think about what I was hearing. Doug wanted me to trace the sounds back to their origin – to become the bowling pin being hit by the ball and knocked into other pins, to make the sounds I was hearing by interacting with the scene. I never could do this the way he wanted me to, but I could trace sounds back to their origin. I just couldn’t become a dynamic part of the sounds’ creation."

Jack noticed an expanded sense of sight, "I could see, with focused sight as if my eyes were seeing. I could look at my physical self and I could turn and look at (his friend) Buzzy. Doug wanted me to try seeing both at the same time – to defocus and see panoramically. Interestingly, this was not difficult to do. When out there, all I had to do was want to do it. If I wanted to see Buzzy, I turned and saw him, but if I wanted to see both of us at once, my vision just widened and curved and I saw us both at once, as if I had eyes in the front and side of my head at the same time."

While at first trapped inside the bowling pin, Jack slowly learned to move his astral body around the room he was in; sometimes with unexpected consequences, "I could move. Buzzy was talking on the phone to a girl and I just kind of drifted over to the phone and went into the mouthpiece and suddenly I was in a bedroom looking at a girl on a bed talking on a phone. It wasn’t who I though Buzzy was talking to and in fact may not have been the right person, but seeing a stranger was so unexpected that it brought me back with a jerk."

With practice Jack was able to move from the room by means other than the telephone, "But I wanted to really move around and found this to be difficult. I managed to float over to the Big M, to San Bernardino High School, and to the Orange Show Stadium, but could not “fly” around town like I had set out to do."

Jack found locomotion of his astral self to be rather hit and miss, "I once slipped out of my body and was instantly a dozen miles away in my bedroom, but when I tried to move around the house I snapped back into my body. I thought I should be able to project myself onto the moon, but could not. I did end up a couple of times at places I did not know, with people I did not know, and had no idea why or how I ended up at these places."

Nirvana Smirvana!

Doug kept pressing Jack to go even farther, "Doug wanted me to expand my consciousness, to become more than the bowling pin, more than the room housing my body, more than the point of view that moved around observing things. Doug wanted me to do two things. First, he wanted me to become other than myself. For example, he thought I could become a tree if I really tried, feeling what the tree felt and possessing the consciousness of the tree. I never could do that. I could never become anything other than who and what I was. Second, Doug wanted me to dilute myself, to expand my consciousness so wide and so broad that I became one with the entire universe. This, he promised, would be blissful. This was the way to achieve Nirvana."

Doug told Jack that he thought "you could achieve Nirvana while still on earth. Buddha did it. The secret was being able to leave all worldly possessions behind. They only way he knew how to do this was to leave your body and become an astral being without self. You shed the self by becoming other-than-self, and when you had experienced life as many other-than-self you then diluted your consciousness by becoming more and more than yourself, by becoming one with more and more until you are one with everything. Doug called this 'integration.'”

Jack had problems with this, "I could not integrate. Doug said it would take time – perhaps a lifetime – but once I reached this state I would understand everything and would not want to come back. The physical world would hold no promise for me and I would just break the thread and stay out there." When first confronted with the idea of accidentally breaking the thread, Jack had become cautious, but doing it on purpose? Willingly? This really bothered Jack.

"Well hey, this is pretty scary stuff to be laying on a 17-18 year-old kid. I didn’t want to be 'out there.' I wanted to be right here on Earth, enjoying the sensations of the flesh. So I asked him, if it was so blissful, why he came back. And he said, 'I’ve never been able to integrate either.'

Well, I didn’t mind doing things that Doug knew about, but I didn’t want to be breaking new ground – especially if you could get stuck out there."

And that ended Jack's student-guru relationship with Doug on metaphysics. Doug was an amazing guy, with a number of unusual talents. Scaring the shit out of a teenager just happened to be one of them.