When Robert Monroe penciled in the 'focus levels' on his map to the Unworld, the vague descriptions he gave these landmarks and the nondescript names he gave them were presumably meant to suggest that the descriptions needed to be expanded on and better names needed to be found. My map to the Unworld is an effort in that direction.
There are correspondences between my landmarks and Monroe's, but most people who aren't re-educated by The Monroe Institute don't have any idea what Monroe meant by his focus level descriptions, so I've left that as an appendix at the end of this chapter.
(The following concepts are illustrated at the bottom of the page.)
Earthville
Earthville is a wildlife refuge for the isolation and protection of the members of the human form, i.e. individuals who are stuck in physical reality and think there's no way out. It's an offshoot of the Unworld at large, in fact it's a high-gravity sort of belief-system territory like the ones Monroe talked about, but with 2ness, 3ness, and 4ness turned way up, while Monroe's belief-system heavens and hells have 2ness and 6ness turned way up. Either way, a trap is a trap.
Stormy-weather twisters swirling around out of control are not welcome just anywhere in the Unworld, which is my fanciful way of saying that the human form doesn't resonate with other Spforildewitts--species-wide configurations--found throughout the greater universes, but it does resonate with the configuration of the Earthville Mental Institution. To a large degree, most humans resonate with each other so we're attracted here like incoming weather which slides of it own volition into the exact environment where it fits. There are no diabolical astral captors, no cosmic conspiracies, and no karmic prisons except the ones we manifest unconsciously to protect ourselves from our fear of the Unworld at large. Some people have more freedom here than others. Some are even here voluntarily when they could be somewhere else.
My goal is to learn how to get unworlded any time I want and stay unworlded as long as I want. I don't demand total freedom because it would be boring, but I expect to find more freedom somewhere else as soon as I figure out what it is about my Troovammickle--my personal configuration as an individual--that causes me to be stuck here in Earthville.
We humans assume that the universe is an objective reality which exists the same for everybody including other species. We weren't always this stupid, but the three-headed one-god religion Christianity/Islam/Judaism with its more recent sect, the new religion of science, has taken its toll such that we're currently wandering the globe at breakneck speed without useful belief systems for the most part, since TV and Facebook have replaced the formerly fruitful imagination and curiosity of the ordinary individual. The reason this sort of thing is allowed to happen is that no one is in charge. We are weather. We're lucky to exist as individuals at all. The object of the game is to fly out of here with consciousness intact in order to explore other places. The universe is not broken, so the sickening way humans do things doesn't need to change here. That's why there's a door out of here.
The human Spforildewitt or human form is like any Spforildewitt: it comes with a limited amount of intelligence, which is to say, limited ability to use its awareness in its own best interests. No species is able to take over completely--which is how the universe remains unbroken--because for individual species to exist, they must have limited resources. That's the definition of 'identity' or 'individual': it's something set apart from everything else, and thus limited. The limited resources of the human form are now split among so many individuals due to overpopulation that the average human is currently little more than a debt-incurring robot set in place for the entertainment of itself and the transient enrichment of the rich. Don't be fooled by the speed at which we idle; we are in general just awaiting further instructions. The good news is that our stupidity will just get us killed or thinned way back so the earth can continue to entertain the survivors.
The earth as we know it is a mass hallucination of the human species as a whole. We have no idea how donkeys or rocks or mosquitoes perceive their worlds, although I have some theories about mosquitoes. The universe is projected from what's left of our imaginations after our unique differences have been mixed into a lowest common denominator and sifted through the Collective Average. Outer space is really just a representation of the Nowhere, with the patterns among the stars being a reflection of our overall planetary Spforildewitt. The Zodiac--the band of constellations that appears to rotate around the earth--doesn't cause our personality types to exist; our personality types or Troovammickles cause the Zodiac to exist. The reason the stars are so far from our sun and so far from each other is that they are not places; that's the real reason we can't go there, but we experience this phenomenon of barely being able to Notice the existence of other realities as unimaginably vast distances. How any other species experiences its world is beyond anything we could possibly imagine in an ordinary human state of consciousness.
Earthville is created by the 2nd harmonic of awareness, the root chakra. As an infinitely complex waveform that can be likened to a Sound Current that creates the world, the seething delineations of entities which mingle and writhe and crawl over one another to form our ever-changing Moment also reflect as the Babble of human thought, also known as...
The Froth
The Froth holds the world as we know it together so that instant manifestation of an individual's thoughts rarely occurs in the Dayly Dreame here on earth. The Froth acts as a barrier between the Tunnel which is the way out--and Earthville. The relative likeness and unlikeness of our thoughts to each other cause us to cluster together in groups of all sizes from couples to entire cultures. Those who don't cluster are called Contrary Beings or Outpost Scouts. Most of them are just killed, while some are slowly tortured to death and a few lucky bits of oddly-configured weather seem to adapt pretty well to finding themselves on the wrong planet. But there's hope for those of us who are immune to--or allergic to--groupthink; that's why I write these chapters.
In order for an individual to set out for the Unworld, he must be able to enter the Tunnel. This is not possible to do while awake in the physical configuration without swearing off the Froth. Simply put, the would-be unworlder must stop talking to himself, start seeing that only the Moment exists, and give up having opinions about what other people do. He must control his emotions and his tendency to live in the past and the future so that he can enter the Tunnel and Notice what's there waiting for him.
One reason I've been a beginner at Unworlding for several decades is that I find it very difficult to give up my opinions about what other people do. This is called 'self-importance' because it keeps the self anchored to the physical.
The Tunnel
The Tunnel is traversed in one direction to approach the Unworld or the other way to return to Earthville. The function of transiting the Tunnel, much more than just going through a tube, is to strip away the distractions of our habitual obsession with 2ness, 3ness, and 4ness (the lower chakras). The 2-3-4 Mind/Body/World thus gets slimmed down as it proceeds through the Tunnel, and by the time it arrives at the entrance to the Unworld at large, it's able to fit through the door, the Urumara.
Unworldings of many varieties can take place in the Tunnel, in which case there's likely to be a dimming of imagery compared to unworldings in the Unworld at large. You might perceive yourself to be either awake or asleep in the Tunnel; for example, thought dreams and other NREM dreams can take place there, but so can hypnagogic imagery. Remember that places on this map are really states of being, and while the map is just a 2-dimensional picture, the universe is holographic and multidimensional. The Tunnel can be experienced as a hallway or corridor of any size such as a mall or a long, narrow building or room; a highway, road or river, or any generally long, narrow, straight or winding pathway from one place to another.
Forced Noticing
Upon rejecting the distraction of his internal dialog, a practitioner enters the Tunnel and proceeds to seek out things which aren't supposed to be there according to the Collective Average's propaganda machine, the Hoveltongue. One way to accomplish this is by Noticing. With eyes closed and wearing a dark mask over the eyes if desired, as soon as you stop talking to yourself, you can see that the darkness behind your closed eyelids is not uniformly black. Noticing this opens a whole new world and as you proceed down the Tunnel, the Noticings don't have to be forced anymore. But at first you might have to make yourself look at the darkness more carefully since some people drop their assumptions about reality with great reluctance. The real trick to seeing your first images is to stop talking to yourself and pay Attention to what's already there. Blobs, dots, streaks, smears, in every color of the rainbow, are already there and waiting for you to Notice them. If you still can't see them after a few minutes, you're still talking to yourself or going la-la-la in some manner.
Spontaneous Noticing
Once the 2-3-4 Mind/Body/World has been slimmed down a ways, it will no longer be necessary to force yourself to admit that the Tunnel is full of images. More coherent images and patterns will appear by themselves and all you have to do is keep yourself detached and mentally quiet and watch them come and go. Do not try to visualize anything; Noticing is easy and visualization is hard. Just see what's already there. Don't cling to an image or stare too hard. Just pay attention with what Frank Kepple called 'mild curiosity' (Metsuke).
Beyond Noticing
Near the end of the Tunnel you can catch glimpses into the intake chamber of the Projection Room (the Green Room). These Screenshots can appear as rectangular or circular screens with well-defined edges which take up a portion of your field of vision. Images might be moving or still. Resolution can go up or down. The images sometimes appear with startling clarity. For example, I've seen ornate wheels within wheels, rotating in different directions within the same circular window. I've seen a moving picture of Laurel and Hardy with a wide diagonal band of clarity moving back and forth across it, and when the scene came into focus perfectly, Frankenstein's monster appeared behind them. I met the Dream Usher for the first time in a vision in which he sucked my essense out of me as a bright green fog, and then I watched myself uninflate like a rubber doll and run down the drain as a liquid. As well as more pleasant scenes such as forests of front porches, paper doll cutout figures frolicking over a wintry snowscape, and much more. The key to not letting visions dissipate immediately is...
Metsuke
In order to sustain vision in the Unworld, Screenshots are provided near the end of the Tunnel to practice on so that practitioners will have some idea of how to act once they end up in the Unworld at large, as active participants in the scenery. The practice of Metsuke is essential at all levels of the unworlding practice. The general idea is to balance focus and detachment. In terms of vision, we have to relearn to see with the mind's eye, because it works differently from the physical eyes. While physical eyes focus on one small thing at a time and the peripheral vision is blurred, the mind's eye or the Third Eye (7ness--the brow chakra) is able to see everything in focus at once, even seeing in a 360 degree perspective. This capability isn't always obvious but it's always there as a potential.
So you have to adapt to this way of seeing, by looking at things panoramically, for example when Screenshots appear in the Tunnel. If you focus on one object or small area, it will disappear. Go back to panoramic vision or Metsuke and it might come right back. One way to practice Metsuke is to look at the darkness behind you when Noticing, not just the darkness in front of you. You can do this with eyes open throughout the day too. When you put on your sleep mask, Notice especially whenever bright or relatively bright lights appear at the edge of where you normally expect your visual field to stop. These are your Upper dream bodies trying to get your Attention.
Another term for Metsuke is 'soft eyes'. This terminology comes from the Japanese art of peaceful self-defense, Aikido, but every writer from Carlos Castaneda to Frank Kepple talks about it.
The Nowhere
While the conscious mind, physical body, and so-called 'real' world are created by the lower three chakras, the resulting 2-3-4 Mind/Body/World can be transformed from a gluttonous, self-indulgent toy into a tool of the Attention by slimming down the 2-3-4's energy usage. An individual, like his species as a whole, has a limited amount of energy, and the 2-3-4 hogs most of this energy due to living in fear for its own safety. In order to experience what we mistake for sleep, we routinely, without thinking about it, give some of this energy to the Dream Usher so we can go through the Nowhere into an altered state of consciousness. Unworlding is the same thing.
The Nowhere is fiveness, the fifth harmonic of awareness, the heart chakra. It is a layer of variable thickness that exists between any two states of being. The next several bits of terminology in this list are different ways of experiencing the Nowhere. The Nowhere is 5ness as a transition zone in general, a place that can appear as a dimensionless dot or an infinite field, as deep as the universe or extending infinitely in the horizontal and vertical directions but having zero thickness. It makes time machines obsolete before they are invented. It's often called the 3D blackness or the void, as well as many other names. In the Unworld I often experience the Nowhere as a green field or lawn, a desert, a green, gray, white, or beige carpet or wall, a sky full of fog or clouds, etc.
The Dream Usher
Fiveness can be experienced as a dream character, guide, scary entity or any other person in the Unworld who we can merge with, for example by getting in his car. Many beginners tend to fear this entity automatically since it represents the unknown. But the Dream Usher is nevertheless the center of our being, with three chakras below and three above. Since the human race is stuck at fourness (time, values, order, etc.) the Dream Usher is part of the Remote Mind which includes the chakras above.
Currently my main goal in unworlding is to give the Dream Usher something to work with. Any kind of gift, whether a rock or a smile. When I first started Noticing him in unworldings, I would lash out at him. The Dream Usher can appear as an old hag or other monstrous entities if you are afraid of it. This is the entity which sometimes is Noticed by people experiencing sleep paralysis if they are afraid of the experience of transitioning to the Unworld with consciousness.
The Heart Chakra
Fiveness can be experienced as a pump which accelerates the unworlder through the end of the Tunnel into the next part of the transition experience. Like a physical heart, the heart chakra has an intake chamber and an output chamber.
The Green Room
Since green is the color of the heart chakra, I named its intake chamber the Green Room. In the Green Room you will see all kinds of images effortlessly, Beyond Noticing. From here you might go out of the Tunnel into the Projection Room, or you might get scared and turn around, going back into the darker parts of the Tunnel.
I sometimes wake up in the Green Room from a dream and if I keep my mind and body still, I can continue seeing full-size, full-color, self-sustaining images for as long as I want to, even out of bed, as long as I keep my eyes shut. Believe it or not, it takes some discipline to want to. For me at least, the Voice of Idiossification is always tempting me to just go back to sleep. There's also a choice to be made whether to Just Get Up--and possibly be unworlded already--or else if not, then to proceed directly to the dream journal and record your unworldings before they fade from memory.
The Urumara
Fiveness or the Nowhere as the doorway or portal to any other state of being is called the Urumara. 'Urum' is the Visayan word for a dream in which you experience conscious sleep paralysis. 'Mara' is a Swedish word for the kind of sleep paralysis when you think you're awake in your bed. (The '-mare' in 'nightmare' comes from the same word.) In fact any form of sleep paralysis takes place in an altered state of awareness, sort of like being tuned between stations, which is why so-called 'hallucinations' commonly appear.
In unworldings at all levels of lucidity we're constantly going through the Urumara forward or backward to get to states that are more lucid or less lucid, or more of this or less of that; the Urumara is any doorway to any different state of being. These changes are really just adjustments of how much energy goes to which chakra. Consciously going through the Prime Urumara--the transition from the physical waking state to the Unworld at large--is not always necessary, and since it frightens many people, they learn how to get unworlded without experiencing the Prime Urumara at all. This amounts to diving under cover of unconsciousness--briefly lapsing out--and then quickly waking yourself back up once you've passed through the Prime Urumara.
The Prime Urumara is not sleep paralysis itself, but a short stretch at the end of the transition between waking and sleeping or vice versa. It can be experienced as a door, window, cliff, hurdle, obstacle, curtain, hole, cave opening, etc. and can be associated with the end of a transition through energy sensations, the Tunnel, etc. The Prime Urumara is the exact moment when the 2-3-4 falls asleep. It's a big challenge for many unworlders to learn how to wake themselves back up so that unworlding experiences can be had with increased lucidity.
One reason that some people are afraid of going to sleep--whether they realize it or not--is that the 2-3-4 normally has some control of breathing and swallowing while awake, but no control at all when the physical goes missing from awareness. Giving up this control consciously can make the practitioner feel that he's going to die or go crazy. This explains the feeling of a weight on the chest that some people experience, even the Old Hag Syndrome which is just the Dream Usher being taken the wrong way. The only way to deal with possible panic at the borderline of sleep is to practice going go sleep for just a second and then waking yourself up, over and over. This can be done at any time but if it isn't done during the day on a regular basis, for the average non-savant, plodding beginner, the practice could be very slow going. We must practice the essential skill of hovering near the Urumara when the mind and body are not dead tired. If you can learn unworlding without doing Daytime Practices of hovering near the Urumara, then I'd say you're a Natural; for example, someone who starts having conscious sleep paralysis or experiences the Vibes spontaneously and quickly advances to direct unworlding from there.
The Projection Room
Having transited the Urumara, you will be in the Projection Room proper, the discharge chamber of the heart chakra. Here you'll generally not only see images, but also might perceive all kinds of noises and other sensory perceptions and other energy sensations such as vibrations and vertigo that would be called hallucinations if we weren't trying to have them on purpose. Dreams with relatively high lucidity take place in the Projection Room from time to time, where the experience is unusually screenlike, for example watching words scroll past, watching a dream on a movie screen, or experiencing the dream self writing music effortlessly. In highly lucid unworldings, the sky's the limit. If you want to hang out in the Projection Room long enough to hear a whole sonata or symphony, you can do that, once you learn how to get there and stay there.
The Projection Room is the last stop before entering the Unworld at large. All these places are multi-dimensional, unlike the 2-dimensional map suggests. You can go through any number of Tunnels and any number of Urumara portals of various descriptions in a single unworlding; backwards, forwards, or both.
People who don't like my map will attack it just as multi-dimensionally, but without getting the point of my repeated statements of purpose: this map is custom-made for me. You could see it as an example of how one person generates as experience of the Unworld that's coherent to himself, and then map out your worlds to suit your own needs.
The 2-3-4 Mind/Body/World
In order to stay unworlded, the slimming-down of the 2-3-4 has to be more than fleeting. This takes practice, and the time to practice is while you're awake. Lucidity should be practiced all the time, not just when you're in a near-coma strongly craving deep sleep. The energy you borrow from the lower three chakras is conserved for use by the upper three chakras which live in the Unworld and know their way around. The Dream Usher is the moderator of this energy-sharing process. When you become willing to share your energy with the Dream Usher--which is easier said than done--then you will start to make progress, however slowly, in the art of unworlding with advanced lucidity. Of course for some people all this is easy, and they won't need to read my many words. The purpose of these words is to make it easier for anybody by improving on the currently limiting 'OBE' and 'lucid dream' descriptions.
The Uppers and the Remote Mind
The Uppers are the throat chakra, brow chakra, and crown chakra, also known as 6ness, 7ness, and 8ness as well as other names. They live in the Unworld and they are you. They want what you want, so learn to recognize them from repetitive appearances in your dream journal. They might look different every time, but you will learn to recognize them by ident.
The Remote Mind includes both the Uppers and the Dream Usher. It is also the subconscious or unconscious mind, but neither of these terms is very useful except to psychologists and psychiatrists who have an affinity for disparaging terms used in reference to anything they can't control. The subconscious is anything but 'sub' and the unconscious is anything but unconscious. 'Remote Mind' is a term I invented when I was studying the work of Milton Erickson M.D., the founder of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. One of his savant-like abilities was to assist in the induction of behavioral and sensory experience by first joining the subject in the subject's own state of being. This leads to the concept of the dream bodies merging with each other, thus seeing through the same first person perspective.
Sixness is all about Noticing or even appreciating, and if indulged too much, tends toward feelings of uncontrolled gratitude, obsession, praise, religious fervor, and other forms of unbridled lust. This is where many mystics and wanna-be mystics get stuck, which is OK but it's not unworlding. Personally I find it self-indulgent. But it's still a good idea to study the lives and surrounding phenomena of such important historical mystics as Joseph of Cupertino, Ramakrishna, and Nanak the founder of Sikhism. I call my sixness dream body Cwahacoy since she appears as a desirable dream character and often uses her desirability to try and make me pay Attention, i.e. to make me more lucid.
Sevenness is the Third Eye which is all about wisdom, intuition, and knowing what's going on behind the scenes. I first met my 7ness dream body, who I call Mouse, during my shamanic journey days of self-soul-retrieval in the early 1990s. The other soul parts I retrieved at that time abandoned me because they felt I had just made them up, but Mouse came back when I began my current unworlding practice. She currently appears as a serious female dream character. She literally lectured me into my first full-blown conscious, Officially Lucid urum unworlding. Twice while I was gazing at Screenshots during Noticing sessions, my third eye started to open unexpectedly. Bright light was streaming in and I thought my left eye had started to pop open, so I closed the eye that was opening. Later I realized that I was in a darkened room with a dark cloth wrapped around my face; if my left eye had in fact been starting to open, there would have been no bright light streaming into it.
Eightness is the ultimate achievement of the human being. The motto of the 8ness dream body, or the crown chakra, is to Relax No Matter What. This ability incorporates the abilities of all the other dream bodies or chakras below it. My 8ness dream body is called Limberluck. He is a homeless fella who has no worries, likes to joke around and tease other dream characters, and loves to show everybody how he can fly. He always has a few coins in his pocket and knows how to share while retaining enough to take care of his own needs.
The Miruvor
Nineness is the synthesis of the Seven. All seven dream bodies--the whole Soul Retinue--can learn to merge together into one 'higher self' or Future Self as I prefer to call it. This body is really a vehicle to freedom. While my Miruvor, who I call Whirly, is in good shape, I can do anything I want and go anywhere I want. This amounts to wishful thinking at the present time (December 2017), but over two dozen Officially Lucid unworldings in the past two years have encouraged me to hope that even I--a natural skeptic and a tough nut to crack--have the potential to learn and teach unworlding.
Miruvor means 'mirror warrior' and refers to a realized being who has already done battle with the mirror and won. The Miruvor is comprised of seven harmonics of awareness in balance and harmony with each other.
Correspondences between the Map to the Unworldand Monroe's Focus Levels
These correspondences were obtained by studying Frank Kepple's posts on Astral Pulse forum and any detailed descriptions of the way to the Unworld that I could find, including my own experiences. I did not study TMI's literature since I can't afford it. Robert Monroe's own descriptions in his books were too vague to help me.
H-Band Noise: The Froth
Focus 3: Forced Noticing
Focus 10: Spontaneous Noticing
Focus 12: The Projection Room
Fear Barrier: The Urumara
Focus 21: The Nowhere
Monroe's higher-numbered focus levels referred to states within the Unworld at large which I will try to map once I can get there more often, although I'm not sure my map would apply to anyone else's experience. But since the map to the Unworld starts in consensus reality and ends at the Unworld at large, its landmarks should be familiar to anyone who is familiar with the way there.
Suggestions for improving my map to the Unworld are welcome, but don't write to inform me that "the astral world is not a beach ball."
