The Radical Individual - Astral Projection

Radical individual - Astral Projection While I was perusing the internet trying to find an example of how Descartes inhabits our lives, particularly his idea of a radical individual being able to achieve any and all knowledge just with inner reflection, I recalled a time in the past where I was introduced to the idea of self hypnosis. This is the ability you have to be able to put yourself in a trance and alleviate any pain you may have just with the power of your own mind. This to me sounded just like Descartes, as with the power of your own mind you are able to do more than what you may expect. As I was thinking of this I looked up meditation and how to do it, one of the first links that popped up was “11 Astral Travel Tips” this is taking a step farther than just self hypnosis as it entails physically separating your consciousness from your body and transcending your mind into the astral plane. This idea was extremely intriguing to me, so I researched further. This astral transcendance is a meditation technique called Powa. The ability to separate mind from body and travel dimensions with your consciousness. While this isn’t just able obtaining ultimate knowledge as Descartes mentions it seems as if it would be a technique that Descartes would believe in. Not only does Powa meditation allow the consciousness to separate from the body but it also allows it to transcend and be able to inhibit the mind of another. I watched a Youtube video of a monk speaking about his first experience with astral projection (which I will link below) and he describes the experience as his mind being rocked out of his body as a young teenager during regular meditation. His mind then traveled down the stairs of his home where it saw his younger brother pouring a bowl of cereal. While his mind observed this, his brother turned and knocked the bowl onto the floor, spilling the cereal and milk and shattering the bowl. The monk's mind returned upstairs to his body, and he walked down the stairs in time to see his brother finishing fixing up his cereal and turning, knocking the bowl onto the floor just as the monk had just seen with his mind. Not only had his mind separated from his body, his mind also saw into the future. Powa meditation not only can do this but it can guide other consciousnesses to their next life after death, as when your consciousness transcends into the astral plane, it can communicate with other consciousnesses that are in that plane as well, and at the moment of death, our consciousness separates from our body with ease and transcends to find its next life. In a video on the Kadampa buddhism website, people who can experience this level of meditation have found peace in others deaths by helping guide their wandering consciousness to the next live. I find this a wonderful example of Descartes in our lives, as with the power of our own minds we may be able to achieve far more than we realize and transcend the power given to us merely in the genes of our physical body, or from scientific texts or other sources of knowledge, and obtain true knowledge and power while facing death just with the natural ability of our minds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNSBat65EtE http://kadampa.org/video/powa-the-profound-practice-of-transference-of-consciousness