The Astral Monk — Issue #1, March 2026

Welcome to the first issue of The Astral Monk - Listening at the Edge of Consciousness.

What's alive for me right now is this — what you're reading right now. After more than four decades of practice, teaching, and quietly continuing to explore the multidimensional realms that most people don't know are available to them, I feel a deep compulsion to write it all down. To share it. To help kindle what's already stirring in you.

I am newly retired from a long career in teaching, and I find myself with something I haven't had in years: time to go even deeper. There really is no end to how deep you can go in consciousness. We will discuss this more in the future. All these years, morning and night, I plunged into multidimensional worlds and deep levels of consciousness, sandwiched around a completely normal life in the world we all share. I made this a daily practice, a living way of being. I changed my perception of reality; it's all the same, inner and outer — more on that later.

You don't have to wait either.

If you begin now — wherever you are, whatever your life looks like — and make this part of your daily rhythm, something remarkable happens. Not someday. Now. This morning. Tonight before sleep. The multidimensional worlds do not wait for retirement or the perfect conditions. They are available in the twenty minutes before your family wakes up, in the stillness after midnight, in any moment you turn sincerely inward.

And as we grow older and more mature, something else begins to happen as well. We start to see more and more of the bigger picture — how life continues to move on forever, how there is no end to Sat-Chit-Ānanda, the ever-deepening experience of pure consciousness. What a way to move through life. What a way to grow older — not into limitation, but into ever-expanding freedom.

Astral projection and out-of-body experiences (OBEs). Deep meditation. The inner and outer faces of consciousness exploring itself. These are not exotic attainments reserved for monks in distant monasteries. They are your birthright.

And here is what I know from all my decades of direct experience: direct experience reshapes your reality. Not belief. Not philosophy. Not someone else's testimony. Your own direct encounter with consciousness — inner and outer — changes everything. Permanently. Irrevocably.

Every single day, this is my experience. The inner and outer explorations that await you in these pages are not merely interesting or useful. They are astonishing. And that astonishment — that sense of wonder at what consciousness actually is and what it can do — is itself the path.

I wish that astonishment for you. Every day. Starting now.

That's why we're here.

Let's begin.

Welcome. Truly. With great love and respect, I am so glad you found your way here.

What you're holding is the first issue of something I have wanted to share for a very long time — a living conversation about the most astonishing territory a human being can explore: the direct experience of consciousness itself, in all its inner and outer dimensions.

DIRECT EXPERIENCE RESHAPES YOUR REALITY — Through three core areas grounded in Nondual Śiva Tantra and direct multidimensional exploration:

1. Astral Projection & Conscious Out-of-Body Experience (OBE) — Multidimensional Exploration

2. Advanced Meditation — Deep States of Consciousness: Tandra, Turīya, Samādhi

3. Kuṇḍalinī/Śakti Awakening — The Underlying Force

These three practices synergistically ignite each other.

Each issue rotates through four pillars:

◆ Pillar I: Direct Experience of Higher States of Consciousness and Multidimensional Realms — astral projection, out-of-body experiences (OBEs), deep meditation, Kuṇḍalinī awakening, and the direct exploration of the inner and outer dimensions of consciousness.

◆ Pillar II: The Psychology of Self-Realization — the integration of powerful spiritual states with Western psychology, grounded embodiment, and the inner work that makes awakening sustainable and whole.

◆ Pillar III: Technology for Human Consciousness Evolution — how emerging tools including AI, binaural audio, neurofeedback, and virtual reality can support and accelerate the journey inward. Technology serves consciousness. Never the reverse.

◆ Pillar IV: The Astral Monk Journey — my own lived testimony from four decades of exploration beyond the body and deep into the Self. Not theory. Direct experience.

When something exciting, revolutionary, or newly discovered crosses my path — an ancient teaching resurfacing, a scientific breakthrough, a cross-traditional convergence that stops me cold — I bring it to you in what I call the Radar Sweep. These arrive when the material calls for it, not on a fixed schedule.

This first issue is richer and fuller than most will be — think of it as a complete introduction to the terrain we'll be exploring together. Future issues will rotate through each pillar, go deeper with every turn, and build on what came before. The further in you go, the more extraordinary it becomes.

This is not designed for a quick scroll. Make yourself a cup of chai. Sit down. Give it the same quality of attention you'd give a meditation.

You are among friends here.

Everything here is worth your time.

Two Experiences from the Ashram — India, 1978

It is 1978. I have been in India only a short time — weeks, not months — and I am still marveling, simply marveling, that I am actually here. I sold my beloved 1972 Firebird for sixteen hundred dollars and bought a one-way ticket to get to this place. And now I am in it. The ashram. The monastery. The temple.

The energy here is unlike anything I have ever felt. It moves through the walls, through the courtyard, through the people. It is alive in a way I have no words for yet.

I have spent most of the day in meditation and contemplation, and now I am lying down, body quiet, mind beginning to still.

Then I feel it.

At the base of my spine — a warmth. Liquid gold, moving upward. Gentle at first. Almost tentative. A tingling spreads through my entire body, and I recognize it immediately: the Kuṇḍalinī is beginning to rise.

I have felt this before. But tonight it feels stronger.

I sit up. I bring my legs into half-lotus, right leg over left. I close my eyes and turn my gaze upward — inward — toward the space behind the forehead, the ājñā. I have learned to look here. I have learned to wait.

At first, what I see is familiar: pulsating purplish-blue lights, almost like a tunnel. They move toward me, then recede. Then move again. The energy in my body continues to build — through the chakras, rising toward the crown — growing stronger, more insistent, more alive.

The light inside my forehead begins to brighten. The colors deepen and intensify. And then — there, at the center of the tunnel — I see it.

A tiny blue speck of light.

Brilliant. Impossibly small. Absolutely alive.

My entire mind locks onto it. Full intention, nothing held back. Body awareness disappears completely. There is only this light.

And then it begins to grow.

Pulsing blue light — expanding, approaching, or perhaps I am approaching it. I cannot tell the difference, and it does not matter. Waves of love begin to move through me. Not emotion — something older than emotion. Something that has no name in English. I feel completely whole. Completely met. As if I have been searching for something my entire life without knowing what it was, and here it is. Here it is.

The Blue Pearl grows brighter. Larger. Shimmering, pulsing, alive with intelligence. I know — not as a thought but as a recognition deeper than thought — that this is consciousness itself. This is the higher part of me. This is what I am when I am not pretending to be small.

When that recognition lands, the Pearl blazes — almost too bright to hold.

And then, gently, it begins to recede. Back into the tunnel. Back into the dark behind my forehead. And I follow it out of meditation — head pulsing with energy, heart so full it is almost painful.

There are tears streaming down my face.

The words that come to me are from my old Christian childhood: I have touched the face of God.

I know even as I think it that those words are just a beginning — a finger pointing at something that has no ceiling, no walls, no end. But they are the truest words I have in this moment.

I sit in the stillness of the ashram, tears drying on my face.

I cannot wait to meditate again.

I have been at the ashram for about a month. I am in bliss.

Earlier that day, sitting in the courtyard in the afternoon heat, I turned to a friend — another Western seeker, like me, pulled here by something he couldn't name — and made a proposal.

We would memorize every detail of the statue of Bhagavān Nityānanda standing in the courtyard. We would agree to meet there at 2 a.m. — not in our physical bodies, but in our astral forms. Afterward, we would each write down everything we experienced, seal our accounts in separate envelopes, and hand them to a third friend at breakfast.

He agreed without hesitation.

That night, I lie on my back in the corpse position, body completely still, awareness beginning to turn inward. The ashram is silent. The practices of the day have prepared the field — hours of chanting, meditation, and the accumulated stillness of weeks of early-morning sādhana. The energy here is unlike anything I have ever known. It moves through everything.

I visualize myself floating upward.

The familiar vibrations begin — gently, at the base of my spine. Then spreading. Then the energy moves across my entire body like a wave of electricity softening into light.

And then I see my feet.

My ethereal feet — translucent, almost ghostly — begin to separate from my physical feet. Slowly. Deliberately. Then my knees lift free. Then the rest of my body follows, rising upward, hovering about four feet above the physical form lying peacefully on the bed below.

I float there for a moment, aware of both — the body beneath me, still and quiet as a stone, and the awareness that is me, weightless and awake above it.

I remember the statue.

I drift downward through the walls of the dormitory and out into the courtyard. The ashram at night is luminous in its stillness. I hover about three feet above the ground near the statue of Bhagavān Nityānanda, taking in every detail.

Then my friend appears.

He is floating as well, equally astonished, equally awake. We circle the statue together, grinning. We speak — confirming what we see, locking in the details we will later write down. His face in this state carries an expression I have never seen on him in waking life: pure wonder, completely unguarded.

He waves at me.

I wave back.

Then he says — Let's go to another temple — and shoots away to my upper right, gone in an instant.

I stay.

I hover in the courtyard, alone now, basking in the bliss of it. The night air of India, the sacred ground beneath the ashram, the statue of my teacher's teacher standing silent in the dark. I am outside my body. I am fully conscious. I am completely free.

In the morning, we hand our sealed envelopes to our mutual friend.

He opens them at breakfast and reads them aloud.

The descriptions match. What we saw, how we appeared to each other, the details of the statue, what we said to each other in that courtyard at 2 a.m. — all of it confirmed.

I sit at that breakfast table and feel something settle permanently into place.

This is not imagination.

This is not a dream.

This is consciousness operating beyond the body — verifiable, repeatable, and completely real.

I know I can do it again. I have done it hundreds of times since.

Two experiences. One ashram. One month apart.

In the first, consciousness turned inward and touched its own source — a luminous blue point of light pulsing with intelligence, radiating waves of love so complete I wept.

In the second, consciousness moved outward — separating cleanly from the physical body, operating independently in space, confirmed by a witness.

Different directions. Same force.

And yet — even that distinction, inward and outward, begins to dissolve the deeper you go.

I have been in tunnels of light where I genuinely could not tell which way I was moving. Was I flying deeper into inner space? Or expanding outward into another world entirely? The question stopped making sense. Because at a certain depth of experience, the inner becomes the outer. The outer becomes the inner. The spectrum of consciousness doesn't have a fixed center — or rather, every point on it IS the center.

And then you return to your physical body. Which is, itself, another reality — one you simply adopt as real again, the way you adopt any world you find yourself inhabiting.

Each one is equally real. Each one is an expression of the same intelligence.

In the tradition I practice and teach — Nondual Śiva Tantra (NST) — this intelligence has a name: Śakti/Kuṇḍalinī. Not a metaphor. Not a symbol. A living force already present within you, the very power of consciousness recognizing itself — whether it moves toward a Blue Pearl of light behind your forehead, or lifts you out of your body into the courtyard of an ancient ashram at 2 a.m.

Same light. Same intelligence. Same you.

Not belief. Direct experience.

Yours is waiting.

Before I sit for deep meditation, I prepare the field.

There are many ways to do this — some simple, some more advanced — and I will be sharing them with you as we go deeper together in future issues. Each one serves the same purpose: quieting the surface of the mind, gathering awareness, and setting the conditions in which the inner worlds naturally begin to reveal themselves.

Here is one of the simpler and most accessible ways I prepare. Begin with this. It works.

A few rounds of simple prāṇāyāma — nothing elaborate. A gentle inhalation to the count of four. A soft hold at the top of the breath, and in that pause, I push my awareness ever so slightly upward into the upper regions of the forehead. I know the Blue Pearl is there. I set my intention toward it.

This is not wishful thinking. This is Saṅkalpa — the Sanskrit word for intention — and it is one of the most powerful forces available to a practitioner. People sometimes say, oh, it's just imagination. I want to be direct with you: it is far more than that. We will go deeper into this teaching in future issues. For now, simply understand that the universe itself arises from this same creative power. Setting your Saṅkalpa before meditation is not pretending. It is participating in the same force that generates reality.

I exhale gently, longer than the inhale. Hold softly at the bottom of the breath — just a slight pause, a gathering. Then inhale again, carry awareness back to the top, hold, and repeat. Two, three, four rounds. Just enough to prepare the body and focus the mind.

Then I settle.

Back relatively straight — relaxed, not rigid. Eyes closed, inner gaze lifted gently toward the ājñā chakra, the space behind and slightly above the eyes. I begin to breathe from that point — as if the breath itself is moving in and out of the spiritual eye. A mantra often accompanies this, cycling silently with the breath.

And then I simply go deeper.

As awareness settles and focus sharpens, the pulsating blue and purple lights begin to appear — a tunnel-like quality, lights moving toward me, then receding. I don't chase them. I continue to look inward, gently, with full intention.

And there — at the very center — the Blue Pearl appears.

Sometimes dark blue. Sometimes light blue. Sometimes ringed with gold or brilliant white. Sometimes it appears as a single blue star suspended in inner space.

However it comes, I meet it with the same quality: steady, loving, completely focused attention.

What happens next — you already know, because you just read about it.

A Simple Version to Begin Tonight

Four slow rounds of gentle prāṇāyāma — inhale four counts, soft hold at the top, exhale slightly longer, soft hold at the bottom.

At the top of each hold, direct awareness gently toward the center of the forehead. Set your Saṅkalpa — your intention — simply and clearly: I am open to the Blue Pearl.

After four rounds, settle into stillness. Inner gaze soft, directed toward the ājñā. Breathe as if from that point.

Watch the inner sky without forcing. If lights appear, don't chase them. If a blue point of light appears at the center, meet it with your full, steady, loving attention.

That is enough. Seven days. Same time each morning if possible — pre-dawn is ideal, when the world is still, and the veil between states is thinnest.

Write down what you notice. Even nothing is something worth noting.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells a simple story:

A merchant searching for fine pearls finds one of extraordinary value. He sells everything he owns to acquire it.

That's the entire parable. Twelve words in the original Greek.

For centuries, Western Christianity interpreted this pearl as the Kingdom of Heaven — something external, something to be earned, something awaiting you after death.

But in the Gospel of Thomas — an earlier collection of Jesus's teachings discovered in Egypt in 1945 — the same parable appears with a different resonance. The Gnostic readers of Thomas understood the pearl not as an external kingdom but as the true Self. The luminous essence already present within you. The thing you have always been, beneath every layer of conditioning and forgetting.

You sell everything — every false identity, every limiting belief, every attachment to the small self — to recover what was never actually lost.

Now sit with this for a moment.

A tiny, brilliant point of light. Pulsing with intelligence. Radiating love. Found not in the world outside but in the deepest interior of awareness itself.

The merchant in the parable recognizes it instantly. He doesn't deliberate. He doesn't analyze. He simply knows — this is it — and surrenders everything to have it.

This is precisely what I experienced in that ashram in 1978. The Blue Pearl did not feel like something I had discovered. It felt like something I had always known and finally remembered.

The Sanskrit tradition calls it nīla bindu — the blue point. The Tibetan Buddhist tradition calls it thig le — the luminous drop at the heart of awareness. The Gnostic Christians called it the Pearl. The quantum physicists, approaching from an entirely different direction, describe the singularity — the dimensionless point from which all matter, energy, space, and time emerged at the moment of creation.

Different languages. Different centuries. Different traditions.

The same pearl.

And here is what unites all of these descriptions: it is not found by seeking outward. It is found by going so deeply inward that inner and outer dissolve — and what remains is a tiny, brilliant, pulsing point of light that you recognize, immediately and completely, as yourself.

Before you close this issue, I want to leave you with one question and one practice — both so simple you can begin tonight.

The question: Have you ever had an experience you couldn't explain that felt more real than ordinary reality?

If you have — even once, even briefly — you already know more than you think you know. That experience was not random. It was not imagination. It was consciousness showing you what it actually is.

I read every message that comes in. I may not be able to respond to each one personally, but nothing you share goes unseen. This is a real conversation, and your experiences genuinely shape where this goes next.

Now — the practice.

Tonight, before you sleep, set a simple intention:

Tonight.

I will remember my dreams.

That's all. No technique. No special preparation. Just that quiet declaration to yourself.

And when you wake in the morning — don't move. Not yet. Before the urge to get up, before the day rushes in, lie still for just a few moments and let the dreams come back to you. Gently. Without forcing.

This single practice, sustained over days and weeks and months, begins to train the deeper layers of awareness to surface. And here is what I promise you: eventually you will notice that certain dreams feel different. More vivid. More real than ordinary reality. More real, perhaps, than the room you wake up in.

We are just beginning.

If this calls to you — you're welcome here.

From the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra — a living scripture of Nondual Śiva Tantra, over a thousand years old:

Meditate on the living reality of your own awareness as the light of a lamp — luminous, without object, without limit.

That light the ancient masters pointed toward — luminous, without object, without limit — is the same light that appears as a tiny blue point at the center of inner space when awareness grows still enough to see it.

The Blue Pearl is not separate from you. It is not something you find. It is what you are when the noise settles and the searching stops — a single point of living light, pulsing with the intelligence of the entire universe, waiting quietly behind your own forehead.

The sages of Nondual Śaiva Tantra saw it. The Gnostic mystics called it the Pearl of Great Price. The quantum physicists describe its equivalent as the singularity — the dimensionless point from which all creation emerges.

And you — in the stillness of an early morning, eyes closed, awareness turned gently inward — can touch it yourself.

This is not poetry.

This is a precise description of what is actually there.

Direct experience reshapes your reality.

Dive inward, fly free.

Don

The Astral Monk