Fun book of psychological excercises

[swords]

I picked this book up today called Astonish Yourself
http://www.amazon.com/Astonish-Your...bs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221179466&sr=1-1

It's a silly title for a very fun and interesting book of quantum psychological & philosophical experiments to run on yourself and others. I only can recommend this type of experimenting to open minded people and for those of you among us, it will open your world up a bit further to the malleability of "reality", your perceptions of yourself. Other personality types won't do these mental excercises and just say this is a useless venture. There are a few excercises available in the book preview on Amazon but they get weirder and more interesting further on in the book.

Have fun and maybe put a sticky note on yourself with your address along with the disclaimer "If found please place in nearest mailbox, return postage guarenteed."

 

[xvart]

Thanks for the link. I love material like that. Unfortunately, my local library does not have it. I suppose I'll have to try to do some inter library loan, if they will still allow me to do it... lol.

Looks like a great book.

xvart.

 

[seedjar]

Haha, that looks like a lot of fun. I used to love books like that when I was a kid - I think I'm going to order a copy and maybe another one to give to my friend.
Once in eighth grade a friend and I dubbed a four hour long audio tape with a loop of me saying "schoolbus" and listened to it while staying up late the next night. I think I suffered some sort of psychological damage as a result.
~Joe

 

[swords]

LOL! But I don't view it as damage but an expanded awareness/consciousness reaching into areas we don't normally access. The mind is a toy - play with it! After reading a lot of the book last night I noticed that a lot of these techniques can actually work to lead one into the various ecstatic states needed to enter the mystical/magickal experience mindset. Which is culminated simply focusing your concentrated will (after it's ego loss) on a certain idea & outcome once the psyche/ego has reached the doorway to "chapel perilous" supplied by some of these excersises. Much simpler than anything Crowley or the hundreds of other mystics ever wrote out for achieving similar states of disassociation. i also like that the book teaches these techniques without any references to dogmas Infact one technique in the book shows you how to destroy dogmas you've imposed on yourself; such as taking a week or month to read from and venerate a phone book a few minutes every day as if it were the bible or another holy book. It's mind exploration plain and simple, with the choice for the experimenter to add and subtract to the experiences as you wish.

One of the funnest things I've done like that before getting this book and seeing some of these ideas that I plan to implement was get into the "right state of mind", and then placed a weight on one of my synthesizer's keys that was set to a very slowly oscillating sine wave pattern. Then I went about sculpting or whatever it was I was doing that day. After it ran for about 3 hours my pupils were huge and I was seeing black geometric shapes surrounded by "auras", tracers and everything else typical of a psychedelic experience. And it was all au naturale, no substances used it was just the repeated oscillating sound from the synthesizer which created the "magical" effect that took place in my mind and visual perception.

 

[seedjar]

That stuff gives me terrible headaches. I had this weird Rainman experience the other day counting change - I counted out several rolls of quarters 20 coins at a time, without giving them much more than a glance - and then I had to leave work and go lie down because my head was spinning. I get the same way around people with lots of cologne/perfume on.
~Joe

 

[xvart]

I counted out several rolls of quarters 20 coins at a time

AHHHH! Don't mention quarters. I had to carry $800 in quarters two days ago. I still have nightmares about them falling all over the place and throwing my back out!

Books like that are so fun to read. My friends in college and I could probably write some pretty good ones because we used to just stand around and similar discussion all the time on the front porch of our residence hall. I still can't imagine how some people don't find it fascinating at all to think about, and simply dismiss any sort of mental exercises or the sort. Some of my fondest memories are pushing the envelope of thought and reality. Man, the conversations we had about VR...

xvart.

 

[swords]

If exotic incense and smells send you off you should try wandering around the apt building my dad lives in. Since there are folks from just about everywhere in the 42 story building (mainly from the middle east and north Africa) you smell some amazing things. Some wonderfully good you can't imagine what would make such a smell, some so shockingly terrible and some just otherworldly and completely unidentifiable. My co-workers are basically all Asians and Somalis so I get to try all sorts of "weird" food stuff by American standards.

I think the reason more people don't do these programs is they don't understand what it can do for their preconceived perceptions (reality tunnels). Or they are afraid it actually may change their perceptions and many people are (subconsciously) afraid of changing their consciousness cos they imagine "I know it all about me and my world is set up like this: A, B, C and it definitely does not include D!" But when you include "D, E or F" things are different from then on. Complacency and conformity to our own constructed realities only leads us to a dead end (or closed minds) I believe. I think anyone who's had a successful consciousness changing experience will seek it again but it's getting over that initial fear/skepticism of the unknown.