Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

The Phase. Shattering the Illusion of Reality
The Phase. Shattering the Illusion of Reality
The Phase. Shattering the Illusion of Reality
Ebook602 pages13 hours

The Phase. Shattering the Illusion of Reality

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

5/5

()

Read preview

About this ebook

All my life I sought an elegant solution to one odd riddle. I sought it from Siberia to California, from the field of neurophysiology to quantum physics, and in illegal experiments on thousands of people. But the answer I found sent me into shock and changed my entire perception of reality. Unlike others, I offer not only a new perspective on the world, but also step-by-step practices that can shake the pillars of your limited reality, and give you revolutionary new tools for obtaining information, self-healing, travel, entertainment, and much more.

By the Phase Research Center

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Part I: What is the Phase?
Chapter 1 – The Enigma
Chapter 2 – The Search for an Answer
Chapter 3 – The Answer

Part II: How to Enter the Phase Today

Part III: The Phase Practitioner's Practical Encyclopedia
Chapter 1 – General Background
Chapter 2 – The Indirect Method
Chapter 3 – The Direct Method
Chapter 4 – Becoming Conscious While Dreaming
Chapter 5 – Non-Autonomous Methods
Chapter 6 – Deepening
Chapter 7 – Maintaining
Chapter 8 – Primary Skills
Chapter 9 – Translocation and Finding Objects
Chapter 10 – Application
Chapter 11 – Useful Tips
Chapter 12 – A Collection of Techniques
Chapter 13 – Putting a Face on the Phenomenon
Chapter 14 – Final Test
Chapter 15 – The Highest Level of Practice
Chapter 16 – Real Examples of Phase Experiences
Appendix

(Version 3.0, 2015)

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 20, 2014
ISBN9781311815859
The Phase. Shattering the Illusion of Reality
Author

Michael Raduga

Michael Raduga is the founder of the OOBE Research Center. He researches a dissociative state of mind (the phase) commonly referred to as out-of-body experiences (OBEs), astral projections and lucid dreams. M.Raduga the author of more than 10 books published on this topic. He is a leading researcher on methods that allow every person to achieve out-of-body experiences within a very short period of time. Meanwhile, M.Raduga approaches the matter in a scientific and non-nonsense way.

Read more from Michael Raduga

Related to The Phase. Shattering the Illusion of Reality

Related ebooks

Self-Improvement For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for The Phase. Shattering the Illusion of Reality

Rating: 4.833333333333333 out of 5 stars
5/5

6 ratings1 review

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Excelente !
    Will like to see kind of a summary of it .
    Thanks Michael.

Book preview

The Phase. Shattering the Illusion of Reality - Michael Raduga

Phase Research Center presents

THE PHASE

Shattering the Illusion of Reality

(Version 3.0, 2015)

By Michael Raduga

Translated by Peter Orange

Illustrated by Andrey Goodkov

Copyright 2015 by Michael Raduga

Smashwords Edition

All my life I sought an elegant solution to one odd riddle. I sought it from Siberia to California, from the field of neurophysiology to quantum physics, and in illegal experiments on thousands of people. But the answer I found sent me into shock and changed my entire perception of reality. Unlike others, I offer not only a new perspective on the world, but also step-by-step practices that can shake the pillars of your limited reality, and give you revolutionary new tools for obtaining information, self-healing, travel, entertainment, and much more.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Part I: What is the Phase?

Chapter 1 – The Enigma

Chapter 2 – The Search for an Answer

Chapter 3 – The Answer

Part II: How to Enter the Phase Today

Part III: The Phase Practitioner's Practical Encyclopedia

Chapter 1 – General Background

Chapter 2 – The Indirect Method

Chapter 3 – The Direct Method

Chapter 4 – Becoming Conscious While Dreaming

Chapter 5 – Non-Autonomous Methods

Chapter 6 – Deepening

Chapter 7 – Maintaining

Chapter 8 – Primary Skills

Chapter 9 – Translocation and Finding Objects

Chapter 10 – Application

Chapter 11 – Useful Tips

Chapter 12 – A Collection of Techniques

Chapter 13 – Putting a Face on the Phenomenon

Chapter 14 – Final Test

Chapter 15 – The Highest Level of Practice

Chapter 16 – Real Examples of Phase Experiences

Appendix

Proposals regarding translating and publishing this book and other works of M. Raduga may be sent to obe4u@obe4u.com

www.obe4u.com

Part I: What is the Phase?

Chapter 1 – The Enigma

Mid-May, Moscow. A train arrives from a still-cold Siberia, and I step out. I'm 20 years old, don't know anybody, don't have any money, and I'm awfully naive and insecure. Well, what desperate idea brought me here and what will come of it all?

The Chain Reaction Begins

At first, you think everything's black and white. Then, you understand that many black things are actually white, and vice versa. And then it turns out that there's neither one nor the other. Isn't that the principal way we judge everything and how we understand life?

Now an avowed materialist and hardened pragmatist, it long seemed to me that I was into things that were not only totally nuts, but were also lacking any tie to reality – to the world around us. However, my mind can't stand such uncertainty and would always try to explain the situation. As a result, each new step on my path in search of an answer incredibly expanded my field of activity, and brought it frighteningly close to the most fundamental pillars of each of our lives.

However, having gone from many years of research on myself to illegal mass experiments on people, I determined that everything in nature is logical and cohesive, and that miracles only take place in the minds of the uninitiated. But do we want to know the plain truth about our world, and are we ready to live in that reality?

Dear reader, quite soon you will have to rethink some important aspects of your day-to-day life. But to keep things from getting too abrupt and painful, we'll start by talking about things that seem quite strange at first – but they're just the appetizer. So please don't rush to conclusions. All events in our lives are much more interrelated than is generally believed, and that's why the story of solving my non-trivial problem will be much clearer if we start from the very beginning.

I was born on-campus at the Akademgorodok university complex in the Russian city of Novosibirsk, which is the academic heart of Siberia. I grew up with Nuclear Physics, Thermal Physics, and Computer Center being the names of bus stations, with zero degrees Fahrenheit being the average temperature in winter, and summer lasting two months. I grew up alone with my mother in what were very trying times for my country, which is why I spent my entire childhood in dormitories and in constant want of basic necessities. That's probably why I was always sick, sniffling, and suffering from asthma. I even got doctors' notes to sit out of physical education (PE) class, but that didn't stop me from getting into martial arts and then weight lifting later on.

Since grandma was the head accountant at a large scientific research center, and mom was a histologist at the morgue, my most vivid memories from childhood involve two-story computers crunching away and playing with wooden blocks at mom's work. The soft tissue of the deceased would stick to my play blocks because of the paraffin wax she used to make small specimens with a microtome. Only now do I understand the strange looks of passersby when I would play and catch grasshoppers in the building where mom worked.

However, the key factor became one special way that my mind worked, which led to me graduating high school by the skin of my teeth. My mind stubbornly refuses to take in detail and always tries to operate on nothing but the big picture and overarching systems. It's something like inattention to detail, but in an extreme form. For example, I would be able to learn grammar rules quite well in school, but I would write a seven-letter word with only six letters or make two or three obvious spelling errors in it. I could reread the word a hundred times and still not see those mistakes. Only after several hours or days (once my mind had forgotten what I had written) would I be able to see those mistakes. They weren't yet words made of letters, but were still concepts made of symbols. Having such a disorder, I was only able to get the lowest grades in many subjects at school, even though I had the theory part down.

This being special had a flipside: a well-developed imagination and ability to see the whole system behind things. In childhood, this allowed me to turn any household item into a toy. Any pencil or even meat grinder could easily turn into a realistic spaceship or firearm. Even though I was unable to write a single sentence without making mistakes, I was able graduate as the best in my class in history; and I was the only one to have read works by Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Remarque all the way through.

My childhood insecurities kept me from venturing out, and compelled me to read voraciously and dream of the impossible. Although I now adhere to a thoroughly pragmatic worldview, back then I would believe what I read in any tabloid about an alien visitation the day before, the end of the world coming the next day, or Bigfoot lurking in every patch of woods. The words ESP and paranormal were sacred to me. I always hoped to uncover some supernatural ability in myself and finally break out of this ordinary world, which had always somehow seemed gray and boring. I believed in any and all nonsense in the hope that the world was actually more interesting. And then, my dream came true.

The autumn I was 16 years old, I woke up in the middle of the night and opened my eyes. I had awakened unusually early, and my mind and senses were super sharp. Taken aback, I decided to roll over and fall back asleep, but I was unable to. I couldn't move! My first thought: It's all over, I've died! Then a brilliant idea hit me: I'm being abducted by aliens! And well, isn't that how alien abduction stories usually start? Nighttime, in bed, paralysis... I immediately realized what would come next: They were now pulling me up into their flying saucer.

Although I had been waiting for this moment my entire life, I turned out to be unprepared for it. The feeling of being absolutely terrified amplified until I felt my body levitate off the bed. After pleading with the invisible aliens, I felt myself being returned. Thanks! I'll be brave enough for it next time, guys! No sooner had I communicated that to them telepathically than I was lifted up off my bed, and pulled legs first towards the window. At some point, I was able to move my arm and even clutch at my comforter; but it were as if it weighed an entire ton, and I let go of it.

My fear substantially subsided when I realized that I was flying towards a closed window. Are they going to use me to batter through the window? I've never read in newspapers about UFOs doing that! I shut my eyes tight as I neared the glass. To my astonishment, my physical body went through the window pane, which I felt with each of my internal organs! Now finding myself on the other side of the window and in the starry, cold Siberian sky, I decided that I wouldn't be afraid anymore, and to let what was about to happen, go ahead and happen. Judging from it all, I was in for a big surprise; but then I shot up awake in bed, astounded. Actually, I wouldn't be able to sleep the rest of the night.

Here's where I'm going to tell you something that will either relieve you or disappoint you: this book isn't at all about aliens. It's not even about what you think. So what happened next? Was it a dream? I have had many vivid dreams since childhood, but this had hardly been a dream, as I had been aware of everything and my physical body had been pulled outside. Why had I flown through the window? Who knows what little green men are capable of! Why had I reappeared in my room so suddenly? The aliens had erased my memory of what happened next! My mind ignored any inconsistencies. I simply didn't know that the most interesting things were still ahead. What had happened was much more earth-shattering than I thought, as I would soon find out.

In 1803, Thomas Young sent a beam of light through an opaque plate with two slits in it. Instead of seeing the expected two lines on the viewing screen, he saw several lines, as if two waves of light from the two slits had been interfering (overlapping) with each other. Over the 20th and 21st centuries, it has been proven that not only light, but also individual elementary particles and even some molecules behave as waves – as if they were going through both slits at the same time. However, if you place a sensor at the slits that observes what exactly happens to the particle at that point, and which slit it finally ends up going through, then only two lines will appear on the projection screen, as if the fact of observation (indirect influence) collapses the wave function and the experiment subject behaves as a particle.

Dreams of Superman

That had probably been the most dramatic and important event in my life, and I treasured it and kept it alive in my memory. I even told somebody about it, but for some reason they didn't really believe me. And why would they? In my mind, I was among the elect few whom the aliens had been paying attention to and needed for some reason. My alien abduction would have been my biggest achievement, were it not for the sequel.

A few months later, I woke up in bed during the day and was again unable to move. I was again overcome by pure terror, but for some reason I immediately understood that this time, aliens had nothing to do with it. How could there be aliens in broad daylight? But what if it had been nighttime... For that or some other reason, my body wouldn't move anywhere. I simply lay terrified, trying to move, and was able to after a minute or two. Now there had already been two paranormal events in my life, but how could I explain what had happened?

I gradually recalled books and articles about psychics who would leave their bodies or enter the astral plane. Judging from those descriptions, I had had something similar to their experiences happen to me: vibrations, noise in the ears, and paralysis in the body. Generally speaking, I had always dreamed about and even tried it, but to no avail. When it happened a few weeks later, my suspicions were confirmed.

I will again bring relief to some and disappointment to others: This book is not about out-of-body experiences or astral travel – not even close. But we'll get to that.

That's when it became clear that I had a unique gift that I needed to develop. After all, it could open up incredible opportunities, and the world no longer seemed gray and boring! At a bookstore, I found a section that had answers to all my questions and contained the God-given truth on everything: the New Age & Occult section... Of course, I was unable to buy any books due to a lack of funds, and that's why I simply read them there in the store. Back then, I would visit bookstores more often than the most devout go to church.

The books would partially touch upon out-of-body travel, the astral plane, or lucid dreaming, but the techniques they described wouldn't work for some reason. However, I started to have spontaneous experiences once every few weeks. For some reason, it was always after sleeping. I would still experience terror, but I was able to get over it. At first, I would push out only one arm for a couple of seconds. The next time, I would be able to push out the upper part of my body, and then after some time I was able to walk around the room and get used to the sensations, having already separated from my body. I also noticed that sometimes I would leave my body with my soul while in my room, and at other times I would find myself in some other world – maybe it was that very same astral plane that I had read about in books and newspapers. I would also start to have lucid dreams: I would suddenly realize while dreaming that everything around me was a dream, and then do what I wanted. Thus, I had obtained three whole superpowers! And I was ready to slap anybody who said I was wrong. You see, it was all real in terms of how I experienced it.

Don't think it was all something I imagined or dreamed – the feeling of horror didn't come without a reason. While in those unusual states, I remained fully conscious and self-aware, but I couldn't feel my physical body in my bed. Meanwhile, all of my senses were intact in my separated soul or some phantom, astral body. Those sensations were so vivid that they were often hyper-realistic, and the clarity of perception exceeded that of the normal human senses many times over. While there, one thought kept nagging at me: Why is it all as realistic as the physical world? How is that possible?!

I should add that by then, mom had married and I had a little brother. They all moved to even more northern reaches of Siberia, and at 18 years old, I was completely on my own. It was work – or starve. Since I couldn't enroll in a university right away and become an Orientalist, and since I was a well-built athlete, I had been working as a bouncer at night clubs since the age of 17. My first experiences with real life, money, and women took place at such a distinguished establishment.

However, both at work and at home, I could hardly stop thinking about my gift. I wanted to study it, figure out what it was, and discover all the opportunities that it brought. Although everything was awfully muddled and obscure, I was 100 percent sure that there was an elegant explanation for what had occurred, which could be incorporated into a logically coherent worldview. But how?

It seemed experimentation and practice would be necessary. And that's when I stepped on the same rake that everyone does when it comes to these things. How to check whether or not you're really outside of your body? You'd have to appear before somebody or find out something that you didn't know before. For example, you could check to see which card you had pulled from a deck and placed face-down on your dresser. It all looks easy, but isn't in practice. It's as if you exit your body and then appear in the physical world. However, you'll see the right card as often as would be predicted by chance. The same goes for other tests of the same sort. Even more puzzlingly, even though I was leaving my body, why did I still perceive everything in my usual physical body, and why was it that I often could not do things I expected to be easy, like levitating or walking through a wall?

Either way, I gradually understood in no uncertain terms that this works best not when falling asleep (as is recommended everywhere in books), but upon awakening, and especially in the morning or after a daytime nap. It wasn't until later that I realized that people simply value experiences obtained upon awakening less, and therefore often distance themselves from them. I use the intuitive term the direct method to refer to those less effective actions performed before falling asleep, and the indirect method to refer to those performed upon awakening. It was the latter of the two that was giving me more and more opportunity to experiment. And that had serious consequences: I was able to verify whether everything they wrote about in the books on the New Age & Occult shelf checked out in practice. Isn't that where all those fantastic and amazing stories come from – from the fact that readers don't have the ability to verify them in practice?

For example, in one book I read about how after leaving the body, you could fly up to people you know, pinch them, and leave a real bruise. Many people's jaws drop when they read that, as did mine when I was a child. But now, I could try it out. Having caught the moment of awakening, I could employ a technique, leave my body, fly out to my friends and family, and pinch them everywhere possible. Well, I tried it dozens of times before asking myself a simple question: If the author had really done it, then why did he talk about it so casually, and why didn't he at least try it out one more time? He would have received the Nobel Prize if it were true, for starters. Alas, he gave us nothing but a brief description. All such stories are based on the same template. As are all such books. And none of them can be repeated in an experimental setting...

The regularity of my experiences – by then I had had several dozen – pointed to something else. No matter which place I ended up, it always had the same properties. That is to say, if I left my body, my opportunities would be the same as if I had entered the astral plane or had a lucid dream. Exactly the same! Moreover, when leaving my body, I often began to notice that the configuration of our apartment wasn't exactly the same: Something might be missing or not have been there before.

But it finally got through to me that if any other person did what I did, than they, too, would leave their body. That is to say, I didn't have any special ability and God knows what I was doing with my time, as all experiments related to real-world application had ended in failure. I was overcome by a sense of complete disappointment. It had turned out that all my hopes were pinned on some crock.

Thanks to a 1927 discovery, thousands of scientists and students have repeated one and the same simple experiment by shining a laser through a hole that gradually becomes smaller. Logically, the visible laser point on the projection screen shrinks as the hole contracts. But when the hole becomes narrow enough, the laser point suddenly widens and expands across the screen until the hole closes. This is the clearest proof of the quintessence of quantum physics – the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which states: The more precisely we define one of a pair of properties in a quantum system, the more uncertain the other property becomes. In this case, the more precisely we define the position of the laser photons by making the hole smaller, the more uncertain their momentum becomes.

Renewed Horizons

I'm thankful that I was lucky enough for it to all have happened when I was 18 and 19 years old. Later on, people often came my way that were unable to let go of their beliefs because their entire worldview had been based on those beliefs for decades. It's hard to admit to yourself that you've been wrong about everything, starting from square one.

After several months of complete disappointment in my gift, I suddenly began to notice that I was still drawn to having such experiences, even if I wasn't actually leaving my body at all. First of all, it was still the most amazing feeling you could imagine. Second, I clearly understood that this practice gave me my only opportunity to go somewhere besides the Siberian steppes, and to see people who I couldn't in real life (for example, the girl who wouldn't notice me). Third, I increasingly felt that there was great potential here, but that I simply didn't know which way to go.

But was I all alone with my gift? The answer I arrived at was surprisingly optimistic. Let's say I can't do what others are unable to do. By corollary, I can do everything that at least one person on the planet can do. That's how I gradually approached my next wave of practice. This time, I threw out any outside sources of information; and I started from a clean slate, evaluating what had taken place in as unbiased and objective a manner as possible. The process gradually consumed me to the point that I wanted to concentrate on my research more, and so I quit my job. Since I was on my own, the situation taught me to live on a few dollars a month and still be a serious athlete. I also learned what it's like to live in Siberia with the power turned off due to non-payment, and what social isolation means.

However, those were the most productive years of my life. Although I dreamt of some research center where I would be able to conduct experiments involving a large number of practitioners, in reality I could count on nobody but myself. That's why I set up my schedule so that I could do as many attempts within a 24-hour period as possible upon awakenings: after nighttime sleep, morning sleep, daytime naps, and even evening sleep.

In search of an elegant solution to the mystery of the phenomenon, I experimentally came to the quite simple conclusion that out-of-body travel, or lucid dreaming, and the astral plane, were of one and the same nature. And that's why one and the same techniques are used to experience all of those phenomena. And that's why the properties of space and practitioner's opportunities are always the same, no matter what you call the experience.

As it turned out, if it's all one and the same, then researching any one of the phenomena can be counted as researching all the others. Although mystics wrote about the astral plane in 19th century books, the study of lucid dreaming got its start in 1975 when Keith Hearne proved the ability to maintain consciousness while dreaming in an experiment at the University of Hull. Next, Stephen LaBerge repeated a similar experiment at Stanford University. In both experiments, participants exhibited previously agreed-upon eyeball movements while instrumentation showed that their brains were asleep.

Initial findings on the physiology of the brain demonstrated that in most cases the phenomenon was caused by rapid eye moment (REM) sleep, during which centers of consciousness anomalously activate. That's when I gradually began to realize that with careful study, modern science with its phenomena and questions was far cooler and mysterious than any and all religion, mysticism, or new-age occultism.

In order to keep the various phenomena together, I began to use the term phase or phase state. The phase is not some alternative to all the other jumbled terms out there, but is the unification of them all. An umbrella term was also necessary for the reason that it turns out that the phase encompasses many more phenomena than one would guess. For example, sleep paralysis (where it all started for me) is also related to the phase. My alien abduction story was clearly rooted in it. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Back then, it never occurred to me how far all this could go, and what quite unexpected things the phase could relate to.

But how elegant was this unifying theory and to what extent did it fit in with my worldview? The phase was still some strange, ivory-tower phenomenon. However, even if the phase was clearly something extraneous to my otherwise cohesive worldview, everything seemed right when it came to the small details. Even though that seeming discrepancy turned out to be a ticking time bomb in my mind, that theory was completely sufficient for me for the time being.

It turned out that in the phase, I was able to travel the Earth, throughout outer space, and in time. Even though it doesn't happen for real – far from it – it's more real than the physical world in terms of sensation. I was also able to meet any person, even if they were very far away, deceased, or famous. Once again, these encounters were as real as they could have been in the physical world, and even more so. You can hear a person's voice, touch them, smell their perfume, and even scrutinize the pores on their skin!

Even more astounding was the fact that you can obtain information in the phase. It doesn't matter what's behind it, be it the subconscious mind, an actual exit of the soul from the body, or some informational fields – it really works. I quickly discovered that in talking to any object in the phase, I was in fact talking to a powerful source of knowledge in a language I could understand. In addition, it turned out that in the phase I could have an effect on my body and heal myself. I began to actively use all this to study the phase itself and for my personal life.

We can't leave aside the main field of application of the phase for many young people: It is a kind of incredibly high-quality virtual reality in which you can simply enjoy yourself or fulfill any desires. After all, we cannot only see and feel the body in the phase. We can also hear and smell. We can touch things and eat food (back then, it was the only place where I could have something tasty). We can feel pain and pleasure, including the sexual kind. In essence, if you have any unfulfilled desires, the phase gives you it all.

As regards phase entrance techniques, the indirect method (performed upon awakening) was increasingly effective for me. If at the beginning I was happy to have one experience a week or fortnight; now I was able to enter the phase several times within 24 hours, although far from every attempt of mine was successful. As it turned out, during the first minutes upon awakening (and preferably without first moving or opening your eyes), you need to try to separate from your physical (i.e. stencil) body by levitating, rolling out, or standing up, which are performed as regular movements, but without moving a physical muscle. If separation is unsuccessful, then you should go through techniques for a minute until one of them works, after which you can again try to separate from your stencil body.

I was also able to become conscious while dreaming with ease. To do so, I trained my dream memory by writing down all my dreams. This was also helped by training my secondary attention. To do so, you need to ask yourself the question, Am I asleep? Do this in any unusual situation or at certain intervals of time.

It turns out that it's not enough to simply know how to enter the phase: You also have to know how to deepen it, as sensations are not always immediately realistic. The simplest way to do so is to attempt sensory amplification, which requires thoroughly feeling over and scrutinizing objects in the phase. In addition, without knowing the techniques for maintaining, which I also had to figure out on my own, the phase will usually last only a few seconds. You will either be returned to your stencil body (i.e. physical body), or you will simply fall asleep, or a false awakening will occur. Although there are many techniques for combating this, the simplest one of all is to focus on your plan of action and obligatorily attempt to re-exit the stencil body when you are returned to it.

I also had to be able to translocate in the phase and find objects in it. It's easiest to do that immediately upon separating from the body or by opening a door, while concentrating your attention on the place or person you need being behind that door. It's a paradox, but it was also necessary to learn to how to fly and even walk through walls, as space in a deep phase hardly differs from the physical world and its limitations.

At the age of 20, I rejoined society and got a job again. However, those two years had profoundly changed me. An enormous amount of new knowledge had entered my mind, and I began to see the world with different eyes. I became a happy man – after all, I had found my passion.

Did I fully understand what exactly I had gotten into? Despite my enormous practical achievements, I had not found an elegant explanation for the existence of the phase, nor an explanation for some of the stranger qualities of the phase space. Honestly speaking, I was simply afraid to think of such things, since I understood what erroneous beliefs one could easily fall into and suffer immensely for. That's why all those issues temporarily went on the back-burner and I gave my full concentration to where I could definitely move ahead.

The thing is: It long seemed to me that the phase was only my personal affair. This was before I understood that nearly everybody dreams of it. People shoot films and write books with storylines quite similar to the phase, without even suspecting that they have it all, that it's all true, and that it can all be learned. The problem is that the standard reading list on the topic is quite antiquated and ineffective. Perhaps, I was to write my own book and open people's eyes to their real abilities? Why dream, when I could do it?

In 1933, Walther Meissner discovered that in a superconductor that has been cooled down as much as possible, the magnetic field will be expelled. This phenomenon has been dubbed the Meissner effect. If a regular magnet is placed on aluminum (or any other superconductor) that is then cooled using liquid nitrogen, the magnet will levitate and hang in the air, as it will see its own magnetic field of the same polarity expelled from the cooled aluminum, and the same sides of magnets repel each other.

Bringing the Phase to the Masses

Now I had a provisional, but all-consuming objective: to bring the phase to as many people as possible. I had begun several months of work on my first book, Out of Body. Since I worked as a security guard, my long shifts afforded me time for learning English, nodding off, and phasing. Meanwhile, my two days off a week were spent on the book. But what does a 20 year old have to say? Maybe it was a typical book on out-of-body experiences, although I understood that it was just the sensation of being outside the body, and not an actual exit from it. Meanwhile, I strove to include what all such books were sorely lacking – more realistic and usable information on techniques.

Either way, work on the book, in and of itself, had an extremely unexpected result. It turned out that such an endeavor is a great way to structure your knowledge, as well as get together your ideas and thoughts. Many things suddenly became clearer when they were put down on paper in front of my eyes. To make a topic more straightforward for others, you should first make it more straightforward for yourself. Looking back, of course, I can't but admit that it was all a cocktail of faint ideas on the phenomenon, personal experiences, a mishmash of techniques, and a heap of erroneous conclusions. It was also hope for something more, as I still didn't quite understand the nature of the phase. But in any case, it was better than nothing.

Literally three days after finishing the book, I went through something quite personal. I had grown up alone with my mother, and hadn't been especially interested in my father. Once I gave it some thought, I quickly realized that the person who I believed was my father in childhood actually wasn't. And so, I began my search for the truth. Word of my search had reached my mother, and she sent me a letter that I received immediately after finishing the book. It turned out that my father was a professor at the same university where I didn't get in. He was also an author of physics textbooks, was a leading researcher at the Hydrodynamics Institute, and lived next door to my grandmother. If it weren't for the physics part, the coincidence would have been unbelievable. After all, physics is completely different from the phase, right?

Since I had few relatives, I was overjoyed at the opportunity to double the number of family in my life through my father's line. The thing was that my father didn't even know I existed, and it seemed to me that he ought to also be overcome with joy. But that was from my perspective... I was able to speak with him on the phone three times and see him once; and then it was made exceedingly clear to me that nothing in life had changed, and that nobody even wanted to talk to me. That hit me hard and further prompted me to move from Siberia.

I sent off my manuscript to several publishing houses in the capital. Without first waiting for a reply, I quit my job, got together a little money, and bought a train ticket. I thought my book was brilliant and that they would accept me everywhere with it. Instant success was assured, and so there was no point in thinking about how I would support myself there. It's good that I didn't have the brains back then to realize how idiotic that was...

Having fit all my most important things into one bag, I arrived at the station early in the morning and set off for a long journey. More than 2,000 miles and two days later, I arrived at Moscow's Yaroslavsky railway station. I got off the train. Fully aware that I only had enough money for a few days and that I didn't know anybody there, my plan was still to immediately find my way.

Having paid for a bunk in a shared room at the cheapest hostel on the outskirts of town, I set out for the publishing houses with printouts of my book in hand. On the one hand, my provincial self was impressed by the enormous megapolis, and I felt proud just to be in such an important place. On the other hand, I felt suffocated by the thousands of people all running somewhere and my antisocialness. When trying to find the address of some publishing house, I would sometimes roam around a neighborhood instead of simply asking someone the way. It goes without saying that I couldn't even work up the courage to ask a passerby the time. I told myself that all I had to do was make it to the publishing houses. And everything would work out.

I nevertheless found the publishing houses I had been looking for and handed them my book for their review. All that was left was to wait for their decision. Although I was completely certain that their answer would be an affirmative one, I tried not to think about how exactly it could change my life in an instant, or how I was running out of money since I had to keep paying for my bunk at the hostel.

However, reality turned out differently than I had expected. Some quickly responded with a rejection. With others, you had to wait many weeks or even months just to get a rejection. Within a few more days, everything had become clear: My idea of popularizing the phase had been a flop, nobody liked my book, and all that was left was to take the train of shame back to Siberia. Yes, shame – because everyone knew that I had quit my job without planning on returning. It would be in shame because my ideas had turned out not to be what people wanted. Meanwhile, there was no point in remaining in Moscow, nor any way to – I was a complete stranger there.

And so, I got together my things and headed for the train station, where a psychologically hard road and the complete unknown lay in front of me.

In 1938, Pyotr Kapitsa cooled liquid helium to a near-zero temperature and discovered that the substance had lost its viscosity. The phenomenon was dubbed superfluidity. If you pour liquid helium into a glass, it will still creep up along the sides and drip out of it. In fact, as long as the helium is sufficiently cold, there are no limits to it creeping up and dripping out, regardless of the shape and size of the glass. At the close of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st, superfluidity was also discovered in hydrogen and various gases.

Back to the top

Chapter 2 – The Search for an Answer

Late October 2010, Los Angeles. My phone ringtone wakes me, and I learn that my experiment has become a worldwide science-news media sensation. But how did I get there and what was the experiment about?

Conquering the Capital City

As I rode the subway to the train station, I tried to figure out how to get home, seeing as I was already out of money. There was the idea of taking suburban trains and hiding from the ticket collector, or asking the conductor of a slow train to take pity on me and let me ride for free. In Moscow, I still didn't know anybody well enough to borrow money from them. Turning to my few relatives in Siberia wasn't something I was willing to consider – I had never done so in the past, nor would I in the future.

Standing on the platform and watching departing trains, which normal, everyday people were boarding and had no trouble affording, I got a very scary idea: burn all the bridges behind me. Despite all the possible difficulties, it would be simpler to remain in Moscow than to traverse thousands of miles and recreate my previous life. Moreover, I couldn't imagine how my close friends and family would look at me after such a stupid and unsuccessful adventure. It was simpler to just stay in Moscow and try to survive. I put my bag in one of the rental lockers and used my few remaining rubles to buy a newspaper with help wanted ads. Welcome to the real world!

The first months were extremely hard. There was no work I could turn my nose up to. Without a legal address, without education, and without life experience, I had to count not only on the hardest lot, but also had to go through all that crap that usually piles up in incredible quantities in capital cities. For the first half year, policemen on patrol constantly tapped my shoulder to check my papers – I evidently stuck out from the locals like a sore thumb. Even my manner of speaking and accent were different from everyone else's.

Although my phase practice had become irregular due to overall difficulties, I still hadn't lost hope that I would make my idea happen, and I continued trying to publish my book. Either way, everybody around me knew about my goal. I saw genuine interest in their eyes, and that greatly motivated me not to give up. However, all of the agencies stubbornly closed their doors in front of me, and the statistic that only one author in 10 gets published became my painful reality. After all, I was one of those nine-in-10 unlucky ones.

Then, there came forward a man from among those to whom my ideas were near and dear. He agreed to put up the money for the first print run. It turned out that this didn't technically mean publication. It was simply an order to print 1,000 copies. Naturally, publishing houses don't pay attention when authors pay to self-publish.

Of course, I grabbed hold of the opportunity, since there weren't any other ones. A new hope arose within me: Once the book was printed, it might become so popular that everything would work out on its own. However, the money came with terms attached: The book had to be reworked in a whole number of places. Meanwhile, I hadn't even opened my book in several months. And when I did take another peek, I was horrified.

The book was awful. It contained an unbelievable number of grammatical mistakes, nonsense, and text that was simply unnecessary. Nearly half the book could have been edited out without any loss of value. And that's what I did, along with overhauling the text. And then I overhauledit again. And only then did the book take on a decent form. The other problem was that the money was only for the actual printing itself. The layout and editing were up to me, a person who had always gotten the lowest grades in language arts at school.

As I pen these lines many years later, I now have enormous experience in the publishing field, and yet still have serious problems with being careful, and so make a lot of mistakes. My brain simply doesn't catch them, as it takes in whole words and not individual letters. But now, I have computer software, proofreaders, and editors as my insurance policy. Yet back then, there was nobody to help me. Having reread the text over and over again, it seemed to me that there weren't any mistakes left. I did the cover layout myself, too: just white text on a black background. Then, I sent it all off for printing.

Having spent my 21st birthday and nearly five months in Moscow, I now held the print version of my own book in my hands. I had accomplish my number one objective, made my dream come true, and now everything ahead seemed simple and easy. After all, now the masses would come to know the phase! I even had a place to share the news, as my Russian-language website www.aing.ru and its forum were already up and running. There was a pile of books before me, and soon they would be in the hands of many people whose lives would never again be the same. But, how to actually get the books in their hands?

It turned out that no large bookstore chain works with individual suppliers. All the small bookshops either refused to put our young author's books on its shelves, or asked me to fill out a special application form. Naturally, nobody even looked at those applications and nobody ever got in touch with me to follow up. Moreover, it quickly turned out that there were mistakes and typos on nearly every line of the book. There were often several per line. At that's how it was with the whole book, all 200 pages of it... The black ink on the cover was of the sort that would come off upon any contact with a hard surface. Even new books in their packaging looked used from rubbing on

Enjoying the preview?
Page 1 of 1