In a previous post, we learned about the afterlife and astral plane consciousness, which exists at several levels and sub-levels that we all explore during our soul’s evolution. Is that as far as we can go? Or is it possible to astral travel in dreams to merge with your Higher Self?

What is a Higher Self merge?

To answer this and other questions, I’ve been reading several books by Gordon Phinn, who is an experienced consciousness explorer with a knack for humorous, often irreverent but vivid accounts of his out-of-body experiences (OBE) in the nonphysical realms.

• His understanding of the spirit world has evolved over the years from his “Eternal Life and How to Enjoy It” (2004) to “Word Of Gord on the Afterlife, Book 2” (2014).
• More importantly, Phinn’s work is totally independent of Guy Needler’s work, but they seem to be talking the same language, which validates their work to readers like us (see What Is the Big Picture? – Big Picture Questions.com).

How did he get started?

After learning to meditate and do out-of-body travel using hemi-sync tapes, Phinn’s guide (“Henry”) first appeared to ‘astral Gordon’ (not to ‘physical Gordon’) to teach him about the astral realms, how to do soul retrieval work and how to connect with his Higher Self.

• The Higher Self is also known as the Oversoul, Godhead, Monad, Disk, Source Self, Total Self, Atman or True Energetic Self (TES). They all refer to the same eternal being, which is who we really are, which is an individualized sentient unit of our Source Entity.
• The souls that animate our human form are much smaller “aspects” projected from our Higher Self/TES. Each soul/aspect can project up to 12 smaller “shards” of itself, as shown below (click to enlarge).

“The Higher Self conspires, unfortunately with our full cooperation, to denude us of all cosmic consciousness…we are essentially starting out once again from the basement of consciousness to explore not only the house above but the many mansions which it magically contains.” – Gordon Phinn (Confronting Your Immortality)

Phinn added: “We must make the journey in a variety of vehicles, exploring all the available routes, so that the Higher Self, that hotel where all your souls may commingle and commiserate, can accumulate all the information necessary to its educative completion, and graduate with pleasure to even more sublime adventures.”

What do spirit guides look like?

Our humanoid form is fluid and can be remodeled or shifted in shape and appearance. In “More Adventures in Eternity,” Phinn gave examples of the “costumes” that he and his guide have used to approach the recently departed confused souls, who don’t know they have died.

• The astral appearance of an afterlife guide is matched with the circumstances, belief systems, expectations and level of development of the soul to be retrieved.

• It takes a different approach to talk convincingly with the soul that was a child who died of leukemia vs. a soldier killed in a war zone vs. a hippie that overdosed on drugs.
• There are a lot of “costumes” to choose from, since we’ve had thousands of lifetimes on Earth and elsewhere that are kept as reusable “imprints” in the data banks of our True Energetic Self.

Needler said that in our multiverse, the sphere is the predominant shape for energy that has purpose. We appear as spherical energy beings, i.e. brilliant balls of light to evolved souls, who don’t need to see a humanoid form. But Phinn said some souls are afraid of a ball of light, believing that it’s an “avenging angel” coming after them and try to shoot at it in the astral. 😉

How to astral travel in dreams?

In “More Adventures in Eternity,” Phinn explained how ‘astral Gordon’ could split himself into three or four parts, each with a different function during his OBE. For example:

• One part goes to merge with his Higher Self (True Energetic Self), where the “divine spark merges with the blissful fire of the Monad, which modulates the soul’s energetic makeup…The blending and merging with other selves (distant personalities) is effortless here in the virtually infinite consciousness of the Higher Self.”
• A second part splits to do soul retrieval in a war zone or disaster zone to work with recently dead people, helping them understand what happened to them.
• A third part shoots out into space (e.g. Moon) to interact with alien beings there or to England to re-experience his old Druid character and crop circles etc.

Afterwards, all three parts merge back into the ‘physical Gordon,’ who’s been sleeping, napping or meditating and wakes up to do his physical life commitments with only partial memories of what happened.

• Needler explained that this is an advanced form of astral traveling, in which one’s consciousness is split into different locations.
• The bodies associated with the human form are not employed here, although some esoteric literature suggests that we use our astral, mental, buddhic etc. bodies to do this. It’s done by projection of our consciousness, not our bodies.

How does the Higher Self see us and vice versa?

According to Phinn, the Higher Self sees us as “limited form with unlimited potential” and as “divine beings lost in belief systems.” The Higher Self wants to shine on us like the sun, and the image he got is “a globe of glowing light, a sphere with lovely rainbow colors rippling across it.” He explained:

• We all belong to this group soul configuration, and most of us return to that highly conscious (Higher Self) state between incarnations to “recharge our batteries.”
• Nothing is static, finished or finite. We are always expanding, through every death and change of form…in endless experiments in multiple simultaneous incarnation.

In “More Adventures in Eternity,” Phinn channeled his Higher Self:

“The thrill of power, the gloom of oppression. The excitement of youth, the serenity of age. The pride of riches, the shame of poverty. Adventures in the food chain. Ignorance and intelligence. Instinct, intellect and intuition. All these and more are the game preserve.

We send you out into them to collect experiences. You return to show us just how the varieties of fear and desire create their rigid systems of belief in which you inevitably settle or struggle, depending on the details and your perception of them…

You have paid for your enlightenment in full, friends!”