I came across an interesting page on Instagram. This person seems to be having very interesting and enlightening experiences of regularly leaving the body/having visions of being in other planes of existence. Here is an example:

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cw-CvqbuFp1/?img_index=2

Is it realistic to expect to be able to do the kinds of things this person is describing if one is adept along the path? I haven't heard of any traditions discussing what this person is able to do. 

I don't want to be a party pooper, but the stuff on that page bears no resemblance to the meditation stuff I know about. I get the sense that people want to escape into some amazing video game where they're surfing on a comet with Shiva or something, but meditation seems more similar to what Dorian Yates did, i.e., training himself by doing something straightforward but difficult many, many, many times.

Unless the experiencer can routinely produce verifiable information they would have no normal means of knowing, there are no grounds for believing what they say. Unfortunately there are many examples of deliberate fakers and self deluded people so you need some way of telling who is reliable and who is not.

I've described my experiences here
https://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/psi_experience
and here
https://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2012/10/what-is-it-like-to-communicate-with.html

If you can find one person who travels to other realms and routinely gives verifiable information I would be interested to hear it. As far as I know there are none.
Six Studies of Out-of-Body Experiences by Charles T. Tart
https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc799368/m2/1/high_res_d/vol17-no2-73.pdf

I am not saying all of them are necessarily fakers, just that you need a way to tell who is real.

The most reliable information from other realms that I am aware of comes from this source:
https://www.leslieflint.com
Leslie Flint did not travel to other realms, people from another realm came to him.

off the top of my head...


swedenborg

dante

blake

countless sufis





from the marriage of heaven and hell, william blake:



A MEMORABLE FANCY

As I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius, which to Angels look like torment and insanity, I collected some of their proverbs, thinking that as the sayings used in a nation mark its character, so the proverbs of Hell show the nature of infernal wisdom better than any description of buildings or garments.

When I came home, on the abyss of the five senses, where a flat-sided steep frowns over the present world, I saw a mighty Devil folded in black clouds hovering on the sides of the rock; with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence now perceived by the minds of men, and read by them on earth:—

“How do you know but every bird
that cuts the airy way
Is an immense world of delight,
closed by your senses five?”

“As the archetypes, like all numinous contents, are relatively autonomous, they cannot be integrated simply by rational means, but require a dialectical procedure, a real coming to terms with them, often conducted by the patient in dialogue form, so that, without knowing it, he puts into effect the alchemical definition of the meditatio: “an inner colloquy with one’s good angel.” Usually the process runs a dramatic course, with many ups and downs. It expresses itself in, or is accompanied by, dream symbols that are related to the “représentations collectives,” which in the form of mythological motifs have portrayed psychic processes of transformation since the earliest times.”

Excerpt From: Hull, R. F.C., Jung, C. G., Shamdasani, Sonu. “Four Archetypes.” 

Hi.
There is an instrumental value to conventional perception:
Here I am in 3D space at 8 PM in the night, drinking with my buddies.

From this point  onwards every event perceived, experienced and stored in memory in a conventional representation and descriptive language:
I got progressively drunker till they threw me out of the bar, had a boxing match with a lamp post and then subsequently passed out. In the mornning I woke up in my friend's home on his couch where I had been dumped the night before

This conventional storing and recollection of memory is useful. Because if my next door neighbour gets murdered on that same night, then I need an alibi. and unless I am 'conventional' ... I am in serious trouble!

Unless we have some severe psychiatric disorder - all of us are fully capable of generating such alibis.

In the realm of meditation, awakening, spirituality ..... some people don't like to be conventional. I dont know why, but they just dont. There could be three reasons. They are genuine and can come up with a conventional language but prefer not to for their own amusement. Or they are frauds. Or they have a psychiatric disorder.

​​​​​​​
my father, a lifelong "functioning" alcoholic, named me for this poem:


​​​​​​​
Terence this is stupid stuff!

Alfred Edward Housman
1859 – 1936

"Terence, this is stupid stuff!
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache!
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head...
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow!
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad!
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad!"

Why, if 'tis dancing you would be,
There's brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not.
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is that 'twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul's stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
--I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.

The Laws of God, the Laws of Man
​​​​​​​(a e housman)

The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
Please yourselves, say I, and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not; they must still
Wrest their neighbor to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hell-fire.
And how am I to face the odds
Of man's bedevilment and God's?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong.
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn nor to Mercury,
Keep we must, if keep we can,
These foreign laws of God and man.

There is no way we can get "OUT" of our experience to verify if indeed there is something "out there" talking back at us. 

All we perceive is what mind makes out of the info tumbling through the sense doors. 

​​​​​​​Don't chase waterfalls. 

Hi Al,

I skimmed through interesting bits of few these visions and they all sound like the kind of stuff you find in Vajrayana books so there doesn't seem anything new/interesting there. That said I just skimmed it - maybe there is something interesting. Only way to find out for which I personally do not have time or will. That said IMHO it is better to read books.

Visions themselves sound very colored. That said I see no reason why someone could not attain skills needed to make them like they read - in fact reading them there are visualizations experienced right away. The skill is to just discover how to make mind express its innate abilities in more meaningful way.

My own visions focus on essences so typically graphics are not the best. Not to mention I mostly practice visualization other way around so to fabricate missing sensual experiences when I see something. I do however have some skills and I even got inspired by your post to maybe practice having better graphics and less hectic vision. Typically focused on insight/essences of any visions I had with presentation only mattering on "vibe" level and not other aspects of presentation.

As for if it is possible to get insight from void... conventional mundane truth is NOT, it is all expression of what mind is thinking about. If someone didn't already figure something out then they won't have any visions about it. Also having visions indicate absolutely nothing. Best to treat it as fun skill and practicing it fun hobby.

That's all, have a nice day
Ni