Chapter 8 from Keith's latest book: Inner Coach: Outer Power

Multi-dimensional Journeys
with Extraterrestrials 

By Keith Varnum

 

In college, Thanksgiving was a great excuse for me to escape from the pressures of schoolwork. The traditional rituals of the holiday were secondary to my need to blow off steam and space out watching the latest action flicks. I never suspected my soul would cast me in an action movie of my own adventures featuring ET’s and inner space.   

Lisa, Sylvia, Jacob, Chris and I were good friends and fellow film students at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. We were very thankful for the chance to skip town and reconnect with living as normal human beings instead of college students. When the holiday neared, we went our separate ways across the country to spend time with our families and simply vegetate. As so often occurred in my young sojourn on the planet, my inner coach had a special, secret agenda for me on this particular holiday. Returning to Ann Arbor after the school break, I discovered my friends and I had independently latched onto the same idea for a co-created film. Each of us came back to town wanting to do a documentary on “multi-dimensional travel.”

As was my usual manner regarding spiritual breakthroughs, I backed into this one with no idea of what I was getting into. If I had suspected the divine disruption of my life lying ahead, I probably would have postponed this adventure another few lifetimes!

My friends and I didn’t considered ourselves spiritually-inclined people. We were an unlikely crew of metaphysical explorers. None of us ever heard of multi-dimensional travel before. Nonetheless, in diverse ways in different parts of the country, we were each connected with the same esoteric topic at the same time. 

One member of our group, Lisa, had picked up a book on “astral projection.” Jacob met a new acquaintance who shared her theories about “journeying to different levels of awareness.” Chris was fascinated by a lecture on “past life regression.” Sylvia came back from vacation bubbling with excitement about “communicating with my Future Self,” which she had read about in a metaphysical magazine article. I was riveted by a film documentary on “multi-dimensional realities.” Reunited after the holiday, we marveled at the synchronicity of our separate, independent discoveries and took it as a sure sign this subject was meant to be our next film project.

A few days later, I was hanging with my rock musician friend Rhone who, in an intoxicated state, let slip that he had an Uncle Gaston in Montreal who was part of an “international, secret, spiritual society.” He blurted out that his uncle’s mysterious group taught yoga and meditation publicly and more exotic, arcane arts privately. I seized the opportunity to tell Rhone about our documentary project.

“Uncle Gaston knows a lot about multi-dimensional travel. He refers to it as “soul travel.” He even showed me how to do it. But it got too scary for me, man. Too weird. I stopped seeing him and quit answering his phone calls.”

Much as I tried, Rhone wouldn’t share the details of his paranormal experiences with his uncle. In fact, the subject was closed by Rhone as quickly as it was opened by a few cans of Bud. 

Undaunted by Rhone’s fear, my friends and I wanted to contact Rhone’s uncle in Montreal immediately. We weren’t intimidated by the nature of the subject because our interest—so we believed at the time—was purely artist and journalistic. It never occurred to us for one moment we would actually do any multi-dimensional travel. Intrigued and excited, we simply wanted to make a film about the topic. Our modus operandi was to not get involved in any way with the subject. We considered ourselves professionals. We would be objective observers, not participants.  Ah, the blind arrogance and naiveté of journalists!

After the shattering effects of his tutelage with Uncle Gaston, Rhone was loath to personally contact him ever again. Finally, after much pleading, he agreed to give us his uncle’s telephone number. Refusing to call his uncle, he insisted I phone the group leader in Montreal myself. 

I rang Rhone’s uncle at his home. As soon as I mentioned my name, Gaston instantly replied, "Yes, we've been expecting your call.” Being certain that Rhone had not previously phoned him to tell him about us, I felt the Frenchman’s super calm, knowing response was like an overused line from a cheap “B” horror flick.

Gaston added to the mystique of his reply by coupling it with an invitation that seemed a bit overly hospitable to strangers. Before I had an opportunity to mention our connection with his nephew Rhone, or our interest in making a film, he volunteered, “You can all come and stay at our house for as long as you like."

A red warning light went off from my inner guidance system. Hiding my uneasiness, I responded to Gaston’s offer with polite, professional decorum, "Great. Four friends and I would like to meet everyone in your group and film a documentary about your endeavors.”

Jovially, Gaston agreed to my plans. He and I made arrangements for the five of us to visit over our college Christmas vacation and stay at his sprawling home in the suburbs of Montreal.

Gaston’s overly gracious response was my first intuitive clue that my friends and I were getting involved in an adventure with deeper implications for our future than the making of a documentary film. His words haunted me for days. Rhone confirmed he hadn’t told his uncle about us. "Why such a generous offer of his home to people he’s never met, before I even got to fully introduce myself and my motives for phoning?” I queried my friends. No one had an answer that quelled my uneasiness.

But, in a response typical of my youthful innocence and inner trust, I ignored my personality’s urging to investigate further before I proceeded. Had I hesitated or inquired further, I may not have undertaken that fateful journey to Montreal.

A few days after Christmas Day, we five, intent filmmakers drove from Ann Arbor to Montreal to shoot a journalistic record of the teachings and operation of an esoteric, spiritual society. About half way there, I became violently ill with nausea, dizziness and diarrhea. I chalked it up to a combination of over-excitement and intestinal flu. In retrospect, I realize my condition had nothing to do with the flu. My body was reacting with trepidation to the prospect of the total life upheaval awaiting me in Montreal.

When we arrived, we were warmly greeted by Rhone’s Uncle Gaston and Aunt Edith, who appeared to be a very unassuming, sweet, vibrant French couple. They could easily have passed for totally ordinary Quebecois. The two made a very cheery pair, alive with the Gaelic spirit and joie de vivre. They invited us into their typical, suburban home, which we later discovered was called "the clubhouse,” a meeting place for an international spiritual group of about two hundred people.

A short time after we arrived, it began to snow… and snow… and snow. It snowed heavily all night. When we opened the front door in the morning, we found six feet of snow had blanketed the city overnight. The powdery white fluff had drifted up above the opening of the front door. The storm was severe, even by Canadian standards! The whole city was at a standstill. It would take days to clear the streets. We were, in effect, shut in with the extraordinary subjects of our film.

My co-journalists and I reasoned it was the perfect opportunity for us to get to better know the people who were to be the focus of the documentary. Rhone’s relatives, however, had other plans for us! Their intentions differed vastly from ours.

That morning, Gaston and Edith calmly confided that they headed a secret international, or as they described it more accurately “intergalactic,” spiritual society. The group met and operated in secret because they felt they could function more freely as an underground organization. The membership consisted of a wide spectrum of ordinary citizens comprised of all ages, races and backgrounds that included doctors, lawyers, bankers, artists, truck drivers, post office workers, housewives, college professors and students. Most of the group members felt it was best if their ordinary work colleagues, relatives and casual friends were unaware of their membership in such an extremely esoteric, metaphysical society. 

After a restful night’s sleep, we eased into our first whole day with the Bourdages. My friends and I were still under the comforting illusion we were there to make a film. Listening politely, the five of us sent silent, bemused messages back and forth between us with our eyes. This turn of events was even better for our project than we had anticipated. They were actually telling us about the inner workings of their society and we were gathering a wealth of information. When Gaston offered to acquaint us with their spiritual practices, we quickly accepted his offer. After all, the more we knew about what these people were up to, the more thorough, accurate and powerful our documentary would be. 

Having our complete attention, Gaston then informed us that he and Edith were not human! We all took a collective deep breath. We remained silent. What could we say to that! In a casual tone, with a straight face, Gaston stated the two of them had taken human form for the purpose of increasing the comfort level of the humans with whom they interacted, “Our intentional guise of familiar human appearance makes communication so much easier, you see.”

“Yes, of course,” we agreed in stunned unison, trying to hide the skepticism in our voices.

Since the snowstorm had paralyzed travel in the city and trapped us inside with these folks for a few days, my friends and I felt we needed to reserve our opinions on the veracity of their extraterrestrial revelation. We nodded diplomatically and Gaston began to unfold his version of the true history of planet earth and the cosmology of the universe. 

The essence of Gaston’s presentation was focused on the true nature and meaning of life. He declared that all beings are, in essence, Spirit. As individualized aspects of the Oneness, people incarnate on earth, in other worlds and in other dimensions for the sole (soul) purpose of exploring creation. All beings leave the Unified Field of Consciousness, Oneness, by deliberately buying into the belief of separation and duality, the cosmic play of opposites, the polarities of right and wrong, good and bad, light and dark, up and down, and yin and yang. 

This deliberate forgetting of our connection to the unity of all things in Spirit allows us to create and play in a world of front and back, visible and invisible, and form and essence. The front—visible form—is the universe of physical matter, which we can see, touch, smell, hear and taste. The background—underlying invisible, essence reality—is made of nonphysical energy, which we can contact through multisensory perception.

Most people have yet to open their senses to this more fundamental, causative aspect of  life—the nonphysical, vibrational level of reality. This behind-the-scenes energy is primal life force, which is the creative power that animates all forms of life.

The lively Frenchman described in elaborate detail planet earth’s role in the cosmic unfolding of the Universal Plan or Game. He emphasized to us that his explanation of the true nature of the universe would be heard and absorbed differently by each of us. Each person’s perception would vary according to their individual personality with its unique belief filters and cultural conditioning. 

Gaston also informed us that every year or so, he would reiterate this same basic information to us, but in different terms and on a higher level of understanding, “As each of you grow in wisdom and personal power, you will be able to absorb more truth. And I will be able to explain the workings of the cosmos in a more and more accurate way. However,” he forewarned, “the explanation I, and other spiritual teachers, share with you at each successive, higher level will make the previous level of information seem to you, on the surface, like a lie. But each new, more accurate version of the human story will only appear to contradict the last version because your understanding of the true nature of life will have changed so radically. You will be in such a new place, a place of greater clarity and truth, that your old ways of understanding life will seem overly simple, naïve, even false. You will be seeing life through new eyes—a fresh, expanded perspective that will render your old points of view obsolete.”

I will interrupt my tale for a moment to tell you that, since my time with Gaston, I have, in fact, been told and retold essentially the same cosmology in many different forms. Not by Gaston, but rather by other spiritual mentors: Indian guru Sai Baba, Ascended Master St. Germain, macrobiotic leader Michio Kushi; spiritual teacher Lester Levenson and Hopi medicine man Medicine Cloud, among others. As Gaston had predicted, each new rendering of the truth of existence made the preceding rendition seem like fiction to me. That aside taken care of, I will continue with our experience with Uncle Gaston.

Gaston talked to us for a full day, breaking only for one meal. After hours of trying to integrate the amazing human adventure Gaston was positing, we were finally excused. We crashed for twelve hours of deep slumber.

The next morning found the city of Montreal still in the grips of the blizzard and at a standstill. But not Gaston! He had a momentous journey in store for the five of us. When we awoke, the cheery extraterrestrial announced he would like to assist us in experiencing the full spectrum of our soul’s cosmic existence. He wanted to take us “soul traveling,” also referred to as “astral projection,” “multi-dimensional awareness” or “exploring one’s Akashic Record.” 

Having come to Montreal specifically to film a story about this fascinating procedure, we readily agreed to give it a shot. Mind you, none of us really believed the otherworldly technique was valid, or that it would work for us, so we were quite relaxed and calm about such a weighty undertaking. Imagine our shock when, under the skilled direction of Gaston, we spent the next five days soul traveling through the multi-dimensional universe! 

While lying fully clothed on a bed, each of us were cajoled into allowing our inner coach, or soul, to open to an awareness of various lifetimes on earth, on other planets and in other dimensions. In some of the lifetimes, we didn’t inhabit physical bodies as dense as our bodies on earth; we had energy bodies that were translucent, very light and fluid. 

Three days later, it gradually dawned on us, we were no longer simply exploring our subject for objective, investigative journalism. We were, in fact, undergoing a very subjective, spiritual initiation and transformation. By the time we realized this, we were so deeply engrossed in the adventure that it was too late to turn back, or attempt to return to being solely objective observers.

Each of us went on a dozen or so of these extra-dimensional awareness journeys. Whether we were truly experiencing actual other lifetimes was not important to us at the time because whatever we were doing, it was very real and powerful for us. We experienced being physically in each body and lifetime with a level of concreteness equal to that of our everyday reality. We were aware of a small portion of our consciousness in a body lying on a bed back in Montreal on earth in 1969, but most of our attention was riveted to very realistic, sensory, emotional and physical events in another time and place. 

The level of experiential authenticity of these life adventures was teaching us such deep, profound emotional and social life lessons, we didn’t care if these other lifetimes were in reality our own previous or future existences or not.

During each lifetime, Gaston would guide us through birth and death in that existence. The births were very visceral, tangible and emotional. The deaths were equally physical, palpable and dramatic. Over and over, we each experienced our soul coming into a physical body at birth and then leaving the physical body at death.

We also reconnected with what occurs to people between lifetimes. We met with spiritual advisors, talked about what we learned during the last lifetime, and then chose our next lifetime. We could elect to be a woman, man, farmer, artist, peasant or prince. The choices were as endless as the universe. And the cumulative effect of these realistic and fascinating journeys was profound.

We were acutely aware that the purpose of each re-visiting of a lifetime was for our soul to learn more about the effects of greed, selfishness, revenge, jealousy and dishonesty—as well as joy, innocence, humor and compassion. We realized we had stumbled into a treasure house of direct knowing about the most significant aspects of human existence.

Each lifetime allowed us to directly experience what happens when we stay overly focused on and obsessed with fame, power, money, sex or security for a whole lifetime. We saw firsthand how being stuck in a certain narrow point of view in one lifetime dominated and decimated our aliveness and humanity in that lifetime. We personally absorbed the healing and liberating power of exchanging genuine concern, intimacy and laughter. The soul journeys were explorations of all the various human conditions and frailties that exist on the planet—and in our past and future.

Each lifetime we visited also had significant, synchronistic relevance for the challenges we were, in fact, facing in our current life on earth. Each of us had intuitively chosen issues to confront that were valuable and timely for us to explore in terms of our weaknesses and strengths in our present daily lives. The lessons I learned were ones I’ve not forgotten. In fact, the revelations from those soul trips changed forever how I live my life.

After five days of soul travel, Gaston demonstrated how to open the chakra energy centers of the body. The massive amount of natural vitality and raw aliveness released from these sessions was almost overwhelming. Each of us felt vibrant and open to the power and majesty of the universe in a way none of us had ever felt before in our lives.

As if the shamanic journeys and chakra revitalization were not enough transformation for one week, Gaston then gave each of us a four-hour personal soul history. For four straight hours, he candidly revealed to each of us who we really were as eternal spirits, what our souls came to do here on earth this lifetime, and how well we were accomplishing our spiritual goals. Gaston didn’t pull any punches. He was blunt, direct and specific. He knew events in our lives none of us had ever told anyone before—not close relatives, not even our best friends. He spoke facts about our lives, and truths about our feelings, we hadn’t even admitted to ourselves! It was quite shocking to all of us that anyone could know these deeply intimate details of our lives. This wasn’t hit-and-miss fortune-telling. This was in-depth soul truth. 

Gaston posited that when the Oneness deliberately fragmented into separate aspects of consciousness, each individual being ended up embodying more of one aspect of consciousness than the other qualities of the Oneness. Some people mainly embody and emanate the vibration of love. Others radiated more the essences of strength, transformation or courage. We each carry all the different parts of the totality, but express different aspects to varying degrees. We each have different jobs to do here.

My personal reading was mostly encouraging. The Gaelic seer told me I’m here on a multi-lifetime mission of peace. I’m here to observe humans and society to see how people behave and interact in a multitude of challenging, everyday, human situations. When I’ve watched and learned enough, I’m going to apply my observations to help people deal better with everyday life. Using various psychological therapies, I’m destined to assist people to make peace with their inner demons, and in the process, with other people. I’m also here to help develop successful approaches to conflict resolution in our society. Eventually, I’ll embody and radiate the vibration of peace to such a degree that if people who were arguing come within five hundred feet of me, they’ll simply quit quarreling and move into a tranquil state. Gaston said I was from a place called Xeros, a planet, or timeless space, of peace.

My closest friend in our group, Chris, also got a favorable reading. Gaston described to him in detail how he was progressing very well toward his life mission of sacred service. Chris’ reading tied together many seemingly disparate events in his life into a cosmic mosaic of purposeful design. Soon after our collective adventure in Montreal, Chris’ human journey lead him to Findhorn, a spiritual community in Scotland. He went there initially to seek assistance in understanding what happened to him in Montreal. After integrating his radical tutelage with Gaston, Chris has been involved in spiritual healing and teaching in Great Britain ever since.

One particular aspect of Gaston’s soul readings impressed me: the content of his life readings was not entirely complimentary. In fact, for three members of the group, Sylvia, Lisa and Jacob, the revelations of the frank Frenchman were very unflattering and disturbing. From my perspective, his appraisal of the soul expression of all of us were very loving and non-judgmental. However, from their point of view, my three friends felt they received very derogatory assessments of their lives. Gaston had been extremely honest and specific, and they were not ready to hear reckonings as direct, accurate and detailed as he shared. He was quite explicit about each of them being caught this lifetime in a very narrow band of egotistical self-interest. In retrospect, I feel his intention in his harsh delivery was to shake up and shock my friends so they’d look inward and re-focus the direction of their lives. At the time, his stark truth telling had the opposite effect. My three comrades became intensely angry and resistant toward Gaston and his suggestion they go inward to intuitively review their lives. After their life readings, the three were ready to revolt and bolt! They had definitely had enough self-truth reflected to them by this candid extraterrestrial.

Chris and I were ready to split the scene as well. We had reached the “outer limits” of our ability to absorb any more social or personal revelation. By then, Montreal’s sturdy army of snowplows had cleared the streets of the city, and we could leave. As if of one intention, the five of us packed our belongings to return to Ann Arbor and familiar environs, both geographically and psychologically. It would be a gross understatement to say we felt completely overwhelmed by our experience with this secret, intergalactic society. 

We had no way of adequately dealing with the events of that week mentally, emotionally or physiologically. What was left of our minds was blown into almost unrecognizable pieces. We were drained emotionally. Our bodies were reeling with the stress and strain of having our worlds rocked and exploded beyond recognition. Not having a metaphysical background at the time, none of us ever read or heard anything resembling the types of experiences we just went through. We had no frame of reference in which to put our week of spiritual initiation. We’d totally forgotten our original plan to make a film in Montreal. Our overriding desire at the time was to put as much physical and psychological distance between us and the source of our overwhelm as possible!

Driving the ten hours back to the good old US of A, we had time to rehash the week’s dramatic events in exact detail. And the privacy of a car allowed us to recount the traumatic ordeal with great emotion and depth. Together, the five of us considered at length every conceivable way to view the preceding week’s affair. 

By the time we arrived in Ann Arbor, the three who disliked their life reviews, Sylvia, Lisa and Jacob, had concluded that Gaston and Edith were evil or, at the very least, part of a cult that was very dangerous to their physical and spiritual safety. They reached a state of panic, and, feeling they needed protection from the people in Montreal, sought advice and defensive rituals from a “white witch.” The day after our return to Ann Arbor, all three came over to the house where Chris and I lived. In a fervent frenzy, they sprinkled holy water and salt on our heads, and on every doorstep and doorsill in the house. They claimed being blessed by these sanctified natural elements would ward off the evil spirits connected with the “satanic” Montreal cult. They screamed and railed at Chris and me to awaken to the danger of the demonic spell cast on us by Gaston. 

The frantic, bizarre scene unfolding in front of us resembled a skit from a cosmic, comic “Three Stooges” skit! Our three, frightened friends had twisted every word of Gaston’s presentation into a fanatical, ironclad indictment of the whole Montreal group and their motives. Chris and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Confused and bombarded, we alternated between reacting with horror and humor. Clearly, it wasn’t funny to witness our close friends in such a state of panic and terror. However, the extremely righteous and sanctimonious way they denounced the whole philosophy of the Montreal group verged on the absurd and ridiculous.

Conversely, Chris and I were experiencing a spiritual healing and awakening from the initiation in Montreal. Our friends’ fearful over-reaction to the miraculous spiritual gifts of Gaston was challenging us to evaluate our experience even more deeply. Yes, Chris and I were also freaked out on a psychological level. However, we viewed our mental resistance as a normal, expected reaction to a mind-blowing experience. Our everyday paradigm had been busted wide open by Gaston. The familiar security of our mainstream perceptual framework had been shattered. Stretching our cultural envelope beyond its limits, we were thrust way outside our box of normal experience.

However, contrary to our three hysterical friends, Chris and I were extremely grateful. We were unnerved, but not undone, by our expulsion from ordinary reality. We were thankful at being liberated from the prison of our old, narrow world. When our three alarmed friends burst upon our home, Chris and I were celebrating our emancipation, not seeking a way to invalidate and reverse it.

Naively, Chris and I tried to intellectually discuss our different point of view with our three fear-stricken friends. Unfortunately, they were long past the point of a philosophical resolution to their perceived predicament. They felt their very survival was at stake. They were afraid their souls were in danger from demonic forces. 

There was nothing Chris and I could do to mollify their terror. Before our spiritual adventure in Canada, we felt our three friends were fairly strong individuals. But the experience totally shook their grasp on a safe reality. All three eventually sought psychiatric counseling to help resolve the disruption of their worlds caused by the Montreal trip. They broke off communication with us. Unfortunately, I’ve lost track of all three of my former, cinematic comrades.

I’ve not had any further contact with Gaston or the people in Montreal—that is, that I am aware of! On other levels of consciousness, I’m certain they’ve been assisting me. They invited the five of us to come back to see them in Montreal anytime we wanted. However, after our first encounter, I needed an extensive period of time to integrate the expansive spiritual opening Gaston afforded me. The only request Gaston made of us was to share what they revealed to us with whomever it felt intuitively right. As I absorb the wisdom and tools Gaston gave me in Montreal, I pass on these treasures through my workshops and personal coaching. 

The central purpose of the secret, spiritual society in Montreal is the same intention of my Dream Workshops. Our common goal is to bring people together as peers to awaken to their connection with the Infinite, and empower people to use their natural spiritual powers for the good of humankind and their individual soul purposes. The way Gaston helped us to open to direct communication and guidance from our inner coach laid the foundation for the intuitive, shamanic journeys that are so valuable now for people in the Dream Workshops.

*****

This true story is an excerpt from Keith’s latest book, Inner Coach: Outer Power:

Forty-eight firsthand stories reveal the amazing creative powers within you that can heal your body, expand your heart, and attract phenomenal abundance into your life. Fresh and captivating, Keith shows you the practical, everyday use of levitation, alchemy, multi-dimensional travel, near-death experiences, out-of-body journeys, parallel realities and time-tripping. Spiritual teachers unveil their secrets to happiness. Ancient shamans impart how to manifest an easy flow of money. Angels illustrate how to heal the body instantly. Nature devas share keys to attracting soulmates. Spirit guides demonstrate how they can save your life in a crisis. Using his vast exploration as a healer, mystic, acupuncturist, urban shaman, filmmaker, personal coach, and seminar leader, Keith helps you become a real Miracle Maker!

Available at bookstores, Amazon.com, or www.TheDream.com