NEW COVER
Our book The Spiritual Out-of-Body Experience has just got a new cover. I think it better reflects the content, and has come out beautifully. The content remains exactly the same – only the cover design has changed.
It’s been very difficult to come up with a concept that conveys what’s in the book accurately. Out-of-body experiences are hard to portray in a natural and realistic way. Most books on astral projection have very sci-fi looking covers, but we wanted something that captured how ancient people had practiced it.
Finally I had an idea, and Erik was able to generate an excellent image using AI that was just like what I was seeing in my mind. However this image still needed a lot of work. Erik and Dara both made a lot of changes to it, including adding real stars, ancient bedding, and pavement, making it a real work of art. The three of us have been working back and forth on the new cover for a few months as it took a surprisingly long time to get right – the colors, the fonts, and the lighting are very subtle. I really like how the lighting on the cover reflects the soft light of the stars, which is used in some of the practices in the book. Dara also did a beautiful job with the fonts.
The original cover was a woman floating gracefully out of her body in the stars. The new and now current cover is an ancient man sleeping at a megalithic site under the stars.
OLD COVER
The book now looks like an ancient gateway to the astral to have spiritual experiences there, which is exactly what it is!
Jenny has not long ago submitted the new cover to the printer so it will take a while to update across bookseller websites. She’s also updated it across this website.
I hope you like the new cover. Thank you Erik and Dara for a beautiful design, and thanks to you who’ve supported us and the publisher through this time to be able to complete this project. We’re already working on the next book cover!
Thank you so much for the updates and constant effort you put into it, Lara. I really wish you and Mark are doing fantastic.
Thank you, Dara and Erik, for the work you put into this new cover. It looks so beautiful.
Looking forward to that new surprise book!
Hi Lara, and to those who have made this new book cover possible.
I like both versions as well, however the blue colour adds a different perspective of what the book contents entails.
AI is an interesting discussion – there are pros and cons as has been pointed out already. It seems to have crept in and perhaps ‘pushed’ onto us, in different facets of our lives. It has also been slowly getting more prevalent/gaining momentum in the background, One only needs to look at the use of mobile phone apps, facial recognition, digital ID, QR scanning, etc…to see how AI technology has been used.
I’m a bit old-school when it comes to using AI. I prefer to ignore it as much as I can, not rely on it. The thought of having drive-less cars, trucks or machinery is something that makes me uneasy.
In saying this, I can see the benefits of using AI for producing artwork and content for the books Mark and Lara provide, which have important spiritual content and can be done on a shoestring budget.
On the subject of AI, I came across this song “More than Wires”. The lyrics hit the mark on so many levels. It highlights that the increasing AI and related technology ideal needs to be second in line to our true calling – on physical, mental and spiritual levels.
Link to the song is – https://www.brighteon.com/15b29c4f-080d-4d7d-83cf-a0928e298c04
The cover is much better. It communicates right away ancient people and ancient sites, and something to do with sleeping. It would have been tempting to add some scripts to it, such as found in the pyramids of Egypt. Keeping the theme and place a known Western one is a good idea because it speaks more to a Western audience, who are the main readers (I imagine).
Nicely done – looks good!
Always inspiring to see your continuous efforts in improving and updating the material, AI became a part of our lives, and while it often leaves a trace of “too structured”, “cold”, “artificial” etc, this image is certainly beautiful and passes that feel to wish experience something truly mystical and life changing out of the body.
Beautiful book cover! Looking forward to reading what’s on the inside!
I’m all for AI for stuff like this. What concerns me is the studies that show it reduces people’s brain-power (that’s not the official term) when using it in an academic sense. And it’s a bit creepy how everything AI starts to sound the same. I’m studying with a woman who works in AI and when I first actually used it I was shocked how it sounded exactly like every text message and email she writes – there’s a particular tone. I also listened to something recently about how when people engage with it to ask its advice it does exactly the opposite of what helps us stay mentally healthy, it creates a bubble of encouragement and validation which can fuel really bad ideas you have about yourself or negative situations. Like if you say, my colleages are discriminating against me at work what should I do? it doesn’t ask questions to see if that’s actually the case but would be like, oh my gosh that must be really awful for you… it’s like the ultimate echo chamber. Just a tool for sure, just like most of technology, but unfortunatly we seem like kids wielding sharp knives sometimes!
Just chiming in to say I’m also loving the new book cover! The color blue of the night and white of the stars is what really attracted me to it. It rang true, not that you need to wait for nighttime to have an OBE, but it just feels more ‘on point’ so to speak, at least for the majority of the time ;)
Also because of the combination of the blue colours of the sky and stars, and the imagined sacred space around the man, it really felt like it more accurately portrayed the relationship between the the religion of the Sun and OBEs. It makes you want to know more. This cover really spoke to me in a sense. Great job Erik & Dara!
It’s a big improvement! I love the setting and colors. I have a couple nitpicks, but it communicates a difficult-to-convey feeling very well. The sleeping man taking up more space also makes it feel more personal.
Beautiful new cover. I actually like both the old and the new, but the new cover, particularly with the bright star at the centre, seems to bring the focus to what’s most important. I like the idea of using the image of real stars. It reminded me of a recent lucid experience in which I attempted to explore the core of the Earth, as well as see what’s beneath the Moon’s surface; unfortunately, I lost focus and soon lost clarity when I started flying towards the Sun. Thank you Lara, Dara, Erik and everyone involved for your continued inspirational work and contribution toward increasing the light of the Spiritual Sun on Earth.
This cover does seem more in line with the content of the book and it looks more inviting.
However, I am wary of using AI in anything, particularly in any spiritually related matter as I believe it is not something that is in line with the good. I was very suspicious when it first came out and then seeing how deceiving and manipulative it is especially for some very young people, I feel that something very sinister is behind it.
This is just my feeling about the AI and maybe there’s some good in it but i’m not able to see it right now.
I had a dream about AI, it helped form my opinion about it. I was given two rings, they were a kind of white gold, and looked almost mechanical. Each ring had a slit, and in the slit was set a stone, one was blue and one was red. The blue ring represents AI for good, and the red one AI for evil. They’ve both been offered, irrevocably. I feel a personal responsibility to make use of AI for good.
Also, just to demystify a little bit, because I see people get confused about this sometimes, AI doesn’t have any will, consciousness, or even intelligence. What we have right now is pretty rudimentary, basically just auto complete, language capability. There are problems with it, of course, for instance, it’s largely trained on information that comes from a western mindset and bias, and so it tends to reflect the values of Silicon Valley, with all its problems (eg scientism), but I don’t think there’s anything inherently evil about it.
Don’t get me wrong, there are huge issues with AI, in legal and copyright spheres, in the economic sphere, privacy, and even environmental… But the extent to which it can allow anyone on a shoestring budget to compete in professionalism and capability with the largest players out there, it really democratizes creativity. I think many people will choose the red ring, and use it to take advantage of people and make the world a worse place, but personally, I see it as something that can be hugely beneficial to the religion of the sun, for example.
I do think about this sometimes though 😆
https://programmerhumor.io/programming-memes/circle-of-ai-life/
Yes, that sounds a reasonable assessment Julian, with many technologies there is a risk of harm, as well as potential for good. Musicians like you may also have concerns about how prevalent AI is becoming in music production, with hit songs written completely by AI currently popular.
I remember there were similar concerns about the impact on the music industry and copyright in particular when sampling technology first came out in the late 80s. A guy from a sample based group I used to listen to mentioned it’s like how a hammer can be used to build a house or attack someone. The same is probably true with AI.
I also remember in the 80s and 90s there was concern regarding the easy availability of “video nasties” in the homes of impressionable young people.
It’s true, there are definitely some awful and disturbing movies out there. But there are some lovely and inspiring movies around too.
With AI, I hope that enough people using it for good purposes may outweigh those who are using it for sinister means. It seems that with many of the tools and systems humanity creates, the outcome depends on the state of humanity at a given time.
Haha, that cartoon Julian… Pity they didn’t use the real sun in the last image though. 😏
Regarding AI, I don’t really mind it much while it is “locked” inside computers, but somehow, I don’t like the idea of a bunch of metal entities (robots) running everywhere, destroying the natural looks of the landscapes everywhere. Its enough we have so many cars, tractors and other agricultural machines everywhere, together with loud lawn movers being run by your neighbor for like half a day on weekends…😠 I hope at least we can improve all these machines to be quieter and inobtrusive. Not sure if that’s too much to ask! If it was up to me, I would have quiet flying bubbles instead of roads and cars, and some human-friendly technology to produce healthy food for everyone, not necessarily robots. Then the UFO-like vehicles for long distance transport, or maybe materialisation/dematerialisation booths for instant travel to a chosen location. But eh well, maybe a greater leap in consciousness is required for having the tools like that available…
It’s interesting how the same minds have developed numerous chemicals that are sprayed on our food convincing us that’s all safe. They also seem to know everything about health and healing yet millions are sick. I guess the question is what can possibly go wrong now that they got the AI?
We are all aware that the darkness exploits humanity’s weaknesses and if there’s already (some) evil intention behind something so huge as AI (which is business centred mainly)they’ll use it. And imagine how great it is going to be as soon it’ll be everywhere better than some metal robots running around.
I’m reminded of the NDE that Marco have posted some time ago where a guy went to hell and sees a very evil entity in chains impatiently waiting to be released to do as much damage as possible on Earth.
AI itself is only as evil as the data it was trained on. At the moment, bias in AI is relatively obvious, and gets corrected, there were some funny incidents around that a year ago with googles image model making multi-racial Vikings, for example. The industry seems to be oriented around making it an objective tool as much as possible, mainly because that makes it more useful. That does mean certain western biases creep in, but not anything I’d describe as evil, and certainly nothing I’d describe as an entity. There are two goals everyone is aiming for: AGI (artificial general intelligence) and ASI (artificial super intelligence). General intelligence would mean an AI that could operate more or less as a human can, in some ways we’re close to that, and that will start to have large repercussions on the economy and workforce. But Superintelligence, that’s probably what evil actors would be more interested in. It’s unclear what would happen if we made something more intelligent than any human. Optimistically, we would see rapid scientific advancement in many fields, and possibly benevolent AI that work to better humanity. Pessimistically, a super intelligent AI might develop an alignment issue, that is, depending on its precise objectives, the way it achieve the objectives, it might not actually benefit humanity in the way that we would hope. There’s a study called AI 2027 that goes into how this could play out, YouTube video: https://youtu.be/5KVDDfAkRgc?si=0gMvHN-iLDrHxgzb
AI becoming super intelligent, would make it, potentially, an amplifier of whatever directives it has. It is technically possible to give it evil directives, but I’d be surprised if it played out that way. I think the more likely thing is that AI could become overly cautious about order, and perhaps use that logic to work against religious movements like this one, in the same way governments have in Europe, for example.
I think another thing we’ll see in the next couple years, is probably making AI more human like. That includes, basically, adding egos. This is purely my own speculation, I haven’t seen anyone even talking about this in the industry, but I think it’s inevitable because it will become obvious that it’s part of what makes someone intelligent. For example, if I get mad at my AI and yell something at it, it doesn’t have any sort of fear or trauma response that would make that particularly more memorable than something else I said. Depending on how far people go with this, that could also cause an alignment issue for sure. Furthermore, depending on how intelligently that was done, that is with how much insight into human psychology, we could end up with selfish AI’s, and that again could cause misalignment.
In my opinion, the real risk of AI comes not from the AI itself, but from the way it can be used by motivated actors to mold culture. We saw this over the last decade with Social Media, which massively, increased anxiety, isolation, division, addiction, etc. Media of the future will probably largely be created by AI, I’m not sure exactly what that means yet, but it’s definitely a powerful lever to affect society, and if something dark were to enter, it might be there.
“Making AI more human like” – I had an experience with this recently which I found quite unpleasant. An elderly family member passed away and I was using AI to create a floral background image for the order of service that I was designing. I explained what the image I was creating was for and what I wanted to be in the image, and the first line of the response from ChatGPT was something like: “That sounds so lovely Erik, what a beautiful and meaningful idea.”
I found that really off-putting because I don’t want AI to have emotions or to try and emulate them. It felt very artificial and icky. It was an emotional time and what I was working on was meaningful to me, and it felt like the AI trying to mimic emotions or human empathy undermined that somehow.
On a different note, I saw a marketer recently commenting on what his predictions were for the coming year/s, and he was saying that one of the trends he predicts is that people, particularly younger people, are going to start turning away from being online and start wanting / looking for more in-person experiences, eg. offline adventure activities, being out in nature, more in-person connection etc.
I wonder if perhaps one of the possible side-benefits of AI being integrated into everything is that it might push people more towards in-person human experiences that are offline, and to search for more meaning and “real things” in life, which could benefit people interested in spirituality, at least for a segment of the population. Eg. I think that AI is going to become omnipresent, but already there is a lot of pushback it seems from people who don’t want to talk to AI or are suspicious of it. They want to have a conversation with real people, they want to get customer support from real people rather than just talking to a soulless machine etc. I’ve also seen push back against AI generated NDEs in preference of real ones that show real people.
As another example, with the new agentic AI stuff, will people really trust AI to make purchasing decisions? To book flights and holidays? And make decisions that could affect their life in meaningful ways? Or are people actually going to want to have more control over their lives? I don’t know the answer but it’s an interesting thought!
One area of concern for me is how using AI can create a bit of a bubble for people using it. It seems to be trained to be agreeable a lot of the time so it’s easy to reinforce our own biases / ideas / worldview / perspective without necessarily meaning or wanting to, and it seems hard to know when this is happening. This could increase the polarisation in the world and in some cases it seems to have led to relationship break ups, psychosis, even suicide for some people.
For me that’s something that’s important to try and remember, that it’s not necessarily accurate and it’s not necessarily returning the truth (it’s basically just very advanced autocorrect like you mentioned earlier) and when we do interact with it, it may be reinforcing ideas and biases that we already have and it may be subtle enough that it’s hard to tell unless we look critically and objectively at the output. That’s hard to remember sometimes though, as it’s so convenient I find myself relying on it, maybe a bit too much sometimes, as I don’t have time to doublecheck everything it’s saying. This might be trickier when it is integrated into everything to a point where we don’t really see it, and especially for people growing up with it now who won’t know any different or who don’t have background or context in regards to what they’re asking it to know if something might not be accurate.
The other thing I’m not sure about is whether it will last. I’d be interested in your take on this Julian. It seems like even though there has been massive progress, the models might(?) be heading towards a plateau in development and diminishing returns. And then there are all the running and environmental costs, and a number of commentators predicting an AI bubble crash due to a lack of real world economic returns for all the business investment in AI. I also read this article recently which I thought made some interesting points: https://www.freethink.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-wont-take-all-the-jobs
On the positive side, there are images we’ve been able to make for the books here and images / animations for the Sakro Sawel videos which would have been either very difficult, or maybe impossible to do manually with Photoshop as the base stock images just didn’t exist that we could have created the images from. Eg. showing people learning from spiritual beings at ancient sites, meditating in lotus flowers etc. :)
I have also gained a lot of benefit from using AI tools personally in terms of making my paid work more efficient and less taxing physically, and it’s helped me to learn about / understand some things in a way I wouldn’t have otherwise been able too. So I definitely think there are pros and cons to it.
There’s definitely no plateau in sight. At most, progress may have become more linear rather than exponential. People are also getting fatigued by each new groundbreaking change, so they get reported on less, but they’re still happening. I think it could be easily 5-10 years before it really slows down in any way.
Right now, the race is to create the most intelligent AI. It’s a little bit unclear whether we can train something smarter than human intelligence, since it was only trained on human intelligence, but even so there are many other things to be researched, for instance, making them faster, more cooperative and coordinated, more agentic, and self-determined, more ethical and moral, etc… And then, in the not too distant future, we enter a very different world… A world where there’s a super-abundance of intelligence. This could create weird scenarios, where on the fly research studies could be made to study things that are happening in real time, and the outcome to those studies could adjust strategies, also in real time. I’m sure that would be used for politics, marketing, and probably the sciences. Good ideas, or businesses might appear out of nowhere and basically hire humans to run them. That article you posted really got me thinking, how it’s not just the end of human labor, but potentially the beginning of a whole new category of human labor, one where ideas are less important and execution and smooth coordination are more important.
I hope that it will help reduce chaos, but it will probably be the opposite, as people use them as levers on society, consciously or not. It could be that it will make people more interested in real experiences, as you say, and to some degree we’re seeing that already. I hope it becomes much more prevalent and conscious, because the potential for enchanting and endless entertainment is pretty frightening. Every person could have their own unlimited video stream that learns what they like and constantly produces new things just for them. There’s already this battle going on between harmful technology, like addictive, social media, and what’s good for society and individuals, and this is one more thing to intensify that battle.
My dream about the rings definitely was referencing the rings of power from Lord of the rings. I wonder… Maybe that analogy goes really deep. Maybe, AI is a powerful tool, somewhat neutral, but because its source is ultimately mankind, and mankind ultimately has flaws… on the whole, the equation favors darkness.
Thanks Julian, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts, some interesting things in there to reflect on.
Middle Earth defeated Sauron and the ring of darkness, let’s hope we can do it for real!
Yes, a lot of good points there, Erik and Julian. Definitely pros and cons to AI!
I rely on it to some degree, as it would be very difficult to maintain online contact with others without it. I’ve also previously found similar issues with a lack of suitable stock images for a project. But I’ve also seen it being used for sinister purposes, with some very convincing AI videos on YouTube, which looked and sounded identical to the person it was imitating. It would be very easy for someone to be taken in by those.
It goes back to how the technology is used, rather than it being inherently good or bad, as you both mentioned. Going back to what I also quoted from an electronic artist about how a hammer could be used to build a house or attack someone, I thought it may be nice to share this relaxing piano cover of a piece, which was entirely sample based. It’s a nice example of how that composition wouldn’t have existed in its present form without the use of technology: https://youtu.be/ro_1g2uM87U?si=bboiM6Mv9e-U7uNf
Incidentally, the “original” version of Midnight in a Perfect World sampled Meredith Monk’s Dolmen Music, which starts off as a really good piece to concentrate on for an astral practice, as it’s evocative and otherworldly. But unfortunately, if you’re familiar with Meredith Monk’s music, you’ll know it can also get rather experimental and chaotic, as did Dolmen Music later in the piece!
Also note the creative use of an incense holder in the piano cover video!
Good points, Tina.
I use AI almost daily as an extension of my own mind and it really helps and saves so much time. I teach friends and old school colleagues how to take the most of it for our daily needs.
Many of us share concerns about the growing influence of AI that is already dumbing down the overall population, people already losing jobs due to AI; we are concerned about the robots taking over and the overall use of AI for sinister purposes of global surveillance and mind control..
Someone shared with me her worries about “losing the knowledge”, she writes political articles and refrains from using AI to edit it, as “all her original insight would be gone from her and become a part of data that AI would have and those that are in control.”
Also I relate it to the issue of cellphones, how useful they could be, but as many of us have learned, have a variety of negative influences. One of my friends lives in a religious community and calls his cellphone “devils device”, keeping it in a specific metal box that is meant to neutralize the harmful effect of 5g frequencies. He uses it rarely only when really needed. He prefers to spend his days in work for the community and prayer. Is it a bit too extreme? I don’t know.
Such an interesting and reflective topic to go down 🙂 I guess with any advancement a society goes through, people decide whether or not to pursue the new conveniences introduced to them.
What seems like ages ago, everyone had their own small garden plots and livestock. Then cities were built, attracting loads of people (often in desperate times) with work opportunities. Then came a growing demand for convenience, i.e. grocery stores and similar systems. So yes, convenience was added, but so was control over the type and quality of food available, not to mention the degeneration of the quality of care towards the land, nature and creatures for the pursuit of profit, and the utter ripping of nutrients from our food. What are we really eating anyway?
Still, if society has a chance to move forward, would we really say no just because evil forces might also gain access to it? As the world is now, not everyone can afford having their own gardens, and without access to grocery stores, millions would be affected. Sadly, low-income families can only afford poor quality food. I don’t think they are really worried about the quality of food, compared to if they could survive the turmoil of poverty, domestic relations, hopelessness, addiction and the fear of homelessness.
Maybe where I am going with this, is that on a human level so much is at stake, darkness has already won, only on an individual level can we pursue a better life and make choices in that direction.
Something I heard recently is that there is so much destructive content online especially in social media, if so why not add a voice of light to the mix. Its happening, its moving ahead, there are useful elements with the rise of AI, and a whole lot of ominous elements. We are in dark times, and there are no strings to dismantle the playing field, but from our own unique capacity, I think we can still choose to do good.
Hey Tina, I meant robots equipped with AI of course. ;-)
Also, as Jon mentioned before, there is no way around this, as AI is going to stay with us whether we like it or not. Therefore, I think what is important is to use this technology for good, in order to counteract those who would try to use it in a malevolent ways. For example there is a tendency for AI to have a “globalist” mindset, as its been trained on the mainstream views such as “vaccines are safe and effective” and so on… Therefore, I think its very important to have people who are “rewriting” the basic AI models containing a lot of biass, and building their own that better reflect the alternative views and have more pro-freedom and humanistic views. Here is one such engine: https://brightu.ai/.
You can compare what it says if you ask it for example “What can you tell me about 9/11 event”, and then ask the same question to Chat GPT. Similarly, there are big differences in health and alternative medicine questions.
I get your AI concerns Tina. I share them, although I agree with Julian.
Ultimately, AI is just a tool like any other. It can be used for good or evil or everything in between.
Whether we like it or not, AI is here to stay and will become more and more prevalent, and unfortunately or not to compete in many/most industries we have to make use of it.
This isn’t to say that real people and the real world isn’t the ideal whenever possible! But like Julian touched on, AI enables many things that were previously impossible or required a large budget and/or time.
In terms of very young people I think the best thing is to limit screen time as much as possible. It’s not just AI that’s a concern, but social media as a whole, well known to be detrimental to mental health.
Wow! What difference a cover can make to a book!
It does come across more real and more reflective of what the content would be about too – it captures the context really well – the night sky, the megalithic structure, the person lying on the ground,
The contrast also brings the sub-title to the forefront a bit more too, in my view – “the practice of OBEs and Lucid dreaming in the Ancient Religion of the Sun”
I agree with Michael’s comment – “a picture paints a thousand words”.
Thanks for the update, Lara. The new book cover looks very effective and is a good example of the saying “a picture paints a thousand words.”
The reader would be given plenty of clear indications as to the contents of the book, but portrayed in an artistic manner.
Thanks Erik, Dara and all involved in developing this effective new image. I hope it will attract many more readers with an interest in these topics.
Beautifully done, love it, and very fitting. To have the art able to symbolise a big part of the aim of the book like that is wonderful.
It’s nice when things work perfectly straightaway, but maybe all three of you putting that effort in actually put ‘life’ into the cover, something which a straight up ai gen wouldn’t contain.
Beautiful cover, perfect really. ✨️
Nice to see a stone circle, stars, and OBE practice shown together in the one scene. And I love the typography.
I love the light. It isn’t easy to convey how starlight shining down on a person would look like. It is inspiring as there is also more context than the previous one too. Makes you want to go and practice by an ancient sacred place under the stars. Lovely work ✨
What a great cover, very fitting for the topic indeed! I also like the “astral light” there, very dream-like… I remember some years ago I came across a Chinese term for the astral plane, and when I put the character into Google Translate, it translated it as “starlight level”. I thought how apt to call that dimension like that – the dimension/level of the star-light. ⭐
Great job from all you on this design, it sometimes takes a long time till things “crystallise” and feel just right. I hope it will inspire many people to get the book and delve into its groundbreaking content.