"The Download"

manjit

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Okay, this is an odd one :)

I think I've mentioned here before that several years ago, during a set of neuro-biological experiences I label (for linguistic only purposes) "kundalini awakening", that I had an experience that I spontaneously described to myself in my own head as a "download", and which subjectively altered my perception/way of thinking/knowledge quite significantly. After those experiences, I started noticing other people were also using this word "download" to describe an experience within a variety of "altered experiences" from kundalini awakening, psychedelic use to NDEs etc

I have been fascinated ever since, but don't really know what to make of it or how to look into what this phenomena really is any further (any ideas anyone?!).

I was very recently talking with an internet friend of mine who is going through some major "awakenings" and "shifts" of their own and I had mentioned this "download" episode to them in context of another issue. A few days ago they emailed to me a link to an Adyashanti video where he shares his own experience of "awakening", and he also mentions the "download" experience.....I was totally blown away when I heard this clip!:


Funnily enough, this same poster emailed me yesterday saying they had heard the same word "download" used again by the respected Sufi Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee to describe an experience he had, but I cannot find the exact excerpt yet.....there is many, many hours of audio it could be in!

One point & one question:

Point: For any scientific, rational, or just curious people, I can assure you SOME sort of experience is happening here (and by this I specifically mean the "kundalini" thing, without the use of any drugs for eg, and often entirely spontaneously to people who have no idea what's happening, pretty much like me!) that science & biology currently absolutely has no understanding of. It is an experience that many, many different & diverse people have with striking similarities, and it is very, very weird. But people can investigate that for themselves should they be interested!

Question:

If anyone is aware of ANY other reference to the word or similar type experience as the "download", in any kind of format, book, blog, video etc, can they please post it here?

Cheers!



 
Funnily enough, this same poster emailed me yesterday saying they had heard the same word "download" used again by the respected Sufi Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee to describe an experience he had, but I cannot find the exact excerpt yet.....there is many, many hours of audio it could be in!

Maybe "Technology, Consciousness and the Future" by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee here:

http://www.workingwithoneness.org/video-audio

From the blurb: What are the values, the attitude of consciousness, we need to download that will allow us to live the future that is waiting? He doesn't mention it in the audio file, but the word is mentioned in the description.
 
Thank you very much Michael, you are a gent!

Apparently a more detailed explanation of Llewellyn's experiences, which included the concept of the "download", was definitely discussed in one of the clips, but I haven't been able to locate it yet.

But, what you have posted at least indicates my email friend was not mistaken, and it is probably likely Llewellyn mentions the experience somewhere in there! I'll see if my friend can narrow it down a tiny bit :)

Cheers Michael.
 
If anyone is aware of ANY other reference to the word or similar type experience as the "download", in any kind of format, book, blog, video etc, can they please post it here?
For a while I was taking programs through the Monroe Institute. In "Far Journeys" Robert Monroe talks about "rote". This seems comparable to downloads. Some of the other attendees described their experiences with downloads or rotes.

Unconnected with Monroe Institute I've had some experience with Kundalini which had/has many aspects but nothing for me that resembles a download.
 
Hi North, thanks for the pointer. I will definitely check out "rote", it doesn't ring any bells at all for me! Read Far Journies as a kid, but there is no way at all I could even have begun to understand such concepts as this then....."out of body" was enough mysticism for me :)

I'm fascinated to hear people's experiences with "kundalini" North, is there somewhere you've already shared that, or would you share here?

I guess a whole new thread for that could be a good idea, but it doesn't feel right for some reason. I've moved away from those kind of paradigms, and reading forums like these is a kind of symptom of that, so feels odd to start a thread on it here.

I do think, though, it is possibly one of the most potentially fruitful avenues of scientific research into consciousnes and the "paranormal" that there is available to us....far beyond, in my own opinion, than anything we could learn from NDEs for eg. I say that because there does seem to be a universal (to humans) phenomena we don't understand which seems to have some very physical effects which co-relate with it. It also radically "messes" with one's consciousness (easily comparable to psychedelics like DMT for eg...in my personal experience), so it could reveal lots about the human condition.

As it is, we only have the understanding and paradigms which have come out of millenia of eastern mysticism, so a very "one track" approach....

Anyway North, would love to hear your experiences?

Cheers & thanks again for the "rote" pointer ;;/?
 
I come across the term ‘downloads’ frequently in new age circles and maybe on a smaller scale, I am experiencing them when I need an answer to a question. My take on a download is that it is a form of claircognizant channeling. I have never heard anybody specifically explain the form in which the data gets downloaded other than a vast amount of knowledge gets transmitted in an instant or a matter of moments.

Personally, I have experienced such downloads in the form of pure light moving through my body from the crown, pictures or visions along with thoughts or just an inner knowing of past or potential future outcomes.
 
Wow, thanks Nicole! Seems it's a lot more common than I thought! And there was me thinking I was oh so special ;)

Out of interest.....do you roughly remember the first time you heard it expressed as "download"?

Thinking about it, now, "akashic records"? Hmmm, will have to ponder that as I've never made the connection! I KNEW there was point to all this online chatting malarkey :)
 
My take on a download is that it is a form of claircognizant channeling.

Hold on, forgot to comment on this.

Interesting Nicole. What do you think we are "channeling" though? Do you have any thoughts on that?

It's easier to understand "channeling" as a concept in the sorts of videos Typoz has linked up, for example, for they are purported "beings" often with a prior (simultaneous etc) existence on earth.....so easy to understand as beings or "souls" or whatever being "channeled".

But when it's just information? Thanks!
 
Robert Monroe's "Rote" (thanks for the heads up North):

Some of the terms Monroe invented go further than these approximations. An especially useful one is Rote, meaning a thought ball—a packet of thought/mentation, total memory, involving knowledge, information, experience, and history, an idea or concept complete in itself. The term Percept indicates a combination of insight, intuition, and understanding. Ident is a mental name or address—the energy pattern of an item. Curl is organized energy, usually intelligent, and CLICK (printed thus) is an instantaneous change in consciousness.

The Rote itself, a package of thought, knowledge, information, experience, and history, emanates from the nonphysical beings encountered in the out-of-body state.

http://www.intuitive-connections.net/2007/book-monroe.htm
 
In 2005, when I met a young guy who claimed to have been in a severe car crash with his brother, leaving them with physical disabilities and brain damage and unable to work. I am fuzzy on the details now, but at some point Cory started to receive downloads that gave him a different understanding of reality.

He started to see into the multiverse, seeing beings everywhere, even stepping on them and getting access to sacred geometry. He shared concepts that are so foreign and strange that they can only be explained as coming from a different star system. He used this geometry to heal himself and his brother, a story that is being verified by his mother. Not that this proves anything; just that it is a bit more difficult to dismiss the same story told by three people.

Being highly sensitive myself, I could initially feel the energy emanating from his plates. Now it seems to be integrated to a degree that I no longer feel anything, but can still taste the difference in food that has been charged with his products, especially wine, coffee and water.

This brings me to the second part of your question: channeling. Jon Klimo wrote the bible on channeling and his book, ‘Channeling: Investigations on Receiving Information from Paranormal Sources’ is worth a read if you really want to dig into the subject.

Personally, I believe there is a whole universe of data out there and the question is not whether it is real or not, but what you are going to do with it. From all I have seen and heard, I am not able to weave a coherent story of the spirit world or the other side of the veil. It seems if you can imagine it, it exists somewhere. Use what works and makes your life better and leave the rest behind, is the place I have reached.

If you want to know how true a channeling is of a person who has lived on this plane, let’s say Jesus, then listen to a number of different channelers and see if the stories match. In my experience they rarely do. There is always some underlying wisdom to take away, much like taking advice from your friends and family. Nobody has the absolute truth and at the end you need to decide what is best for you.

With that, I think everything is just information or data, until you can find a way to integrate it and put it into practice in the physical world. That’s the hard work! Ask Einstein.

There is just one more comment I have on channeling. There seems to be a difference between receiving data externally and receiving it internally. For example, hearing and seeing a spirit entity is such an external communication. Some people see actual spirits with their physical eyes, others just with their inner eye. You know you have a communication, imagined or not, with another entity. I have even had sensations of being touched and smelled flowers or tobacco coming out of thin air.

Then there are the internal communications, thoughts, feelings and knowing. This is my primary MO. For example, I am being asked a question and an answer comes out of my mouth, that I had no way of knowing. To me it’s just the most logical thing in the world, but there is no moment in time I have learned that information. I understand now that this is called claircognizent channeling. It is information that is coming from somewhere, but no spirit entity is involved in the process.

Was it part of a prior download and being made available on a need be basis? Possibly. My point is that nothing is black or white; everything just exists as a possibility until it takes on physical form or somehow can be observed.
 
That was absolutely fascinating, one of the most interesting posts I've read in a long while, thanks Nicole. :)

I will definitely be reading Jon Klimo's book soon....

EDIT: I didn't know/recall that Jon Klimo had been a guest on Skeptiko!:

http://www.skeptiko.com/56-dr-jon-klimo-on-channeling-and-consciousness/

And Klimo's book sounds extremely good, exactly what I was looking for in my original question - thanks again Nicole ;;/? :

In this study of channeling, earlier called spirit communication or mediumship, Klimo, who teaches at Rosebridge Graduate School in the San Francisco Bay Area, writes with clarity about "the communication of information to or through a physically embodied human being from a source…on some other level or dimension of reality other than the physical as we know it." He profiles recent channels and their sources, goes back to preliterate societies and the advent of monotheism and identifies as channels such figures as Moses, Solomon, Muhammad, Merlin, Nostradamus, Swedenborg and Edgar Cayce. He discusses the sorts of people who are channels, kinds of information channeled, sources of information channeled and varieties of channeling like clairvoyance and automatic writing. According to Klimo, few people tap into their abilities to perform channelingand for those who think they can, he serves as guide.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Channeling-Investigations-Receiving-Information-Paranormal/dp/1556432488
 
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Okay, this is an odd one :)

I think I've mentioned here before that several years ago, during a set of neuro-biological experiences I label (for linguistic only purposes) "kundalini awakening", that I had an experience that I spontaneously described to myself in my own head as a "download", and which subjectively altered my perception/way of thinking/knowledge quite significantly.

Funnily enough, this same poster emailed me yesterday saying they had heard the same word "download" used again by the respected Sufi Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee to describe an experience he had, but I cannot find the exact excerpt yet.....there is many, many hours of audio it could be in!

"Nothing new under the Sun" (except better electronic signal processing and more specific algorithms)

More than 40 years ago I had the pleasure and privilege to meet and converse with Vilayat Inayat Khan. "Download" would not have been a common term of the internet then, but the gaining of perceptions through our higher capabilities of mind had been in place for thousands of years. His son and other Sufi teachers continue an ancient way.

"Downloads" could well become the new meme for describing sudden recognition of an deep understanding. I just fight the idea that it something new.

What is new - in information science - is the conceptualization of informational objects. It is a meme that conveys ontological status to ideas and to objective meaningful situations. Thus, making them on an equal-footing in reality with material objects. Defining numbers and math concepts - as a subset of informational objects - clarifies their status as part of reality; as well as how they are different from material objects.

Give me that old-time spiritual insight. ;-) Clothing it in modern cultural terms is fine (and inevitable), as long as we don't lose track of the heritage of inspiration and personal revelation going back to ancient times.
 
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"Downloads" could well become the new meme for describing sudden recognition of an deep understanding. I just fight the idea that it something new.

Hey Stephen, thanks for the response!

And I quite agree with everything you wrote. (in my recent thread about Oculus, I have a semi-rant about the "universe is a simulation" idea, and how I perceive it to be an excellent example of how we start to see the universe in terms of the concepts we hold internally. I guess similar could be applied to the term "download" in context of a "spiritual experience"?).

Even whilst I was starting this thread, I was aware of the potential of the idea to be, errm, fetishised I guess, turned into a "meme" as you say. Well, que sera, whatever will be will be...and maybe it's supposed to be like that :)

You write "I just fight the idea that it something new".

I quite agree, but then I wonder - is that definitely true though? I think it probably is, but I'm not convinced I am certain about it. Having read numerous historical texts of the stages of "awakening" and other mystical experiences, it is not that clear and transparent where the "download" experience fits in...though there is a few potential candidates. (reading this thread reminds me of the concept of the "Akashic", for eg, but I'm not sure if that's an actual historical/traditional concept, or one born post-Blavatsky?)

However, as per the book Nicole recommended written by Jon Klimo (sounds perfect for my question, is on order!) and North bringing up Monroe's idea of the "Rote"....it seems there is indeed "nothing new under the sun" :)

Anyway, listened to the most recent Mysterious Universe podcast today, at 1hr 5mins mark an NDE story is told. At 1hr 8mins, the NDE experiencer again mentions the word "download" to describe an experience. Fascinating!:

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2016/04/14-15-mu-podcast-2/

PS - Stephen, you mention 40 years ago you had the chance to meet Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan? You are a lucky person, I have heard nothing but good things about him! I don't know too much about him personally, but I have read a few books (He's big on music/sound and mysticism, an old favourite topic of mine!). EDIT: I think I'm thinking about his father, Hazrat Inayat Khan actually?

I would love to hear any personal recollections of yours should you ever care to share? Cheers!
 
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Okay, this is an odd one :)


If anyone is aware of ANY other reference to the word or similar type experience as the "download", in any kind of format, book, blog, video etc, can they please post it here?

Cheers!

I also had a kundalini-type experience some 20 yrs ago. Not really similar to the download. In some aspects it was similar to the descriptions given in the book by Gopi Krishna, Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man or to some experiences described in Patanjali yoga sutras (although I still consider myself a beginner in this endeavour). Let me just give sanskrit names corresponding to my experiences : ananda, anahata sound, short ajna opening. All this lasted for several weeks and was a part of a deep personal crisis. In the culmination it was sometimes accompanied by unvoluntary shaking an sometimes even fear. Some parts were pure bliss, like never before or never after. Just to clarify, I never took drugs in my life.
 
PS - Stephen, you mention 40 years ago you had the chance to meet Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan? You are a lucky person, I have heard nothing but good things about him! I don't know too much about him personally, but I have read a few books (He's big on music/sound and mysticism, an old favourite topic of mine!). EDIT: I think I'm thinking about his father, Hazrat Inayat Khan actually?

I would love to hear any personal recollections of yours should you ever care to share? Cheers!

Pir Vilayat passed about a decade ago. His father, Hazrat, some 90 years ago. I'm kinda old - but not that old.

Pir Vilayat reflected a timeless calmness and depth. He was waiting for others, after a speaking engagement, so I was gifted to spend a few minutes talking about his work with western thinkers, such as David Bohm. I do think he "downloaded" righteous ideas about each cultural religion being from a single source in "heaven".

In my limited experiences, I would compare him to a man of a very different cultural background, Sir John Templeton. He had zero aristocratic airs and seemed to be more of a denizen of rough-hewn porch in the woods, with his home-spun wisdom. (even at a fancy wine and cheese "meet and greet") Both men were gracious and inspiring.
 
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Might be worth looking back at previous discussions of revelation in history as "downloading" has an interesting, modern or even post-modern connotation. It suggests receipt of specific information that one asked for ("clicked on").

But it could also be something sent into your brain, which then suggests the possibility of malware.

Did mystics in the past think of revelation pouring into their minds, a flood of insight, or was it more awareness expansion? Plato talks about the illumination of the sun in the Allegory of the Cave, which is more a sensory expansion...the Neoplatonists seem to follow suit.

OTOH I can see the concept of downloading as having some resonance with alchemy where one utilizes the world to create a technology that brings gnosis. And IIRC Ramanujan had dreams where he drank drops of a goddess' blood that accorded him new mathematical insights.

Anyway just riffing....no centralizing point here...
 
Let me just give sanskrit names corresponding to my experiences : ananda, anahata sound, short ajna opening.

Hi Jumbo - intriguing. I love hearing about other peoples independent experiences, they feel more authentic to me. I would especially love to hear more about your experiences with "anahata sound" if you wouldn't mind sharing....how did this sound manifest for you, how did it effect your consciousness etc?

His father, Hazrat, some 90 years ago. I'm kinda old - but not that old.

Haha, oops, sorry ;) For some reason I thought he was alive around the 60s, and his son was still alive. I believe there was some connections between either or both of them with the "gurus" of the "anahad yoga" (yoga of inner sound) I was following for a while...

Never heard of Sir John Templeton, I shall have to check him out...

Might be worth looking back at previous discussions of revelation in history as "downloading" has an interesting, modern or even post-modern connotation. It suggests receipt of specific information that one asked for ("clicked on").

Excellent post Sci.

I've been thinking about this "download" idea for quite a few years now, but writing it down and reading the responses has helped me a great deal in thinking about it in other ways.

Especially Nicole's post, and the Klimo "Channeling" book mention, got me thinking about what is going on here and how it is a concept that could be applied, speculatively, to a whole host of "mystical" or "paranormal" experiences throughout history. I've been wondering if this is a process or dynamic that describes the mystical revelations or insights of all the mystics of the past. But then some other aspects of the mystical experience don't easily fit in to such simplistic reductionisms, like more formless and contentless ecstatic states...

....either way, the comments here like yours have got me thinking, cheers! ;;/?

Good Klimo youtube clip:




PS - I've finally started reading Techgnosis by Erik Davis today (as I picked up from your thread months/years ago! Been on bedside table since haha), on page 52ish.....ties in very nicely with this thread and the Oculus one, especially speculating about what the future holds, gnostic ideas etc. Great book, thanks for the recommendation Sci ;;/? I wasn't actually aware at the time, but I'd been listening to Erik Davis's podcast for a while, but never knew he had a book, doh! - I think you'll like the most recent podcast maybe Sci?!:

http://expandingmind.podbean.com/
 
Never heard of Sir John Templeton, I shall have to check him out...
In 1972, he established the world's largest annual award given to an individual, the Templeton Prize, which honors a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension. Its monetary value, currently £1,000,000, always exceeds that of the Nobel Prizes, which was Templeton's way of underscoring his belief that advances in the spiritual domain are no less important than those in other areas of human endeavor. Templeton also contributed a sizable amount of his assets to the John Templeton Foundation, which he established in 1987.

Although Sir John was a Presbyterian elder and active in his denomination (also serving on the board of the American Bible Society), he espoused what he called a "humble approach" to theology. Declaring that relatively little is known about the divine through scripture and present-day theology, he predicted that "scientific revelations may be a gold mine for revitalizing religion in the 21st century." To his mind, "All of nature reveals something of the creator. And god is revealing himself more and more to human inquiry, not always through prophetic visions or scriptures but through the astonishingly productive research of modern scientists."

I would have daydreams of "downloading" me one of them Templeton Prizes.
 
I am not sure whether this is adding to the topic or just confusing it, but one of the channeled sources I have listened to, a collective consciousness from the Pleiades, claims that the sun is downloading information to humanity on a regular basis in the form of solar flares.

We understand that satellites are affected by these flares and on occasion power plants have been taken out, with other words that the sun can create havoc with technology. Being highly sensitive, I can feel strong solar flares, they mess with my system as well.

It even feels like a download or computer upgrade. I am being bombarded with energy, which is stirring up old issues that need to get resolved and integrated and trigger a lot of discomfort and agitation. I may be taken out for a day or two, but once processed, I feel like a newer and improved version of myself.

I have observed that connection for a few years and find there is a strong but not perfect correlation. I’ve gotten into the habit of checking the space weather every time I find myself in that now familiar haze, as I did today, and all I can say is yup, here we go again… (a high M class flare, almost X class, but for some reason I can't embed the picture)

http://n3kl.org/sun/noaa.html

I am curious to know whether other people heard of this connection as well. It does tie in with the work conducted by the HeartMath Institute, but I have not seen this discussed here before.

https://www.heartmath.org/research/global-coherence/
 
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