Albeit with a slight delay, we continue to celebrate the birthdays of significant personalities in the history of phase studies. Sylvan Muldoon was born on February 18, 1903, in the United States. Like his British contemporary, Charles Leadbeater, he is considered one of the forerunners of the study of the phase phenomenon, even though he knew it under the mystical term “astral travel”. At the age of 12, Sylvan accidentally woke up and saw a silver cord connecting his projected consciousness to a real body in his bed.
During this experience, Muldoon was frightened and thought he was dying. But after a while, he came to the conclusion that this was a manifestation of “astral projection.” Following this first incident, he managed to repeat the experience on several occasions. By modern standards, Muldoon was never able to become an advanced practitioner due to the lack of complete control over his experiments and their relatively low number. Suffice it to say that in his lifetime he had been able to induce a phase state more or less thirty times, which for some modern phasers is what they accomplish in the course of a month.
At the same time, one should not forget that in Muldoon’s time there was very little practical information available, which is why his achievements deserve to be appreciated. You could say they were unique. That is why, coordinating his efforts with the famous American researcher of parapsychology Hereward Carrington, in 1929, he published the sensational book “The Projection of the Astral Body”. The authors would later publish two more books: “The Case for Astral Projection” (1936) and “The Phenomena of Astral Projection” (1951).
Muldoon also wrote two more books outside of his collaboration with Carrington. Despite the abundance of esotericism therein, Muldoon’s books, especially his earlier works, contain useful practical information and explanations of the most varied moments that can happen in phase states or accompany them. On the other hand, Muldoon is also considered almost the main disseminators of the irrational esoteric terms and prejudices that surround phase practices, and which have unfortunately become ubiquitous. Sylvan Muldoon died in 1971.
Still, even as recently as the 2000s, many reported that when they “left the body” they saw a “silver cord” connecting them to their real body. The influence of occult theories is only now starting to abate. Have you ever seen this notorious “silver cord”?
