The journal
Reflections on emotions, practical tools, and perspectives.
A silver cord in Ecclesiastes, a fire seen 400 kilometres away, a wife who crosses the Atlantic in a dream, a woman who leaves her body inside a scanner. What the best-documented accounts really say — and what they don't.
Your name, your body, your thoughts, your emotions: you say "my" body, "my" thoughts. But who is this "I" that owns them? An ancient practice, found from Vedanta to Buddhism, to rediscover what observes — and the first step of any conscious exit from the body.
"The subconscious is 90% of your mind." "Everything is set before the age of seven." "Listen to affirmations on waking and you'll rewrite your DNA." Behind these formulas lies a deep truth about automatisms — and tools that really work.
Physical, etheric, astral, mental. Traditions drew maps of consciousness long before neuroscience. Understanding them changes the way you prepare for an exit — as long as you don't mistake the map for the journey.
The meditating Buddha, hands cupped. The thumb touching the index finger. Palms joined before the heart. Mudras are gestures thousands of years old. They do not heal organs, as you sometimes read — but they do something simpler and very real.
Twelve rivers of energy run through the body, say the Chinese texts, and each has its hour in the day. What traditional medicine really says, what research has found — and what you can keep for your practice.
Seven wheels of light lined up along the spine, each with its colour and its gland. That is the image everyone knows. It is partly ancient, partly very recent. Untangling the two makes the practice more accurate — and freer.
On cathedral tympana, four figures surround Christ: a winged man, a lion, an ox, an eagle. They come from Ezekiel's vision, return in Revelation, stand for the four evangelists — and correspond to the four fixed signs of the zodiac. A symbolic key to four directions of being.
Traditions speak of a guardian standing at the entrance to the inner worlds. It has a less poetic name: your nervous system. Understanding how it reacts to fear, stress and difficult memories is the condition for safe exploration.
Every evening, your brain crosses in a few minutes a border zone between waking and sleep. This is where spontaneous images, vibrations and out-of-body experiences are born. Understanding brainwaves means learning to recognise the door.
Knowing you are dreaming, while you dream. Long considered a legend, lucid dreaming was demonstrated in the laboratory in the 1980s — and in 2021 researchers even held a dialogue with sleeping dreamers. It is the best-documented cousin of the out-of-body experience.
The Greek word translated as "sin" first means "to miss the mark". And for many mystics, heaven and hell are also states we pass through in this life. A rereading that frees from guilt without removing any of the demand.
Yin and yang, Shiva and Shakti, the Moon and the Sun. Every tradition describes two poles whose union creates life. The books of this journey see in it the key to awakening. As long as they are not confused with the roles of men and women, these two poles are present in everyone.
Every tradition places the heart at the centre of being. Physiology has found in it its own network of neurons, a constant dialogue with the brain, and a rhythm that settles when we breathe a certain way. What is measured, what is told, and what is practised.
"Music is a form of magic," esoteric books say. They are not entirely wrong: it enters us without permission and changes our state. What research confirms, what belongs to myth — and how to use sound as a door.
A tunnel, a light, departed loved ones, a life passing before your eyes. Thousands of people who came back from cardiac arrest report strikingly similar experiences. What medicine has measured, what it cannot explain, and what these accounts change for the living.
It is depicted as two interlocking pyramids spinning around the body: a "vehicle of light" for travelling between dimensions. The image is recent. Its origin goes back to one of the most mysterious visions of the Bible — and to a tradition of inner ascent.
Seven heavenly bodies, seven metals, seven days of the week. The Ancients read the sky as a mirror of the soul. This symbolic language is very rich — as long as it is not confused with astronomy. And the real Moon does affect our sleep.
"Let there be light." The first word of Genesis, the clear light of the Tibetans, the light met by witnesses of near-death experiences — and the faint glow our body really emits. Physics, biology, experience, symbol: four ways of saying the same thing.
Seat of the soul for Descartes, third eye for the yogis, target of every theory on the internet. What do we really know about this small gland at the centre of the skull — and what is it worth to the explorer of consciousness?
The flower of life carved on temples, the golden ratio hidden in shells, Plato's five perfect solids. Sacred geometry has fascinated people for millennia. What is mathematically true is magnificent; what is exaggerated deserves to be said.
"Channelling higher wisdom", "the true meaning of prayer": the books of this journey devote several pages to them. What do we know about intuition? What does prayer really do? Precise and sometimes surprising answers.
Aries rules the head, Pisces the feet. For centuries, European medicine drew a man covered in the twelve signs of the zodiac. The story of a striking image, what it meant, and what we can keep from it.
Desire is an energy. Many traditions teach that it can be directed, transformed, raised. The books of this journey draw strict rules and spectacular promises from this. What Taoism, yoga and psychology really say — without shame and without dogma.
Many spiritual teachings talk about "killing the ego". The books of this journey even make it the inner devil. Research and the best teachers say something else: the ego is a valuable tool, as long as you don't mistake it for yourself.
Ten spheres, twenty-two paths, three pillars. The Kabbalistic Tree of Life is one of the most elaborate maps of consciousness ever drawn. How to read it, where it comes from, and what it can illuminate about your own path.
Earth, water, fire, air — and at the centre, the quintessence. Alchemists were not only after gold: many sought to transform themselves. Read as stages of consciousness, the four elements offer a simple method for transmuting an emotion.
The Emerald Tablet, Hermes Trismegistus, the seven principles of the Kybalion. They are presented as Egyptian wisdom thousands of years old. Their real history is shorter — and their teaching remains one of the finest keys for thinking about the unity of the world.
You believe you see the world as it is. In fact your brain predicts it, then corrects its prediction with what the senses bring. From Plato's cave to neuroscience, the first threshold is perception.
The out-of-body experience is not a gift. It is a skill. Like any skill, it is acquired through regular, methodical practice, free from any mystical expectation.
In inner territories, will is not a brute force. It is a thread — light, tenacious, indispensable — that allows returning and going back.
Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the decision to continue despite it. For the consciousness explorer, it is the most indispensable quality.
Love is not just another emotion. It is a state of consciousness — and inner explorers have known this for a long time.
There are states of consciousness that most humans do not know they can reach. Serious explorers have been mapping them for decades. Here is what they found.
Every night, we traverse extraordinary states of consciousness without remembering them. Understanding sleep means beginning to explore what really happens when we close our eyes.
We seek inner peace as a state to achieve. What if it were instead a daily practice, humble and discreet?
Shame isolates us, shrinks us, cuts us off from ourselves. But understood differently, it reveals exactly what seeks to grow in us.
Sadness wants to be felt, not managed. But there are ways to welcome it without being swept away by the current.
Fear always points toward something we do not yet know. For consciousness explorers, it is a compass — not an obstacle.
Sadness is not a collapse — it is a descent. Those who know how to traverse it discover that it opens onto something vast.
Anger is not the problem. What we do with it can be. Understanding its signal before acting changes everything.