The Day of the great turning point 

Going beyond what we already know about the out-of-body experience that changed Daniel Meurois’ life in 1971, this is the chronicle of events that led him to the decision to devote himself solely to writing testimonies of his experiences, thereby becoming one of the pioneers of the New Consciousness.
A detailed account, known by few, that underscores the importance of audacity and confidence in our lives. Here is the complete text of a conversation with Annie Laforest for Alchymed.

 

Annie Laforêt : Daniel Meurois, hello!

Daniel Meurois : Hello!

AL: I am so very happy to be here with you today, Daniel.  As we know each other quite well and this will allow for a more personal conversation; and for those who do not know you, we will start at the beginning. You are an internationally renowned writer; with your thirty-third book has just been published (we will present it later), and you have been exploring the topic of the expansion of consciousness for more than thirty years now.  Can you tell us a bit about how this all happened?

DM: Indeed, it has been more than thirty years, as far as my written accounts are concerned, thirty-three years of writing, to be exact. As far as my own experience which initiated all of this, it was even further back in 1972. So it’s been about 40 years, a little more. I will give a brief account because I’ve already spoken about this at length; a review for those who are unfamiliar with the starting point of my path.

In 1972, I was in my first years of college in the north of France, in Lille, to be precise. One evening, having come home from classes, I had what we call an out-of-body experience.  At the time I had no idea of what this experience might be but it was sufficiently marking to determine a new course for my life from that moment on.  In short, that is how it began.  In a split second, as I was lying on my bed, I found myself expulsed from my body, that is, my consciousness enabled me to look at myself from outside my body.  It seems silly to say this, but it is understandably an unsettling experience.

Perhaps the word unsettling is a bit excessive, but it was sufficiently astonishing to ask questions. I realized that myself, I was not simply a view onto this body lying on the bed in this little student bedroom, but that the eyes looking at my body were themselves part of a body, another body that was not material. Now after years and years of having thought this through, I would say that this body had  -and still has since I still have these experiences – a semi-electric, semi-gaseous substance. It is an immaterial body.

AL: Daniel, I have a small question. When this happened rather than frightening you I think it awakened your curiosity…

DM: Yes. I did not feel bad, quite the contrary, I felt extremely serene. So this is what later oriented my investigation, as the state I was in could not be attributed to a dream. It was the exact opposite of a dream: a state of hyper lucidity where the senses increase tenfold. The consciousness is also very precise, very sharp, so that I said to myself: I see myself from outside, I’m no longer in my body. Is that death?

My first thought, and it goes all very fast of course, was: if this is death, it’s wonderful… because I felt so great it was extraordinary. I looked at what was happening and realized that I could not control this second semi-gaseous, semi-electric body as I was saying, because this one was burying itself into the ceiling of my bedroom, the cupboard of the room, etc…  I saw my notebooks, my clothes in the cupboard. Then, I would say that I was privileged to live a truly blessed moment before being pulled back into my body. It lasted an indefinite amount of time that seemed relatively long.

Perhaps it lasted five, minutes, ten minutes, or maybe 30 seconds, I don’t know.  But it was so powerful that once I regained use of my body, which was beginning to feel a bit numb, I had to break into it again. It took me several minutes to begin questioning this. What exactly had I experienced? So I sought to reproduce the experience. It took me months to be able to identify the experience. At the time, in 72, virtually nothing had been written on the topic. I found an old book from the 30s or 40s that talked about astral travel and so on.  So, I called the experience as such, and after six months, I finally said to myself: I absolutely need to relive this again because there must be more to it and I need to know.

AL: At that time, you were a student of literature.

DM: Yes, I was a student of literature at the University of Lille.

It took me about another six months to find myself, naturally without the use of any substance and without effort, able to leave my body a second time. From then on after my second out-of-body experience, I began devising a technique to leave the body voluntarily.So my adventure into the expansion of consciousness, that later became a spiritual experience without ties to any faith or dogma, began here.

Over the years, I realized that this experience was similar to the experience of dying. Once I was able to master the technique for leaving the body or for astral travel, I began travelling to other planes of consciousness and to parallel universes where life takes on an entirely different meaning. That is how it all started.

AL: It started like this but at the same time you were destined to a teaching career. So you operated on these two different levels.

DM: When one studies literature, there are not many other avenues of work besides teaching.  So we can say that officially I was destined to become a teacher or a lecturer.

AL: But you had begun to write about this topic and share your experiences.

DM: Yes, indeed.  After seven years I felt I had sufficiently mastered this and something extraordinary happened.

I met a Being outside of my body on one of the planes of the after-life. I won’t go into detail about this topic now.

This Being served me as a guide for a number of years.  The Being proposed that I write an account of what I’d lived and the implications of these extraordinary experiences.

And it began like that.  After about seven years, I began to write about this.

A first book was published that drew much attention from the medias just a few months later.

A second book also and so on.

I was lucky to have access to important television and radio shows in France, as well as newspapers as at the time these things were not openly discussed.

There were not many books about this and very few people were committed to this line of work. Therefore I benefited from this impact.

So the first two books were very popular but even so, it does not mean an author can live from his writing. It helps out but one cannot just plan to live from a writing career.  Furthermore, I didn’t know whether I would have any other experiences to write about.

AL: Also being a teacher gave you job security, and the future could be comfortable and..

DM: Indeed. At the same time, if I want to be honest with myself, I never could see myself teaching my entire life.  I liked contact with adolescents. I always preferred adolescents and young adults; that is just my nature. I felt that discussions could be more interesting, but I never imagined teaching my entire life.  It seemed, well.. impossible.

AL: This is the story you are going to tell us, absolutely, as it is an important point in your life.

DM: Indeed. One day, as a result of my contact with this Being of Light that in my books I call the Blue Being or the Blue Man, he began to say: “ You should not stay in the north. You should go to the southwest of the country”. I say “you” in the plural because my wife at the time, to whom I had taught this technique, had devoted herself to the same kind of investigations.

He said “You should not stay where you are now and it would be good that you travel to the southwest of France, to the region of Perigord, precisely”. There, he indicated a small perimeter in which I should look for something.

AL: The location was precise?

DM: It was not. It was a perimeter, a triangle the sides of which were about 40 or 50 kilometers.

AL: A bit of freedom.

DM: Yes, a bit of freedom.

And that was all.

He added: “I cannot guarantee anything. Try to make a leap, but remember that I cannot guarantee anything”.

So I come back to my body with this information. Then seeing that the first two books had made some money, today’s equivalent of 17 or 18 thousand dollars – not much but as a young teacher, one is content.

So this money, what could I do with it at the time?

Well, travel south to the Perigord and try to find something.

With confidence, but with no specific information.

Then we found something but with 17 or 18 thousand dollars, what can one get…

AL: Not a castle…

DM: ..if only a ruin?  So we found a ruin and I said: That’s it, that’s what we need. We buy the ruin, etc.  Then during the vacations and the entire year we tried to fix it up, we poured concrete, replaced doors, windows, hired local craftsmen with our savings.  Basically, the inside of the ruin was bare earth.

AL:  But you were still working as a teacher at that time?

DM: Yes, this was all happening during the school vacations.

There was the ground and a wall inside which was cob. The doors and windows were falling out.  A little tree was growing in the main room.. it was, well, a ruin.

AL: An organic house.

DM: Yes, absolutely.  But something incredibly poetic and truly beautiful.  The gingerbread house from fairy tales; that is what it was like.

So the little ruin was bought in 82. Then the winter of 84 began and still there was this admonishment to move without any guarantees, nothing at all. I said to myself: we must leave from here because if we don’t move, nothing will ever happen. It was the end of winter when I made the decision.  I took my finest pen and signed my letter of resignation from the National Education Office.

AL: Then that was a great leap.

DM: Yes, it was a great leap because I thought, Daniel, there is nothing waiting for you… you don’t have tenure as a teacher, you are in the system but don’t have seniority, and it’s a good job, which offers security..

AL: It was a clearly defined path.

DM: It was a path. Of course, I sent my resignation letter to the education office without specifying a reason, as I wasn’t going to start telling my entire story.

I simply don’t want to do it anymore and I stop. That ‘s all.

Naturally, my entire family made comments. “What are you doing, Daniel! Are you crazy? What about the job security.. it’s not easy to obtain a teaching position. It’s a guarantee for the future”, and so on.  So there was panic coming from the family. But myself, surprisingly, I felt incredibly free.

And happy!  Although I should have felt a sort of anguish… I felt happiness, and an indescribable sense of freedom!

AL: You said something very important earlier, Daniel. You said: “If we don’t spring into action, if we don’t move, nothing happens”.

DM: I could feel this. I couldn’t necessarily put it into words, but I sensed it.

Two or three weeks passed.

All of a sudden, the phone rang at the house. It was the evening, I remember.

I answered and it was the voice of my publisher.

“Listen, Daniel, there is the publishing business, and related to this, I have another offer to make.

Your books sell rather well. It gives me too much work.

What would you think of revamping the publishing company?”

It was a very small publishing company. There were two books to edit- three books, two of which were mine.  He said of his business: I’m the smallest editing company in Paris”. And it must have been probably accurate.

AL: It was almost like saying: “Daniel, would you like to buy your own rights back?”

DM: Then he says: How would you like to restructure the publishing house and direct it?

Now that made me think. He said: “Beware, because financially, it’s going to be tight”.

But what he was saying was to me was like a gift from heaven.

I couldn’t care less to be tight financially.

To me, the important point was that I had just closed a door and there, just three weeks later, another door opened, into an area that forced me to challenge myself.

So the answer was an emphatic YES.

Because the publishing house was not formally established;

it was under a personal name and had to be transformed into a corporation, etc.

It needed undivided attention in order to open and become a viable company.

I did say to him: “You know, we’re in Perigord now, not in the north of France. It’s a little house, a ruin right in nature”.

“That’s no problem. The work of a publishing house can be done anywhere.”

So that was the starting point.

But since life always has surprises, about two or three months later, I don’t remember exactly,

I received a letter from the National Education Office saying: “We are offering you a teaching position in the southwest of France”…

AL: That was the devil trying to tempt you.

DM: … as if I had never sent my resignation letter. It was as though that letter had landed God knows where.

AL: That was putting you face-to-face with the challenge and with your choice.

DM: It was as though life was saying: is that really what you want? Because if what you want is to live there, you can, and we are giving you this opportunity to do so. You can have a teaching position in the southwest and you don’t have to be an publisher if you don’t want to.

AL: Is it often like this in life, Daniel? When we make a big decision to make important changes in our life, something comes up right after just to…

DM: I have always witnessed this in my life and I don’t think I’m an exception. I believe that when we come to crossroads and change directions, opportunities arise and help is offered, even though we may not always realize it.

But this was so obvious that I could not help wondering.

There was no hesitation, I have to say. I simply said no.

That was a trap to distract me from my work. There would simply be no more teaching.

Then we moved into this little house that was a construction site, sleeping on improvised mattresses, a bit like in a dream.

Then it became livable and in the fall, the company was created.  At the time it was called the Arista publishing house, which later became the Amrita publishing house.

AL: I remember visiting that house, it was a small house very, very far …

DM:  There were 50 square meters in the middle of nature. Thirty on the ground floor and 20 on the first floor; and a slanted roof.

AL: It was this emphatic “Yes” to life that enabled you to begin spreading the teachings of Christ and of the Essenes, which you have been doing since.

DM: Surprisingly, it was in that house, after two or three months of having lived there that “The Way of the Essenes” came out. There was a kind of coincidence. Then, the whole adventure so to speak, the life experience that led me to talk about the Essenes and their philosophy and all that followed from this began there.

AL: Tell me a bit about the Essenes, as I know there are many for whom this word is unknown.

Or perhaps people know the word but are not familiar. Who are the Essenes?

DM: The Essenes were a small faction of mystics within the Jewish tradition, two thousand years ago.

It is in this context that Jesus, the Master Jesus, grew up.

The Essenes were somewhat heretical compared to the rest of the Jewish population of the time.

They were much more mystical and also ascetical.

They lived either in very strict communities, like the one in Qumran, or in villages where there was much more freedom and a sense of equality, like the little communities of Galilee.

This is the environment in which Jesus grew up.

It was the Essenes that gave birth to the famous Dead Sea scrolls that are much talked about. Manuscripts that demonstrate the rather austere monastic character of Qumran.

The communities that I have mentioned many times in my books are fraternities in small villages where there was much gentleness and tolerance and where mysticism was prevalent.

It was by developing this out-of-body experience that I spoke of earlier that I was able to have access to this information.

I realized that while out of the body my consciousness could have access to different strata or vibrational levels.

I realized that by striving to improve oneself, human consciousness has at times the possibility of connecting to a fifth element of nature that is not often widely discussed.

We often speak of the four basic elements: earth, water, fire and air. I won’t go into details, but those are the four basic elements.

There is a fifth important element which is called akasha.

Akasha is a Sanskrit term meaning “light”. But Light with a capital L.

The specificity of this element of the universe is that it is comparable to what in earlier times might have been called the sensitive plate of a camera, and today in more modern terms might be called the hard drive of a mega computer.

That is, everything we do, everything that is said or done somewhere in the universe – and here let us speak of just what goes on on the earth – everything is recorded.

It is an absolutely incredible database.

By connecting one’s consciousness to this gigantic hard drive, we can find the film of certain past events.

That is how with the help of Beings of Light, among which was the Blue Being I mentioned earlier, I connected to the frequency of the film of a life I lived two thousand years ago in an Essenian environment, among the Essenian fraternity and the Master Jesus.

So when I speak of a life that I have lived before it obviously suggests that this out-of-the body experience implies, whether we like it or not, the notion of reincarnation.

I was always being asked: “Do you believe in reincarnation”?

I always answered: “No, I don’t believe in it. For me it is a reality.”

It is not a belief in something but rather a direct experience. I come in close contact with it regularly with my body and with my soul.

This is a short version of the story, to allow those who don’t know me to understand my method, which is a purely experimental method.

So my books are the written transcriptions of the many such experiences I’ve had.

AL: Can anyone do this, Daniel?

DM: In theory, yes. All human beings are made according to the same plan, of course. Except that some are good at mathematics, some are musicians, while others are masons or plumbers. Everyone is needed on earth.  Personally, my particularity is that my consciousness, my soul, is apparently destined to have these experiences and write about them.

Of course, from an external viewpoint, it is easy to say: You made that leap because you knew…

To this I reply no because at the time, what I am describing was far from being crystal clear.

I knew about out-of-body experiences and I knew that there existed invisible worlds that are extremely tangible.  But I had always been told: “We don’t guarantee anything”.

AL: You had to accomplish an act of faith.

DM: Indeed. As I said earlier, I understood intuitively that if I did not initiate this somehow, nothing would ever happen.

And I believe this to be true for everyone.

My case may be telling because it has to do with the invisible world, if you will.

I soon felt a force inside me.  It was as though I had more or less subconsciously recognized the direction of my destiny.  Yes, the path I was destined to take.

I think we all come to this world with a roadmap but without an operation manual.  There is no operation manual for our personal lives.

AL: However on this path, we may often feel that we are predestined and yet remain unsatisfied. Sometimes our destiny appears to us when we take the service road. That makes it difficult..

DM: Yes, it is difficult at times to have the courage or the strength to stop, to rethink things, and to say: “What exactly do I want in life? What do I really care about?”

Not everyone is capable of doing it. I agree it is not easy for all.

When we realize this: I don’t know what I want exactly, and don’t know where life wants to take me, but I know that I don’t want what I am living now; it is then that we must listen to ourselves and make real changes.

I think our world is crowded with too many who stagnate.

Of course, some will say: you could have gone astray. Yes, I could have taken the wrong turn, obviously. So what?  I think we need to learn to dare to be wrong.

AL: Yes, because taking a wrong turn is not such a big deal.

DM: At least we tried, and this opens our mind.

I think the worst thing that can happen in our life – well, let’s say the saddest thing, is to not dare to take risks. Half-heartedness, in a sense.

I know that some will find my words to be harsh.  And it is true that it is not easy. Yet, a carefree attitude sometimes is good.  It sets us into motion. Furthermore, we cannot hope for something that will make us happier if we cannot at some point come to grips and say okay, I will make this change in my life.

AL: I take this risk.

DM: I take my chances.

What is a pity is to be feeble.

Evidently, not everyone can take risks, like when one has a family with young children and so on. That is an entirely different ballgame, I do realize.

But what I mean is that sometimes, and perhaps more often than we think in life, there are doors that open and then we have to decide: shall I take this risk?

AL: It is similar, Daniel, to when we are on our deathbed and our worst regrets are not about what we tried or what we failed, but rather what we did not attempt.

DM: Yes, that is right. Those who know me know that I made life changes that were painful, and these lead one to lose certain things.

But I’ve said before that my losses are my wealth. Because thanks to those losses I grew within, and perhaps surpassed myself more than if I had followed the tracks I was on at the time.

I realize it is easier to say this in hindsight, when events have already unfolded.

But truly, to avoid taking the risk of going astray is itself a way of going astray.

AL: Ah, this is very deep. I shall meditate on this thought.

Daniel, I would like to come back to the topic of the Essenes since you are going to present your latest book, your latest creation. I have it here.

DM: It isn’t only my latest creation but also my wife’s – Marie-Johanne Croteau – because it is with her that I wrote it. She is co-author of this book.

AL: It is a very practical book.

DM: It is a practical book where we bring together the philosophy of the Essenian and Egyptian therapies, an in-depth understanding of the energetic structure of the human being and of course, the greatest part of the book comprises the healing exercises.

AL: It concerns more than just the healing of the physical body..

DM: It is about the whole being: body, soul and spirit.  Such are the Essenian and also the Egyptian traditions. Really they are one as there is filial relation between the two trends.

AL: So what are the expectations people have from reading your book?

DM: To have both a workbook and a book that will bring them into the sacredness of this work, because that is essential.

The sense of Sacred here is very important because one cannot simply put these healing techniques into practice without being permeated by an inner endeavor.  The sense of sacredness is really central to this therapeutic method.

In fact, underlying this very complete healing method is a notion of connection. The connection the healer must have with the universal force of Life.  Some call this God, others may call it the Universal Force.  Whatever name we give it, it is the immanent Presence of Life with a capital L that sustains us at every moment.

The healer’s search for this connection leads him or her into a feeling of oneness with everything.

When one is able to reach this feeling of oneness at will the healing energy flows all the more with the patient.

So this method is not practiced as though we were adding two plus three plus four and it amounts to ten, or whatever. That’s not it. It is a whole.

We enter into a dimension of life that is entirely different and that is what makes these treatments unique.

I would say it is like magical for the person receiving care, and incredibly “edifying” in quotes – I’m not sure the correct term exists – for the one giving.

In reality, we work in a triangular fashion: the Sacred, the healer, and the patient.

AL: During the video conference, we will propose a toolbox, and here you propose an exercise from that book. Would you like to tell us a bit about that exercise?

DM: It is a unique exercise in that book as the rest of the book is geared towards people who will treat someone else who is suffering from something or other.

But in this exercise the patient treats himself, it is a self treatment.

That is the exception in the book, an exercise the healer can give the patient to do between two therapy sessions.

It is an exercise especially for people who suffer intensely from excessive emotionality. I would say that excessive emotionality is the door to anxiety.  I think we all know people around us who are over emotional and tend to turn small problems into large dramas, and lose self-control because of this.

This causes them to feel badly and not be able to manage their lives adequately, leading to more or less chronic anxiety.

This is an extremely common phenomenon.  In this world, it has always been an issue, but I think perhaps our modern world tends to take us more and more in this direction.   The particularity of this exercise, which is very old since its origin dates back to several thousand years, is that the person who suffers from severe emotional distress can practice these simple gestures.

AL: Is it a breathing exercise?

DM: It is a breathing exercise where we place the hands on certain chakras while breathing a certain way and doing a visualization. Of course, it’s not like taking an aspirin. It is an exercise one should do daily so as to make it one’s own, and it will operate deep-seated changes on the person.

AL: That is personal development..

DM: That’s right. It’s not like just saying: I’m taking this pill and my symptom will disappear in ten minutes. Clearly, that’s not how this works.

It is no magic pill but rather an endeavor to work on oneself in a very simple and gentle way. There is no need to be a specialist of one thing or other.

AL: If you chose to offer this particular exercise, I think it must be because leaping into a void, making great changes by taking actions we’ve never taken before can cause anxiety and bring up lots of strong emotions.

DM: Generally, it generates emotionality, anxiety, and adds to the stress of every day life.

AL: But why do we fear so the unknown, why does it hold us back so much?

DM: I think we are raised this way. There are populations that are often called primitive for which the notion of fear is not even part of their vocabulary.

I’m not saying there are many on earth. I forget their name, but I know of some African populations for which this notion is foreign. The word for fear does not exist.

Of course we can say that fear is useful in life as it serves as a safeguard against foolish actions. It is part of our mechanisms of self-protection that can prevent suffering.  As a self-protective mechanism, fear has a function.

Except that in our culture, in most of our world’s culture, I think we teach humans fear of many things from the very beginning, from birth.  We all know we can suffer, that we can fall and get hurt physically, emotionally, etc. But this notion of fear is so developed that we cut our wings from childhood and we do the same to our children by making them wary and by not teaching them trust.  That is what is so important: trust in our way of life, trust in our capacities and in our destiny.

AL: Besides, an act of faith springs from the heart and not from the mind.

DM: Exactly.

I think there are people on earth who illustrate this very well.

The example I gave earlier is but a small one. But people who have really been able to surpass themselves because they trusted something at some point, there are many.

We need to unlearn half-heartedness. We live in a world where we need to be given more and more assurances, offered an array of things that will cover us at every level.

AL: It is also a good market.

DM: Yes, it’s an extremely important financial market.

As a result, as soon as something is slightly out of place we loose our capabilities and panic from being hyper-emotional, anxious, and over stressed.

And then what? Then come tranquilizers and it becomes a vicious circle.

I think this is the direction our world in taking, instead of helping individuals to take charge of themselves from early on, in the sense that each should discover his or her own potential.

Not a potential that is externally defined and where we are made to fit a mold, but the potential that is inherent in each individual. We each have potential. Where we go wrong is when we believe that everyone should have the same faculties in every arena of life.

It’s not possible. Not everyone can be a doctor or a writer and not everyone can build a house.  We each have our own strengths.

I think that is what we need to try to find. To allow each of us to develop self-confidence and his own balance.  Obviously, the pharmaceutical market, as well as the market that benefits from political indoctrination suffers from this because as individuals take control of themselves and of their destiny they are less feeble, less subjugated and simply more mature.

AL: Yes, personal development makes us grow in maturity.

DM: That is the goal. From this maturity is born a form of spirituality which is free, spontaneous, non dogmatic and which enables us to reconnect to our higher dimension. That is the secret. Of course, it does not suit everyone.

AL: That would be another interview. We could talk about this at length. Daniel Meurois, to wrap this up, what would you say to people who feel inside that there may be a side path that is opening up to them and who are hesitant to go forth in a direction they are afraid of following?

DM: There is no one answer because it’s easy to say to anyone that they must have confidence. But confidence is not invented.

First, there are temperaments that are a bit more daring than others and then our upbringing can have a strong influence on this.

Perhaps to try to speak to one’s heart and say: what was my first dream when I came to this world or when I was a young child?

And perhaps that everyone make the effort of asking themselves: what was my initial dream?  If we do this exercise very honestly, memories from childhood may resurface.  At that point, I don’t know whether we can begin executing and realizing the dream that we carry at the bottom of our heart, but perhaps we might make small changes that seem insignificant, but that will liberate us from certain frustrations or hurt and little by little make us take steps towards more relaxation and enjoyment, towards smiling at oneself. Without guilt, most importantly.

AL: Daniel, thank you very much. I will invite our listeners to visit your website the address of which is…

DM: www.danielmeurois.co.uk

AL:  Yes, of course. Thank you, Daniel, that was a wonderful interview.

DM: Thank you very much. Goodbye.