In Neil Mach's novel Moondog and the Scarce Vapour, the third book in the Moondog urban fantasy series, the Romani-born praeternatural detective looks into the claims made by a no-nonsense post-graduate student who reports she had a ghostly encounter with a recently deceased professor.
In the narrative, Moondog employs a technique called Espro Projection to enable his witness to re-establish contact with the spiritual entity she had previously encountered.
But what is Espro Projection?
Espro Projection is a method and a technology that enables individuals to transcend their current dimension and enter a different spatial and/or temporal realm.
Our basic functions, like those of single-celled organisms, are driven by automatic responses to stimuli. However, our willingness and expectations are what set us apart from single-celled creatures. Espro Projection involves separating our physical body, our everyday every-second routines, from our expectations.
Espro Projection requires practicians to engage all their senses simultaneously. Their senses become overloaded and overwhelmed, making everyday life seem a hazy blur, turning everything into background noise. Only after this 'blur of senses' is achieved do they gain clarity, and at that point the most cryptic things will become comprehensible.
Recently, with advancements in technology that immerse users in sensory experiences, this technique has become fully and usefully optimized. Espro Projection has been a scientific concept for a long time, but the ideas remained unused until the arrival of Virtual Reality systems and A.I. technology.
Espro Projection requires the practician to wear a fully-immersive headset, akin to a virtual reality set-up, worn across the eyes, ears, nose, mouth and throat.
The practician has straps attached to their wrists and ankles, along with special socks and gloves equipped with monitors. Once the apparatus is switched on, the user becomes hyper-aware of their own bodily functions, noticing their breath, heartbeat, and blood flow. Often practicians report they hear electrostatics in their muscles, and their minds will become flooded with a kaleidoscope of mesmeric sensations.
Synaesthesia, a perceptual phenomenon where individual senses become abstract concepts, is experienced by some practicians. Occasionally users refer to a sensation that's been described by some as a “union of the senses”. It is typically at this stage of union that the typical practician will ‘move’ from this earthly dimension and into a different spatial or temporal realm, though, of course, they do not move in any physical and literal manner, but merely in a metaphysical sense.
If a practician feels fearful at any time, they’re given a switch to hold in their right hand and told they can release the kill-switch if they feel a pressing need to return to reality.
The technique is entirely safe, but some practicians find the results disturbing.
Words: © Neil Mach
