Astral Projection

Have you always wondered what Astral Projection is?  Well, I sure did!  When I found out I really didn't believe it.  In case you don't know, astral projection is when part of you (your soul or ethereal body or some other filmy substance that is you) separates from your physical body while you are asleep and roams around the universe.  It can meet other astral bodies and journey to the higher regions.  It's completely true. 

A while back the subject came up in an office I was working at.  We were joking around about it when the one person who, in my opinion, I would never want to have dinner with much less meet in my astral body after dark, said that he and his wife did it all the time.  'Oh right', I thought, 'You, the most superficial and unrealistic person I know can do something like this?'  I thought it was for the spiritually pure soul, not your everyday salesman that seems to only care about money. 

So, for many many years, in spite of my interest, I ignored it because just thinking about it conjured up pictures of "Marty" and his wife floating by my bed. "Marty" bugged me enough during the day...  In any case, I eventually decided not to let "Marty" ruin my life experience and delved into the subject. 

First I read Robert Monroe's Journeys Out of Body" and skimmed through a few others.  Monroe describes his experience very clearly and without prejudice.  He is the consummate scientist and recorded his spontaneous journeys faithfully.  It was easy reading and quite interesting.  Since it happened to him spontaneously, however, he is somewhat unable to explain particular aspects of how to do it.  I was able to affirm by later readings that what he experienced was the same as many others. In the end this is what convinced me that this actually did happen to him and was not something he asked to happen. 

Next I checked out a rather hefty tome from the library called Astral Dynamics by Robert Bruce.  It was one of those books that I figured I would check out and leaf through it and due to it's size would discard as being way too much information.  The other books on astral projection are very short in comparison which is why this book intrigued me in the first place. What in the world did this guy have to say that no one else did?

As it turned out, he had a lot to say for good reason.  It was by far the most complete book on how to do astral projection I had ever seen (OK, compared to the selection of books available at the Garfield county library system in rural, Western Colorado.  So you know they just have tons of books on astral projection because we are really bored over here!).  There were detailed instructions, exercises and preparations.  Very weird and specific exercises.  I had to try them immediately!

These exercises had to be done daily for something like a month or two before attempting to project oneself from the body.  They involved moving energy through your limbs and practicing relaxation techniques.  The whole thing about astral projection is that it happens at a certain point when you are falling asleep.  When you are relaxed enough and just before you fall into a deep sleep is when your astral body separates from your physical body.  If you want to experience what happens to your astral body, you simply need to get very deeply relaxed as if you were falling asleep, and be aware.  There's a bit more technique than that, but without getting too detailed,  that's what happens.  You already do it, you just are asleep and don't know you are doing it.  Apparently, you even wake up while doing it and can remember the experience as a dream. 

So this is where I am supposed to report how I did the exercises religiously and then followed through and began to project myself into the universe nightly, but of course I couldn't keep up with the exercises.  Someday, when I am retired and have nothing better to do and I am living in a cave in the Himalayas I will do the exercises and project myself.  In the meantime something weird happened. 

About a month ago I fell asleep and dreamed I was in our living room in the dark with the moon shining through the large picture window.  I was floating above the ground somewhat and suddenly I felt an arm between my legs hoisting me quickly up in the air.  It happened so fast my stomach was queasy.  I felt a deep-seated fear of all this - whose arm was that and why were we going up in the air?  I was free floating above the TV.  Then right there, in the middle of my "dream" I realized what was happening: I was projecting!  I also realized that this same thing had happened many times before and that I had always been afraid of it because you end up flying around. And also because sometimes the sensation of someone lifting you by unorthodox methods also is disconcerting.  I think I assumed it was a ghost.  Maybe it was Marty - lord I hope not!

According to Bruce, the feeling of someone lifting you or touching you is not unusual.  The fear that automatically happens when you realize where you are and that you are up in the air also prevents many people from staying with the experience as well.

Then two other realizations came to me.  Bruce talks about the "higher dimensional levels" or "astral planes" and how you enter them by going through a layer of shapes.  This sounded rather odd to me.  What are the shapes made out of?  Why shapes and not grass and land forms?  Who knows?  Then I remembered falling asleep a few nights earlier and seeing a plane of shapes (a la M.C. Escher) and they were so familiar to me and I went through them just as I fell more deeply asleep. 

The second realization is that as a child I had most likely projected myself quite often.  If you have read my earlier story about the ghost in my bedroom in Hawaii, you may remember how the ghost sat on my bed each night.  I still think that there was a ghost but the sitting on the bed phenomena  I think was my projected self, because of several things.  One, it always happened just as I was falling asleep, waking me sometimes violently and then the sensation of someone being there would be gone, and two, it did scare me but over time I came to accept it while the rest of the events still scare me.  I have even felt it more recently and seemed to be able to make it happen myself.  I wasn't even in Hawaii when this happened!  Do ghosts follow people?  I don't think they do.  In any case I suspect that it was my projected double sitting on the end of my bed each night. 

I find astral projection fascinating and am still very curious to attempt it in a more serious way.  Perhaps, in the interest of this blog, I will be inspired to keep up with my exercises.  If anything unusual happens I will let you know!

But if I manage to do all these exercises and finally drag my butt out of my body at night and the first thing I see is Marty and his wife, I'm staying home!