I Suck at Astral Projection!

[Faria]

There are two facts about Astral Projection of which I am certain:

1. It is real, and possible to "do" on purpose, and
2. I am not good at it!

I can still hear my mother insist that I only bought the Denning & Phillips book because of the naked woman on the cover. I've been obsessed with it for most of my life. There is really a limited amount of literature beyond which it becomes redundant. Besides the Aurum Solis (Denning & Phillips) stuff, there is Carrington & Muldoon, Ophiel, and the set of authors who turned it into a bookshelf genre. Apart from reading, I made plenty of effort at their techniques, and nothing stuck even though they all had interesting features as techniques and explanatory models. I've read 6th & 7th degree AMORC monographs on the subject, and their techniques all appear to have these same sources.

I worked at most of these with friends, attempting to convey information or receive it, but no spectacular results. What finally "worked" was a car accident. Instead of experiencing the accident, I saw the entire thing as if from several feet away. I had a head injury, could not remember basic facts about myself, and eventually recovered. The OBE was genuine, not imaginary or dreamy but real-life. Obviously I didn't want to get another head injury, but the knowledge that the OBE was real and possible was very motivational.

I was introduced to what was described as the A.:A.: method, from Libri XI and DLV, and was later to understand that this is perhaps a nonstandard reading of the text. In this method, you sit and imagine the expansion of spatial awareness and then re-centering that in some other nearby area. After much effort, I found myself across the room, also with that peculiar sense of reality, then falling backwards as if I was attached to a silly putty string. I was not asleep, and I was not awake, it was something else. But there was no control, really, and nothing to be done, and it was a hard-won experience. I tried again, nothing, I could not regain the same type of focus. I was discouraged.

I remain discouraged. I have attempted similar things through other techniques, attempting to see into other places, but this Astral Projection to me has always been one of the higher-tier occult powers. And to be clear, I am not talking about "other planes" but using more or less ordinary waking awareness to ferret out facts in places the ordinary sensory organs cannot. It is clear to me that this kind of experience is possible, and I hypothesize that it could be "used" and directed and not merely experienced as a dream or as the result of injuries.

For what it's worth, long ago the father of a friend of mine was associated with some people who he claimed were credible and capable. They ended up being the Aurum Solis.

 

[unlight]

I think there's some good information on this topic on Robert Peterson's blog. Of course, when it comes to the esoteric applications of astral projection, I don't think there are actually that many useful books on the subject.

 

[Frater M.M.]

I'm not sure if this is what you're asking about but I had a very strange experience when I went to spiritualist church for a short healing session:

I was lying on my back on a sort of raised cushioned bench and a woman healer was doing hands on healing over me. It was pretty strong and I kind of "tranced out". My eyes were shut but I wasn't dreaming (lucid or otherwise). I suddenly had a feeling that there was something behind me like a presence. I sort of leaned up on my forearm and twisted my head round to have a look but at the same time a part of me realised I was still lying flat on my back. I was surprised to see this tall male (all white) figure with a long stylised wing I guess -- It was like a long diagonal line going down the floor (from his shoulder) and then it curved back up to join his shoulder. Then I noticed there was like this black buzzing fog over my throat and he stepped up and beamed down white light from his palms onto it to erase it. Finally, I was jolted "awake" by the woman healer placing a hand me shoulder.

Just a couple notes. I had no expectation of seeing anything, let alone a winged entity. I've never experienced anything like that before. It was also nothing like hypnagogic imagery or lucid dreaming which I've had before. It was like a dual existence on two different levels. The final jolt by the woman healer was almost like the collapse of this existence back into a single one again.

I've only ever had one "proper" OBE, accidentally, which I quoted above. I've never tried to do a voluntary OBE since but I definitely think it would be interesting to test it out (e.g. see visually hidden targets in my environment) if I could ever manage it again.

 

[LionheartG]

You might s

I remain discouraged. I have attempted similar things through other techniques, attempting to see into other places, but this Astral Projection to me has always been one of the higher-tier occult powers. And to be clear, I am not talking about "other planes" but using more or less ordinary waking awareness to ferret out facts in places the ordinary sensory organs cannot. It is clear to me that this kind of experience is possible, and I hypothesize that it could be "used" and directed and not merely experienced as a dream or as the result of injuries.

I do not know what tradition you are a part of, but astral projection or dream walking is part of mine. Firstly it is difficult power, especially if you cannot control it. Some of my earliest memories are as young child accidentally going into people's dreams and frequently annoying an elderly Asian monk at a Buddhist temple, as a child by bouncing off the ceilings, when I spontaneously astral projected without control of my powers. I also frequently got caught in my house and it was awful.

It is a great power but first you have lust for it. To gain it, you must not want it all, kind of reject it in a sense. The less lust for result the better. 2nd the more you excel in matters of moon planetary magic, the better you will become at this ability.
There is something going on with you in that sense. This may or may not help.

Begin by strengthening the astral or spiritual dream body. There are methods I could teach you to force the ability out of you but they are extremely dangerous and could cause some physical side affects. Yes, you must go at it slow. Meditation goes a long way. I don't know if this has been helpful at all.

 

[Wjk3333]

hemisync helps

 

[Faria]

I appreciate these replies.

In part, I made his thread to present a simple idea about Astral Projection which is not well-represented in the literature.

First, again let me repeat that I am specifically and only discussing the Out of Body Experience - not dreams, not scrying, not other planes, but sensory experience of being somewhere in the real world without the accompaniment of a physical body. That and nothing else.

The simple idea is this: we can have an Out of Body Experience without postulating the existence of astral planes, astral bodies, silver cords, and other ephemera common to exercises and explanations from the literature.

I have read many hundreds of pages about astral planes, astral bodies, astral... err... dynamics... that might not exist at all. Ultimately it comes down to having a sensory experience - sight, sound, touch, smell, suppose you might taste too - disconnected from the regular sensory organs. I suspect, but cannot speculate, that there is some natural bio-physical origin to these experiences.

And for that matter, it's probably some kind of evolutionary advantage, being able to track prey or figure out where the buffalo herds went, that sort of thing. Not necessarily transcendental mysticism. I don't think we need to believe in astral energies or astral bodies to have these visionary events, but there might be some kind of technique that provokes it in which these forms become useful. I like to look at magical experiences in reverse, where we have the thing first and then set out to explain it, rather than pre-approve 400 pages of Mastering Astral Stuff in our minds before getting anything to work.

 

[ewiz]

When I practiced these things often, experiencing what I would call an OOBE/AP was relatively easy for me to do. Now it's hit or miss in the level of clarity I experience. It's my opinion, that the experience most people have when they do this is identical to the experience one has when lucid dreaming. This has been my experience of the two. I'm convinced that they operate through the same biological mechanism, and never once paid any attention to talk of etheric or astral bodies, planes, cords, etc. The entire idea of an etheric body was an early theory to describe biological processes before we understood the electro-chemistry of the body; this theory has been superseded and should be disregarded imo, like humorism before it.

With both LD/OOBE, I have experienced all of my physical senses to varying degrees of clarity, and in many cases the sensory experience was indistinguishable from interacting with the external world while awake. However, the setting of these experiences has almost entirely been places that are not mirroring the physical world. Dreamscapes, or alternate "planes" or whatever someone might describe them as. I've been to alternate versions of real places, but haven't imagined the experience to be of myself in those actual places.

I can only recall one experience that was like what you are talking about. There wasn't anything out of the ordinary going on, I wasn't sick or injured, was completely sober, and I wasn't trying to have an OOBE. I was just sitting in a chair in my room and then I suddenly floated up out of my body, turned to look down at myself, and then floated up through my roof and looked at my street, before snapping back into my body. I did try to replicate this sort of experience for a while, but I never could. I can't say if this experience was actually mechanically different from the others I've had, it most likely is not, but it stands out in my memory as a different sort of experience.

I also think that there is a way to gain real sensory information from the physical world through OOBE/AP or RV. But I do not know of any reliable way to do so. I haven't been able to do so. I have zero reason to believe that anyone can reliably do so. Least of all the people who claim they can, like the spoon benders at the Monroe Institute.

As far as the practice goes, I can't really say for sure what resources would be the best. I'm sure you've read plenty. Robert Monroe's Journeys out of the Body was a great book. Astral Dynamics by Robert Bruce was one of the first books that I read that I thought helped, though I remember skimming through most of it looking for techniques only. But given everything I was doing at the time, I'm almost certain the most help for me came from lucid dream related practice. Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge is probably THE book to read on the subject. Keeping a dream journal to improve dream recall. Practicing the WBTB method regularly until I could reliably have lucid dreams. Then practicing the MILD techniques, and eventually WILD. I'm open to having new experiences in life, and could always be wrong. But for me the only difference between going into an LD or and OOBE was the time of day and whether or not I would be getting up and doing stuff after or going to bed.

 

[unlight]

When considering what triggers an out-of-body experience, the most common factor is clearly high-intensity meditation. This phenomenon is frequently reported after a period of high-intensity meditation combined with walking meditation; it generally occurs due to sufficiently strong concentration, mindfulness, and the absence of dreams—or, in other words, because the meditator remains fully aware and does not enter the dream state. Then it occurs. However, meditators obviously do not treat this as a practice, and few have any understanding of out-of-body experiences; most regard it as an incidental occurrence.