Astral Projection

Do you want to leave your body? Do you want to travel the world? Do you want to visit friends and family, living and dead?

Would you like to expand your mind and develop yourself mentally, spiritually and emotionally?

Astral projection has been documented for centuries. It is seen as something certain individuals working in occult circles have dominion over. The truth is people from all backgrounds can and do have out of the body experiences.

There are well known methods of achieving this. Some involve use of substances. This is not advised, as they are usually illicit and illegal, and also because by doing so you would do yourself a disservice, not allowing yourself to gain a true skill. I have detailed the two best techniques, I have came across, for leaving your body. Please try them if you wish, but I do suggest you go slowly and carefully. Perhaps share with a friend what you are up to. Even if it is so someone can check on you from time to time.

I have tried several times to leave my body, and have not managed to succeed. I have had many lucid dreams, but no full blown astral projection. Perhaps, if you are reading this and have some special tip you would like to share, that would be much appreciated.

Body Of Light Technique (Generally accepted as being developed by the Golden Dawn) -

Phase One

Begin by finding a comfortable chair in a room where you will not be disturbed. Then relax, using any method you find works for you. Deep, trance-like relaxation is definitely not required. Simply let go of your worries and muscular tensions so you can concentrate on the job at hand.

Now imagine you are no longer seated in your chair, but standing in the room at a spot about six feet away. Try to visualize yourself standing there as clearly as you can. Make a real effort to paint in detail. Don't just settle for a vague imaginary shape. Try to 'see' what you are wearing. Imagine the scuff marks on your shoes. Count the buttons on your jacket. Note the way your hair falls over one eye. Examine the expression on your face. Visualize in colour and in depth. (Muldoon's mirror exercise is a really excellent preliminary to this technique since it familiarizes you with your own appearance.)

It is perfectly acceptable to visualize yourself as you are in reality i.e. dressed in sweater and jeans, or whatever - but some romantic souls find it easier, or possibly just more fun, to see themselves as a mysteriously robed and hooded figure. That is okay too, but pay attention to detail - mysteriously robed and hooded figures do not all look the same. Spend as much time as you need to build up this imaginary figure fully. A good idea is to set aside a particular time each day for the exercise and devote 10 to 15 minutes daily to it for a week or more.

Avoid rushing this preliminary stage: it is actually the most important part of the whole exercise, the creation of the 'Body of Light' after which it is named. As you practise, you will find the visualization becomes progressively easier until a simple effort of will is enough to call it up in its entirety. Once you have reached this stage, proceed to phase two of the exercise.

Phase Two

Phase two involves you imagining that you are rising from your chair and walking around the room. Close your eyes and try it out. Remember how the room appears from the viewpoint of your chair, close your eyes and try to visualize that same scene. If you find the details difficult, open your eyes again for a refresher. Keep working at it until you are perfectly capable of describing the room in detail with your eyes closed.

With this achieved, imagine yourself rising from your chair and walking slowly round the edges of the room in a clockwise direction. Try to see in your mind's eye how the perspective of the room changes as you move. Try to remember those small objects and ornaments which were not necessarily visible from your chair, but which you know to be in the room nonetheless.

If you have difficulty with this part of the exercise, open your eyes, stand up physically and walk clockwise around the room. Then sit down, close your eyes again, and try to duplicate the journey in your imagination. Keep working on it until your visualization becomes easy and vivid. Now try the same walk anti-clockwise. After a time - and how much time varies with the individual - you will discover the visualization no longer requires much effort.

When this happens, try visualizing yourself in another room, again walking around it first clockwise, then anti-clockwise. Select a room you know well, 'but try visualizing without first visiting it if at all possible. You should find your mental pictures of the second room come faster and easier than the first since you are, of course, exercising your visualization ability. When you have thoroughly explored the second room, mentally extend your range and visualize yourself wandering throughout your entire house.

Many people visualize extremely well and have little difficulty with any of this. If you are not so fortunate, keep trying: there is no time limit on the exercise and practice will eventually bring it right. Just don't devote more than, say, 20 minutes each day to the practice: this is more than enough, so long as you practise regularly.



The final step in this stage is to imagine yourself exploring some more distant and less familiar scene. Indoors is easier to most people, but if you are feeling really confident, you might try imagining yourself in an outdoor location. Once again, you should explore methodically. Avoid visualizing people during any part of this exercise since this will introduce complications which will slow your progress.

Combining Phase One and Phase Two

When you are totally happy that you can quickly and easily visualize any area you set your mind to - and visualize it in detail - you are ripe to move on to the final stage of the exercise. This is the crunch. You have now trained yourself to do two things. One is to visualize a sort of mirror image of yourself standing some distance from where you are seated in your chair. The other is to imagine yourself walking around various locations and examining them in detail.

For your great leap forward, you are now going to combine the two previous aspects of the exercise.

First, visualize the mirror image of yourself exactly as before. Do this with your eyes open if at all possible. When the figure is definitely there and stable, imagine yourself looking out from its eyes. There is a knack to this, rather like learning to balance on a bicycle. The first few times you try, you will probably fail. But then, for no apparent reason, you will suddenly find you can do it.

Imagine the room from the viewpoint of the figure you have created. Look around and note the details, including your own (physical) body seated in the chair. Once you feel the focus of your perceptions is firmly seated in this imaginary body, have it walk around the room in a clockwise direction, exactly as you did in your imagination during the second stage of the exercise. Since you have already practised this again and again, you should find it relatively easy to maintain the new perspective. But if you find your consciousness flickering back to where you are sitting in the chair, don't let that worry you. Simply start up again from the beginning.

As you continue with this exercise over a period of time, projecting your focus of consciousness into the imaginary body and having it carry you from room to room, one of two things will happen. Either you will gradually find the reality tone of the experience increases until you can 'see' vividly from the new body, or you will reach a stage where there is a sudden 'jump' after which the experience of the new body seems far more real to you. At this point, try exploring a totally unfamiliar area while in this imaginary body, then visit the same area when you get back into your physical body. (Which, incidentally, you do by reversing the initial process: from the viewpoint of your new body, simply visualize how the room looks from the physical body sitting on the chair.) Do not be too shocked if you discover that the scene you saw while in your imaginary body is confirmed in every detail when you visit the spot in reality.

What, you might reasonably wonder, is going on here? If you have successfully followed the technique all the way through, it seems fairly obvious that you have managed to project your consciousness into a second body, that you have, in essence, created a phantom. But while this body can take you any where you want to go - and pass through solid walls in the process - it is equally evident that there are substantial differences between the experience and the sort of projections described by people like Monroe and Muldoon.

Where, for example, is the separation of one body from the other? In this exercise, you did not actually separate anything from anything - you simply imagined a second body standing in the corner. And where was the peculiar state of consciousness apparently so necessary for etheric projection, the hypnagogic borderline between sleep and waking? Where was the physical incapacity? You were in a perfectly normal state throughout and if you want to move your physical body you could do so with no trouble whatsoever. Whatever the similarities, you might be tempted to conclude you were not projecting your etheric body at all. And you would be right.

The Body of Light technique brings you closer to something even more exciting than stepping out in your etheric body. It introduces you to astral plane projection.

The Monroe Technique

In astral projection the conscious mind leaves the physical body and moves into the astral body. The astral body is one of our subtle bodies. Some people can astral project naturally. Others are afraid to leave the physical body and never are able to astral project. An alternative approach is remote viewing.

In astral projection you remain attached to your physical body by a silver "umbilical type" cord. Some people see the cord and others do not. You are aware of things you encounter along the way while out of your body.

Step One:

Relax the body. According to Monroe, "the ability to relax is the first prerequisite, perhaps even the first step itself" to having an OOBE. (out of body experience). This includes both physical and mental relaxation. Monroe does not suggest a method of attaining this relaxation, although progressive muscle relaxation, coupled with deep breathing exercises (inhale 1, exhale 2, inhale 3... until about 50 or 100) are known to work well.

Step Two:

Enter the state bordering sleep. This is known as the hypnogogic state. Once again, Monroe doesn't recommend any method of doing this. One way is to hold your forearm up, while keeping your upper arm on the bed, or ground. As you start to fall asleep, your arm will fall, and you will awaken again. With practice you can learn to control the hypnogogic state without using your arm. Another method is to concentrate on an object. When other images start to enter your thoughts, you have entered the hypnogogic state. Passively watch these images. This will also help you maintain this state of near-sleep. Monroe calls this Condition A.

Step Three:

Deepen this state. Begin to clear your mind. Observe your field of vision through your closed eyelids at the blackness in front of your. After a while you may start to notice light patterns. These are simply neural discharges. They have no specific effect. Ignore them. When they cease, one has entered what Monroe calls Condition B.

From here, one must enter an even deeper state of relaxation which Monroe calls Condition C-- a state of such relaxation that you lose all awareness of the body and sensory stimulation. You are almost in a void in which your only source of stimulation will be your own thoughts. The ideal state for leaving your body is Condition D.

This is Condition C when it is voluntarily induced from a rested and refreshed condition and is not the effect of normal fatigue. To achieve Condition D, Monroe suggests that you practice entering it in the morning just as you are getting up, or after a short nap.

Step Four:

Enter a state of Vibration. This is the most important part of the technique, and also the most vague. Many projectors have noted these vibrations at the onset of projection. They can be experienced as a mild tingling, or as if electricity is being shot through the body. Their cause is a mystery. It may actually be the astral body trying to leave the physical body.

For entering into the vibrational state, he offers the following directions:

1. Remove all jewelry or other items that might be touching your skin.

2. Darken the room so that no light can be seen through your eyelids, but do not shut out all light.

3. Lie down with your body along a north-south axis, with your head pointed toward magnetic north.

4. Loosen all clothing, but keep covered so that you are slightly warmer than what might normally be comfortable.

5. Be sure you are in a location where, and at a time when, there will be absolutely no noise to disturb you.

6. Enter a state of relaxation.

7. Give yourself the mental suggestion that you will remember all that occurs during the upcoming session that will be beneficial to your well being. Repeat this five times.

8. As your breathe, concentrate on the void in front of you.

9. Select a point a foot away from your forehead, then change your point of mental reference to six feet.

10. Turn the point 90 degrees upward by drawing an imaginary line parallel to your body axis up above you head. Focus there and reach out for the vibrations at that point and bring them back into your body.Even if you don't know what these vibrations are, you will know when you have achieved contact with them.

Step Five:

Learn to control the vibrational state. Practice controlling them by mentally pushing them into your head, down to your toes, making them surge throughout your entire body, and producing vibrational waves from head to foot. To produce this wave effect, concentrate on the vibrations and mentally push a wave out of your head and guide it down your body. Practice this until you can induce these waves on command. Once you have control of the vibrational state, you are ready to leave the body.

Step Six:

Begin with a partial separation. The key here is thought control. Keep your mind firmly focused on the idea of leaving the body. Do not let it wander. Stray thoughts might cause you to lose control of the state. Now having entered the vibrational state, begin exploring the OOBE by releasing a hand or a foot of the "second body". Monroe suggests that you extend a limb until it comes in contact with a familiar object, such as a wall near your bed. Then push it through the object. Return the limb by placing it back in to coincidence with the physical one, decrease the vibrational rate, and then terminate the experiment. Lie quietly until you have fully returned to normal. This exercise will prepare you for full separation.

Step Seven:

Dissociate yourself from the body. Monroe suggests two methods for this. One method is to lift out of the body. To do this, think about getting lighter and lighter after entering the vibrational state. Think about how nice it would be to float upward. Keep this thought in mind at all costs and let no extraneous thoughts interrupt it. An OOBE will occur naturally at this point.

Another method is the "Rotation Method" or "roll-out" technique. When you have achieved the vibrational state, try to roll over as if you were turning over in bed. Do not attempt to roll over physically. Try to twist your body from the top and virtually roll over into your second body right out of your physical self.

At this point, you will be out of the body, but next to it. Think of floating upward, and you should find yourself floating above the body.