DO_OBE
Table Of Contents
i. Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 5
ii. Distribution .................................................................................................................................. 5
ii. Contacting the author .................................................................................................................. 5
iv. About the author ......................................................................................................................... 5
v. Special thanks ............................................................................................................................. 6
I. WHAT IS ASTRAL PROJECTION? ........................................................................................ 7
A. Introduction: ............................................................................................................................ 7
B. What Is Astral Projection? ..................................................................................................... 7
C. Different Views of Astral Projections. ................................................................................... 8
1. Occult Views ......................................................................................................................... 8
2. Scientific Views ................................................................................................................... 18
a) Parapsychology - OOBEs ............................................................................................... 18
b) Psychology - Lucid Dreaming ......................................................................................... 20
D. Tying It All Together ............................................................................................................ 21
E. Radio Station Theory of Consciousness - The Subplanes ................................................... 24
F. Mystical View of Consciousness .......................................................................................... 29
II. HOW TO ASTRAL PROJECT ............................................................................................... 30
A. Using Dreams As A Springboard For Astral Projection ..................................................... 30
B. Self-conditioning exercises ................................................................................................... 37
C. Trance Methods .................................................................................................................... 41
1. Putting Yourself into a Trance ........................................................................................... 42
a) Hypnogogic Imagery ....................................................................................................... 44
b) Kinesthetic Sensation ..................................................................................................... 50
D. Don's Actual Experiences On The Border Between Waking And Projecting .................. 54
E. Other Techniques For Getting Out Of Body ........................................................................ 62
1. Visualization Methods ........................................................................................................ 62
2. Drugs, Tapes And Other Devices ..................................................................................... 64
III. IN THE OOBE REALM ....................................................................................................... 66
A. Describing OOBEs with words ............................................................................................ 67
B. The State Of Your Mind In The OOBE State .................................................................... 68
C. The OOBE World: Objective or Subjective? ...................................................................... 68
D. The Dweller At The Threshold ............................................................................................ 69
E. Things You Can Do There That You Can't Do Here .......................................................... 74
1. Moving, Flying and the "Wind" ........................................................................................ 75
2. Moving Through walls ........................................................................................................ 79
3. Exercising Psychic Powers ................................................................................................. 81
F. Places you can go: Sights and vistas .................................................................................... 87
1. Life in the void .................................................................................................................... 88
2. Life on the planes ............................................................................................................... 90
a) The Lower Realms ......................................................................................................... 90
b) The Middle Realms ........................................................................................................ 93
c) The Higher Realms ......................................................................................................... 97
d) The Surreal Regions ...................................................................................................... 99
G. Things And People You Meet ........................................................................................... 105
1. Nonhuman Denizins Of The Planes ................................................................................. 105
2. Meeting People: Dead Verses Dreamers ....................................................................... 113
a) The Character of People In OOBEs ........................................................................... 116
H. Getting Into Trouble .......................................................................................................... 133
IV. Waking Up - Returning Back To The Physical Realm ...................................................... 135
VI. Astrology and OOBEs ......................................................................................................... 137
VII. Wrapping it all up ............................................................................................................... 139
A. Review. ................................................................................................................................ 139
B. OOBEs: Subjective Or Objective? ..................................................................................... 140
C. Maya and Buddhi ................................................................................................................ 141
VIII ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY- Recommended Reading List .................................. 144
Plane Talk: Astral Meanderings: Introductions and Update .................................................... 152
Plane Talk: Astral Meanderings: Astral Projection or Lucid Dreaming? ............................... 156
Plane Talk: Astral Meanderings: More About The Trance State ........................................... 165
Plane Talk: Astral Meanderings: ABOUT THE WORLD OF DREAMS .............................. 171
Introduction
You are reading a relatively comprehensive lesson on how to achieve astral projections/OOBEs. The file you are reading (DO_OBE.PDF) is the version of this book being released in cyberspace in Adobe Acrobate 4.0 format. A text file (unformated) version of do_obe (DO_OBE.TXT) is available, and information for obtaining the unformated version can be obtained by going to the web link:
This file was written as notes for an on-line class I gave in the New Age forum on CompuServe during May and June of 1994. I am releasing these notes to the Public Domain essentially as a free book on how to lucid dream/astral project/OBE. Please note however that all of the material is copyrighted.
I hope you will find this material useful and enjoyable. I have stressed a practical approach to inducing astral projections/OOBEs while at the same time trying to provide
a reasonable balance between differing views of this phenomena.
iv. About the author
Since 1987, I’ve had numerous lucid dreams/projections, OBEs or whatever you want to
call it. I’m an avid student of occultism, science, history, social science, philosophy and Marvel comic books. My whole orientation towards the OOBE involves a point of view that seeks to synthesize scientific and occult knowledge. I have a Bachelors of Science degree in chemistry,and a Ph.D. in neurophysiology. I work as a biochemical researcher in the field of cerebral ischemia and reperfusion, and has published a number of papers in this area.
v. Special thanks
Special thanks goes to my wonderful wife Kathy, who had the patience and excellent grammar skills to proof and edit these notes. Thanks also goes out to Jeff Wiley, a fellow traveler/dreamer for his helpful suggestions, and to Rilla Moulden for giving me the impetus to write these notes.
I. WHAT IS ASTRAL PROJECTION?
A. Introduction:
Before saying anything else I would like to thank and congratulate everyone who is taking this class. Whether you know it or not, by taking an interest in achieving the types of experience we will discuss here, you are opening yourself up to a greatly expanded view of yourself and the life and world around you. Hopefully, by the end of this class you will have a deep appreciation of what I mean in saying this. I wish everyone the best of luck!
B. What Is Astral Projection?
Just what exactly is astral projection? Well, we can get very academic and erudite about this, and we will do this to some extent below. But for now, for starters, what we want to do is lay out a definition of astral projection that is practical. There are numerous ways we can view and define astral projection, but the most central point is that it is an experience, a special type of experience. No matter how you look at it, astral projection is an altered state of
consciousness.
So, what is an altered state of consciousness? Well, it is a state of consciousness that is
NOT our normal waking state of consciousness.
There is one altered state with which we are all very, very familiar and that is the dreams
we experience when we sleep at night. Dreaming itself is an altered state of consciousness. And, as we will see as we progress, dreaming and astral projection are very closely related states of consciousness.
Now, astral projection goes under a variety of names. Some other names for the astral projection experience are the following: 1. lucid dreaming, and 2. out-of-body experiences (OOBEs). Some people will debate that astral projections, lucid dreams and OOBEs are different things. We will discuss these distinctions below. However, I want to stress that such distinctions amount to splitting hairs, and are not that important. For our purposes, I will use these 3 terms interchangeably. That is, whether I say "astral projection", "lucid dream" or "OOBE", I am referring to the same thing. Actually, I will probably use OOBE a lot since it is the easiest to type. What is really important is not what we call the experience, but LEARNING FOR YOURSELF HOW TO ACHIEVE THIS EXPERIENCE. And everything I will stress here is geared to this all important end.So, for the sake of gearing all this to helping you actually have an OOBE, there are two main things we will focus on: theory and practice. You need to understand both. Either alone is useless. Theory by itself is just empty talk. Practice without theory just leads to confusion, and in the case of OOBEs, it can lead to real psychological danger as well. By themselves, OOBEs are NOT dangerous. However, if you don't know what you are doing, they can be. So, you need the theory to understand what is going on, and you need the practice to put the theory into action. So, in this course, we will cover both: theory and practice. However, as you will see, I personally lean much more towards the practical, and this is what I will stress throughout. We will pay lip service to theory, but again, theory is useless without putting action behind the ideas. Finally, I want to say this: I will attempt in these lessons to make the information I provide as self-contained as I can. That is, I want to really try to provide a comprehensive overview of OOBEs and really give you your money's worth. However, there is just a tremendous amount of information related to OOBEs. For example, some related topics are the following: human psychology, dreams, occultism, religion, mysticism and science. I hope, that after reading these notes, you will get some idea that all of these topics are related to OOBEs. I am providing an annotated bibliography of books that I feel provide useful study. And I really encourage everyone to look through this bibliography and to actually read some of the books listed there. The more you know about OOBEs, the better. That's all there is to it!
C. Different Views of Astral Projections.
So, having said my introductory remarks, let's look at the various ways people define astral projections/OOBEs/lucid dreams. Basically, we can divide up the various viewpoints as follows: 1. occult views, and 2. scientific views. Within each of these broad views are a number of sub-viewpoints, and we will mention each of these at least briefly.
1. Occult Views
Within the camp of occult views, we can divide this into Western and Eastern occult views. However, what is nice here is that Eastern and Western occultism are very similar. One may find differences in small details, but the general viewpoints are very similar.
Now, the term "astral projection" comes from occult views of this experience. This term implies that what the experience is the projection of one's self to the astralplane. Occultists teach that the universe is a series of planes of matter and that the physical world we perceive with our senses is but one of a series of, usually seven, planes. This is one assumption of the occult view of the world. Here is a list of the important ideas in the occult world-view that will allow us to understand what the term "astral projection" means:
1. Occultists teach that our consciousness transcends our physical body. 2. Occultists teach that each of us is an immortal soul who has temporarily 3. incarnated into the physical world. 4. Occultists teach that the universe is a series of planes. Each plane is a world unto itself.5. Occultists teach that each of us has facilities for interacting with at least 4 of these planes. These facilities are called "vehicles" or "bodies" and we have four of them: a physical body for interacting with the physical world (or plane), an astral body for interacting with the astral world/plane, a mental body for interacting with the mental world/plane and a buddhic body for interacting with the buddhic world/plane.
Before we go into these ideas in more detail, let me say this. To an occultist, the act of astral projecting entails transferring one's consciousness to the astral body and exploring the astral plane. And also let me say that, as far as theory goes, this is the theory I ascribe to. Generally speaking, the occult ideas are the most practical ideas you can use to understand what is happening to you when you have an OOBE. So, let's go into these ideas a little deeper and spell out their implications. For further reading on these topics, see the books by Charles Leadbeater and Annie Besant in the bibliography. First thing that needs to be said: the occult ideas fly in the face of everything we've been
taught about what it is to be a human being here in America in the late 20th century. According to our common social beliefs, we are either atheists/materialists who do not think there is any such thing as a "soul", or we were raised with simple-minded ideas about God, Heaven and Hell. Occult ideas challenge both of these viewpoints, and the beauty of learning to astral project is that you put yourself in a position to determine who is right and wrong on these issues. So, if the following ideas are unfamiliar to you, please be prepared to have your concepts about reality greatly expanded!
The basis of occult teachings is this: the senses of our physical body; our ears, eyes, taste, feeling, senses of heat and balance, smell, these senses define for us the physical world. That is to say, our physical senses, by definition, only allow us to perceive the physical world. However, according to occult teachings, THERE ARE ENERGIES THAT EXIST THAT WE CANNOT PERCEIVE WITH OUR PHYSICAL SENSES. In a nutshell, this idea underlies all of occultism, including whatever particular school of thought you like best (i.e., Theosophy, Hermitics, Paganism, Alchemy, etc., etc.).
Now, the idea that energies exist that we cannot perceive is no big news. Everyone knows about x-rays, about radioactivity, about ultra-violet radiation. These energies we can detect with machines, but not with our physical senses. However, where the occultist "goes over the edge", so to speak, is with the claim that WE HUMANS CAN PERCEIVE THESE ENERGIES WITHOUT THE AID OF MACHINES. However, to understand this we need to go into the ideas of the vehicles/bodies, ideas that fall under the heading of "occult anatomy".
Occult anatomy is the idea stated above, that we humans have more bodies than we can directly perceive: that we have, not only a physical body, but an astral body, a mental body and a buddhic body, as well. Each of these bodies exists on its respective plane. So, before we can go off about the bodies, we must discuss the idea of the planes. The occult planes of nature can be thought of as occult physics. For the idea of the planes posits that there are whole worlds of energies beyond the ken of our perception, energies of which modern scientists are completely ignorant.Again, we are flying in the face of common knowledge. Sure, scientists grant that there are x-rays, radioactivity, ultraviolet radiation, and even infinitely minute worlds of subatomic particles and neutrinos. But to say that there are whole worlds, full of life and activity and strange creatures, that exist beyond the ken of our physical senses is a complete absurdity to the modern scientist. However, this is exactly what the planes are. Each plane is a world, a giant world full of all kinds of strange and exotic places and creatures with sights and sounds that dwarf anything we know of here in the physical world. I should point out too that there are other names you might hear of that refer to the planes. Such terms are: "dimensions", "aethyrs", "lokas". "realms". Each of these terms essentially means "plane" or "world". Now, again, and to keep your interest at this point, let me remind you that once you learn to astral project for yourself, then you can determine whether or not this is all so much fantasy and bs. Keeping this in mind, let's define these planes a little better. In the most commonly accepted schemes of the planes, it is taught that there are seven planes and that we humans can access the 4 lowest planes. The common names of the seven planes are:
1. Physical Plane (which includes the Etheric Plane) 2. Astral Plane
3. Mental Plane 4. Buddhic Plane
5. Atmic Plane
6. Anupadaka Plane 7. Adi Plane
Now, let's define each of these planes.
1. Physical Plane . This is the world you are sitting in right now. The physical plane is the familiar world of our everyday life. In the occult scheme, there are aspects of the physical world that are invisible to our senses, and these invisible aspects of the physical plane are called the "Etheric plane". Above I mentioned x-rays, radioactivity, ultraviolet radiation and subatomic particles. In the occult world-view, these energies are "Etheric" energies, and again, this simply means these are energies of the physical plane that we cannot perceive with the senses of our physical body. As we will discuss below, and is actually quite important to the endeavor of astral projecting, occultists claim we have a body made of Etheric energies and they call this our "Etheric body". It is very likely that many of you will actually have experiences in your Etheric body once you start attempting to project. Again, this will all be explained in due course.
2. The Astral Plane . The astral plane is described of as a world of emotion and desire. On this plane our emotions and desires are actually...
Nashea2