Astral Projection

Astral projection (also known as astral travel), is a term used in esotericism to describe an intentional out-of-body experience (OBE) that assumes the existence of a subtle body called an "astral body" through which consciousness can function separately from the physical body and travel throughout the astral plane.

The idea of astral travel is ancient and occurs in multiple cultures. The modern terminology of "astral projection" was coined and promoted by 19th-century Theosophists. It is sometimes reported in association with dreams and forms of meditation. Some individuals have reported perceptions similar to descriptions of astral projection that were induced through various hallucinogenic and hypnotic means (including self-hypnosis). There is no scientific evidence that there is a consciousness whose embodied functions are separate from normal neural activity or that one can consciously leave the body and make observations of the physical universe, and astral projection has been characterized as a pseudoscience.

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are hallucinatory visual experiences that involve seeing the physical body placed in an external visual space. Many psychiatric disorders, brain dysfunctions, pharmacological agents, and altered psychological states are reportedly associated with these phenomena. OBEs have been linked to various brain lesions, particularly in the parietal and temporal regions, psychiatric disorders, severe emotional states like a near-death experience, substance use, migraine, and epilepsy, but very few have been reported in dissociative identity disorder. In this report, we present the case of a 15-year-old male patient who described a strange experience where he found himself to be floating outside his own body while he visualized his own body from a third-person perspective. On further evaluation, a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder and dissociative fugue was formulated. The patient showed improvement after undergoing abreaction, hypnosis, and relaxation training along with supportive psychotherapy. Dissociative disorders occur due to an internal conflict between ego and self, when a person is unable to successfully repress a traumatic experience, or when a repressed memory or experience comes out of the cocooned barrier, leading to an altered state of perception and self-experience, which is described by the patient as OBE. This report presents a scarce differential in the context of psychiatric illness, which might be helpful in the formulation of approaches toward management in cases of such OBE, making it a strange yet intriguing addition to the literature.

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are visual hallucinatory experiences in which the individual sees his/her own physical body placed in external visual space, like a reflection in the mirror. Many psychiatric disorders, altered psychological states, brain dysfunction, psychoactive substances, and pharmacological agents are reportedly associated with these phenomena. There are about six major variants of the autoscopic phenomenon, namely negative autoscopy, which refers to the failure to perceive one’s own body either in a mirror or when looked at directly; inner autoscopy, which pertains to the experience of visual hallucinations of internal organs in extra-corporeal space looked at directly; the feeling of presence where the patient has a distinct feeling of the physical presence of another person; heautoscopy proper where the patient does not localize himself in the position of the mirror image; autoscopic hallucination, which refers to the patient seeing an exact mirror image of himself, or of his face or trunk; and OBE, which is characterized by the projection of an observing (psychological) self in extrapersonal space seemingly totally dissociated from the physical body.

In OBE, the projection of an observing (psychological) self is seen in extra-personal space that seems totally dissociated from the physical body. In this phenomenon, the patient from a location distinct from his physical body sees himself and the surrounding world. These phenomenological states are divided into three categories, namely disembodiment, the sense of seeing the body from a remote and raised visuospatial perspective (extra-corporeal egocentric perspective), and the sense of seeing one’s own body from an aerial position, which is sometimes referred to as astral projection. OBEs have been linked to various brain lesions, particularly in the parietal and temporal regions, psychiatric disorders, severe emotional states like a near-death experience, substance use, migraine, and epilepsy, but very few have been reported in dissociative identity disorder. The recent Marvel movie “Dr. Strange”, and "The Last Hour", an over-the-top (OTT) series, have dealt with this fascinating phenomenon where the character experiences a form of depersonalization with his parasomatic component coming out of his body and is visualized by his own self from a third-person perspective described as astral projection. An OBE can be understood as a form of dissociation and transpersonal experience. There is a plethora of anecdotal but little empirical evidence related to the connection of dissociation and OBE, implying a shortcoming in the understanding of OBEs. This strange and rare phenomenon has usually been reported in organic states, under substance influence, and intense emotional states. In this report, we present a case involving a lucid state of OBE in the context of dissociative identity disorder.

Achieving your first astral travel experience is always the most difficult—and no single method will work for everyone. And with fifteen time-tested methods to choose from you're sure to be astral traveling in no time.

Once you learn to leave your body, the freedom you'll discover will transform your life. Explore new worlds… learn to travel with a partner… go back and forth through time… even find a lover… but, most importantly, lose your fear of death as you discover that you are a spiritual being independent of your physical body.

As you see, anybody could do it. It’s more like a term for out-of-body experiences. This is the easiest method we know of and it’s effective. It’s going to be a rollercoaster, so get comfortable.

But, here’s the deal:

There are a few warnings we need to give you before you start, and a few tips for getting results faster! Make sure to stick around to the end of the post, as there are important tips at the end.

It might not be easy, but if you follow this guide to the letter and actually practice it, you’ll get results soon! Make sure to bookmark this guide now so you don’t forget, and refer back to it as you learn.

**BEFORE you astral project**

Make sure you understand the risks and the experiences you’ll actually have with astral projection.

You can astral project at any time of the day or night but there are certain times when it’s a lot easier. These are times when your body is just ready for an OBE and more likely to have one.

The best time to astral project is about 4AM in the morning.

Not the easiest time to be awake, but if you can wake up at this time and try then, you’ll have much more luck in the beginning stages, specially if you’re new to this and you’re learning.

**Is astral projection safe?**

It’s perfectly safe to attempt to try and Astral Project. As long as you keep a positive mindset, and you’re trying to astral project to good and positive reasons, there are no dangers to astral projecting at all. In fact, it’s beneficial to your health and can help you sleep better.

For the most part, just don’t worry about it.

There’s nothing that can harm you in the astral plane as long as you maintain a positive energy, and a good intention. It’s just a place you can pass through and experience.

There are going to be posts that tell you it can be dangerous, and to be honest there CAN be some dangers, but for the most part you’ll be fine. I’d suggest reading the above post about astral projection dangers if you’re worried.

**How to astral project tonight (8 Steps for beginners)**

To astral project tonight, set your alarm to go off after about 6 hours of sleep. Then wake up and lay on your back. Close your eyes, and you’ll need to relax all of your muscles, and try not to think about anything. As you lay there, after about ten minutes you’ll feel like your body is vibrating. This soon leads to an OBE.

There are 8 steps to this astral projection technique, which should let you astral travel very easily, and very quickly. Don’t skip any of these steps!

Don’t rush these, and if you don’t understand something, come back and read it again. These are fairly easy to do but you should still have a basic understanding of how astral projection works.

Here are 8 steps to being able to astral project in about 5 minutes (once you’ve learned the techniques):

* · Prepare yourself to astral project
* · Relax and get into a comfortable position
* · Focus on relaxing all your body parts and muscles
* · Enter the vibrational stage (You’ll experience vibrations or tingling)
* · Move out of your physical body and into the astral realm
* · Stay lucid/aware by focusing
* · Return to your physical body by pulling on your silver cord
* · Enter the advanced world of astral travel

NOW, we will discuss each step in a little bit more detail. Ready?

**1: Prepare yourself to astral project**

Before you try astral projection, just make sure your room or the area you’re doing it in is a nice quiet and comfortable space.

This is the time to make sure you’ve not got alarms that are going to disturb you, or TV that’s going to make noise when you’re trying to have an OBE. The space around you should be quiet, peaceful and ideally have the following things in –

* · Plants: They make the area feel more calm
* · Incense: Burning incense can help relax you and set you up for astral travel
* · Temperature in your room should be about 20 degrees
* · Moon Candles: Having candles can relax you further

These things aren’t essential, but they’ll certainly help get you in the right frame of mind. Also, slightly dimming the lights helps too. It makes it easier to close your eyes if you’re not tired.

Disturbing things – Try and make sure as much as you can that no-one is going to come in and disturb you. It can be very annoying to be interrupted by someone when you’re trying to have an OBE.

**2: Relax and get into a comfortable position**

Make sure that you relax every single part of your body.

This can be either laying down on your back or sitting up in a chair. Whatever position you’re going to astral travel from, make sure you’re not having to support your body to stay in that position.

Basically, when you relax ALL of your muscles, you should still remain in the position safely. You don’t want to be falling out of your chair, for example. Sit back and let the chair fully support you and hold you in place.

Armchairs or sofas are better for this, as you can relax back into them fully and get supported. When you’ve got yourself into a comfortable position, you’re ready to move to the next stages.

**A note about meditation and breathing**

Just before we go onto the next stages, it’s important to mention breathing and meditation for astral travel. If you don’t know what meditation is, it’s basically being aware of yourself and letting go of stresses and thoughts.

You can learn more about meditation in your own time, but it’s better to be someone who regularly meditates, for example every day for at least 10 minutes. This will increase your chances of having an OBE.

Meditation can be very simple, so here’s a quick method you can use every single day:

* · Set a timer on your phone for 15 minutes (Ideally a relaxing tone)
* · Close your eyes, relax your muscles and breathe
* · Count your breathes from 1 to 10 (When you get to 10, start at 1 again)
* · To learn how to meditate easily, read our post about astral projection meditations
* · You might find it useful to listen to a binaural beats package like this one (We created one specifically for astral projection and raising your vibrations)

**3: Focus on relaxing all of your body parts and muscles**

Start by focusing on a particular body part, for example, your hand. Don’t move ANY muscles, and don’t even think about moving them at this stage. Just be aware of the hand, and focus on it until you can almost see every part of it in your mind.

Really pay attention to the details, like for example:

* How the hand FEELS resting against the bed or pillow
* Feel the strength and muscles in your hand
* Visualise exactly what it looks like and where it is in relation to the rest of you

Once you’ve done this for a while, (About 2-3 minutes) you can progress.

***Moving your focus***

Now you’re going to start shifting focus from body part to body part.

Start either at your head or at your toes and work your way up/down the body. focus on each body part separately, and make sure you really get a feel of the body part and where it is. Visualise exactly what it looks like, where it is and how it feels. Again, don’t try to move anything.

***Imagine moving the body parts***

Now that you’ve done that, start again, but imagine what it would feel like to MOVE each body part.

If you start by focusing on your foot, for example, IMAGINE (without physically moving) what it would feel like and look like to move your foot up and down.

Visualise it so strongly that it almost feels like you’re actually doing it. When you’ve done this for each body part, (This can’t be rushed, and it may take up to 20-30 minutes) you’re ready to enter the vibrational stage!

**4: Enter the vibrational stage (You’ll experience vibrations or tingling)**

At this point you’ve almost had an out of body experience! You ALMOST know how to astral project; you’ve just got a little bit more to do.

This is where things get fun, but also where things get difficult. You’re now entering the ‘vibrational stage’ of astral travel. This is where you’ll start to really feel something. In fact, I made a short video explaining what the vibrational stage is like:

You’ll feel your whole body start to vibrate gently, as if a soft current of electricity is going through your body. It might also feel like a heavy blanket is covering your whole body.

It’s at this point that you’ll either have an OBE, or you’ll get scared and give up, or lose focus. It’s exactly now that you’ll want to exercise STRONG willpower and just keep going for it.

***Don’t be scared:***

It’s really important that at this stage in particular, you stay as relaxed as possible. Don’t think about anything other than what you’re trying to do. Don’t focus on anything other than your body.

The next stage is probably the hardest part of learning how to do astral projection so make sure you stay focused! Also, don’t give up. It might not happen to you for the first few tries, but keep trying!

**5: Move out of your physical body and into the astral realm**

You’re now going to move your psychosomatic (or ‘astral body’) OUTSIDE of your physical body. This takes a lot of practice, and there are several techniques once you get to this point. They all revolve around visualizing and being relaxed.

This is why we suggested that you practice meditation as a KEY part of your astral travel efforts.

So, now we’re going to briefly explain several techniques you can use to move your astral body outside of your physical one. Feel free to try each technique, and find which ones works best for you.

***Here are some astral projection TECHNIQUES for leaving your physical body:***

***A) The swing technique***

Imagine you’re on a swing.

As you lay there in your bed, (or sit in your chair) imagine your body gently swinging back and forward. Start off with REALLY small movements.

The swing method for astral projection

Now, DON’T actually move, but imagine your body is moving. Just like before when you imaged your separate body acts moving. This time, imagine your WHOLE body moving, in VERY SMALL movements as if you’re on a swing.

Make the movements get bigger and bigger until you eventually swing your entire astral body out, and find yourself floating a little way above your physical body. I made a video explaining the swing technique in more simple terms, and walking you through how it feels:

***B) The rope technique***

   The rope technique involves focusing on your hands. Just like before, imagine your hands moving. When you can strongly visualise your hands moving separately to your physical body, imagine a rope is in front of you.

Reach out to the rope (Again, all with your astral bodies hands, not your physical hands) and grab it. Gently use it to pull yourself up and out of your body. Yo can also use a bar instead of rope and follow the same steps.

These techniques are not by any means ALL of the techniques out there, but they’re the most common and will get you started the right way! Now that we’ve got there, we need to STAY in the astral realm:

**6: Stay lucid/aware by focusing**

The important thing to remember when you’re doing astral travel is that you need to stay focused.

It’s easy to become hazy or confused when you’re trying this. Practice meditating every day so that you’re good at staying focused for long periods of time. This is called being ‘lucid’. It simply means being aware of ‘clear’. It’s an important part of astral projection.

It’s really important to meditate if you want to have OBES because meditation can help you maintain a high level of focus. Focus and awareness are VERY important for this sort of thing.

How to remember your astral projection experience

When you astral travel, your astral body or ‘psychosoma’ is separate from your physical body and brain. The experiences you have in the astral realm are recorded in your astral brain or ‘parabrain’.

This means that unless you really try and set yourself up for it, you’ll forget everything as soon as you return to your physical body and brain!

Don’t worry though, there are some great ways to ‘transfer’ the memories from brain to brain. The main one is by repeating a ‘mantra’ to yourself the whole day before you try this.

Some mantras you could use are –

* · ‘I will remember everything I experience when I have an OBE’
* · ‘I’ll be completely lucid and remember everything that happens in the astral realm’
* · ‘I will remember my astral projection experience’

Repeat these things to yourself once every hour for the whole day. Do this every day to make sure your brain knows what to do!

But how do we get back to our physical bodies?

**7: Return to your physical body by pulling on your silver cord**

The next stage is returning to your physical body.

It’s no good learning how to astral project if you don’t also learn how to get back to reality! To return to your physical body, you don’t actually need to do much!

Your astral body is connected to your physical body via a ‘silver cord’ or rope. This ensures you never lose contact with your physical body and can always return.

You may sense or even see this cord as you’re traveling. It appears as a white or energetic beam of energy which goes through walls and can stretch to an infinite length.

You simply have to either follow the cord back to your body if you’re ‘deeply’ focused in the astral realm. If you’re not so ‘grounded’ you can simply think about opening your physical eyes, and this will ‘snap you back’ to physical reality.

For more, see our guide to the silver cord for astral projection.

**8: Enter the advanced world of astral travel**

Soon, you’ll want to dive deeper:

There are some advanced things you can do to improve your astral projection skills. Let’s explain a few things, but if you’d like to learn more, make sure to check out the advanced astral projection part of the blog!

Finding objects or information quickly

Next time you’re astral traveling, try and find an object in your room.

But here’s the thing:

Pick an easy object to describe and remember. Look at where it is, and when you get back to your physical reality find the object again and see if you were right.

It works best if you pick objects that you wouldn’t have known were there, for example objects in another room that someone else has placed there for you to find.

You can also get someone to write down some information for you on a bit of paper in another room. Astral project into that room and read it, then come back and test yourself! Keep doing it until you’re good at it!

The one thing you should never do

When beginners try to astral project, there’s one thing they almost always do which makes SURE they fail. It’s such a simple thing but it can be detrimental to your success. Make sure to avoid this thing.

The most common mistake is:

Trying to have an OBE during the night.

Lots of people try and have an OBE at 7PM sometimes, which is totally wrong. You MIGHT be able to, but the chances of you successfully having an OBE are very slim.

***Why?***

Because your REM sleep is at it’s peak during the early hours of the morning. If you avoid that period, it’s next to impossible to have an OBE because your brain chemistry is all wrong at that time.

***So when should you try it?***

Well, during the early hours of the morning. This is so very important, that we will keep reminding you of it throughout this website and our posts. Set your alarm to go off at about 4AM, and THEN attempt an OBE.

Your brain will be at the optimum condition then, because you’ll be full of ‘wake up hormones’ in preparation for the waking day, BUT you’ll be deeply relaxed and tired, so you could easily slip into an OBE/sleep!

Now that you have learned all this information, it’ll still be complicated but when you watch any youtube videos or books of step by step of Astral Projection for beginners, you’ll find it as a piece of cake. Also, I have heard that there are also some benefits when you also Astral Project, not just going back or forward in time or even travel to certain places or locations on Earth or the whole cosmos, but there will be these certain possibilities that would be possible, like creating the alternate Dimension or creating a new universe into reality with our own eyes could see.

Here are also these other possible benefits. It’s all fine and dandy if you think otherwise, but only you would need to think for yourself and figure it out to see that these are possible on you.

* · Strengthens your faith
* · Broadens your consciousness
* · Empowers your magical powers and abilities
* · You get to meet Angels, fairies, and Elves.
* · You get to travel Past and Future
* · You get to discover Atlantis

It rocks. But you might need to remember that even though it does rock, it still has its dangers, and you also need to be cautious because it does sound extremely powerful, even for any who already had Out-of-Body Experiences would beware of such things. As well while you would create fantasy into reality with your Astral Body, it’ll be when you need to learn what this Toontopia should be like.

If there would be more than just one of you, you would probably have to work together as long as you follow these directions, no more, no less.