Out-of-Body Experiences (OBE) and Astral Travel
What are Out-of-Body Experiences?
What are OBE’s and Astral Travel?
To describe the sensation of “floating out of the body,” it’s often associated with out-of-body experiences (OBEs). This phenomenon is characterized by a feeling of detachment from the physical body, where individuals may perceive themselves floating above or outside their physical form.
Such experiences are frequently reported in contexts like:
during life-threatening situations
deep states of focus or transcendence.
such as lucid dreaming or sleep paralysis.
seizures, trauma, or high stress.
How to get an Out-of-Body Experience?
Keep in mind that it is MUCH MORE DIFFICULT to induce or train yourself to get an OBE than a lucid dream. Whilst lucid dreams can be achieved by the average person with regular training within a few months (or sometimes a few weeks), inducing an OBE is on another level. Of course everyone can get an OBE by going through a stressful phase or induced by outside events, but deliberately through training probably depends much more on talent, dedication and mental state.
Astral Projection through Progressive Muscular Relaxation
Any technique which helps to abandon our feeling or dependence of the body helps to induce an OBE. It is therefore no wonder that PME helps to achieve the state which releases the astral body.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation helps to achieve a sense of deep relaxation. This relaxation is achieved by constantly comparing the effect of the relaxation to that of the tension before by contracting and releasing each muscle group.
Preparation:
- Lie down and close your eyes or be in a darkened room
- Tighten a muscle group, slowly count to five and then relax before getting to the next muscle group.
- Focus all your attention on the feeling of tension and release. Tense and release each muscle group a few times
- Keep the rest of the body still and quiet. Inhale as you tense, hold your breath while counting and exhale as you release
Do this every day until you get more and more relaxed. If you don’t remember all the muscle groups, you can also make an audio tape to guide you through the relaxation process. The purpose of such a tape is to induce a state of physical and mental relaxation.
The next step would be to combine PMR with OBE suggestions.
As you begin the PMR, tell yourself that you will have an OBE at the end of the exercise.
As you relax all the body parts, suggest that your mental body releases as well.
At the end, focus your concentration on the top of the head. Imagine your mind leaving the body.
When the OBE starts, people tend to feel their body sinking through the bed.
Astral travel through Visualization
The process of visualization allows the mind to become independent of the flesh and the material world.
Do the following exercise:
Sit in a comfortable chair staring at a blank sheet, or otherwise said, the view should be unobstructed.
Place a simple object before you and the blank wall should serve as a backdrop. The object can be something like a book, a vase or a bottle.
Stare at the object and try to memorize everything.
Close your eyes and visualize the object and the room itself. Recreate the room in your mind’s eye.
Do not just imagine the room and the object but do as if you had x-ray vision and you were seeing it through your closed eyelids.
As soon as the memory fades, open your eyes and refresh your memory. Repeat.
As soon as you have mastered this exercise after weeks, do the exercise again, but this time with a clock in front of you. After a few minutes, check the time and try to see if the time is roughly the same as the one you “saw”.
You will be learning to project some part of your mind away from the body. You are learning to make a jump from the real world to another one. After some time and practice, this perceptual jump will occur as OBE.
There are other visualization exercises which can produce OBEs, for example:
Construct mental images by sitting in a quiet place and trying to hold a symbol in your mind’s eye. Try to hold a symbol for ten minutes without losing it.
To energize the body use the breathing rhythm 564 (inhale to the count of five, hold for six and exhale while counting to four)
Place a simple object in front of you, concentrate on it and try to merge with it until you become one with the object. Then observe the room from the perspective of the object. Exercise until you can switch your mind to another perspective at will.
The next step would be that you try to project your consciousness away from your body to the other side of the room. You should be able to think from the other spot.
Astral travel through Lucid Dreaming
Dreams can be controlled very easily. To get a notion about lucid dreaming, read the lucid page from LucidAstral first.
To induce OBEs from lucid dreams, there are a few techniques that you can use:
While being in a lucid dream, try to fly. If you manage to fly in a dream and then order yourself to awake out-of-body. You might induce an out-of-body experience
Another method would be to clear your mind, block out your dream environment and observe your own thoughts. As a result your dream environment will collapse and you can find yourself out of your body.
Another method is to order yourself (while being lucid) to return to your body but not to wake up. What happens then is that you will be back in your body by being able to see your room clearly even though you know that your eyes are still closed. Now order yourself to leave the body by floating away from it. The result would be an OBE.
Why Astral Projection?
The benefits are:
You can fly around
Trying to find probles to everyday solutions
Meeting other people
This might be tempting but....you will highly likely wake up because your physical body gets too much involved.
