Astral Projection - Definitive Method?

[lefthandrising]

Greetings Brothers and Sisters!

For my inaugural post here on Occult Forum, I wish to inquire as to the community's preferred methods of astral projection/inducing OBEs. I have been involved with the occult in one way or another for the past 6 years, and in this time I have only experienced one genuine astral projection (quite unintentionally, I might add). This happened 5 years ago when I was away at college and laying in my bed preparing to go to sleep for the night. I suddenly felt my astral body begin to rise out of my physical body and then realized that I had conscious control of said astral body as physically I was still lying inert on the bed. I remembered having read that at the start of an astral projection one is supposed to attempt to soar upward and so I sort of jumped which caused my astral body to shoot through the ceiling and then far above the planet earth. Within seconds I found myself flying forwards through a tunnel of kaleidoscopic colors (this was very reminiscent of the ending sequence of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey). I was fully aware that what I was experiencing at that moment was a textbook astral projection as the experience was entirely unlike anything I had ever known before (and quite distinct from a dream). Unfortunately, I became afraid that my physical body would not be able to breathe while I was in the astral and I began to panic and forced myself to wake up. Though I frequently have deeply vivid and immersive dreams during which I regularly become lucid, I have not had an out of body experience of this sort ever since.

In this past year, I have experienced a renewed enthusiasm for my occult practice and would like to begin seriously pursuing astral projection as an art. At this point, I have acquired texts on nearly every subject relating to occultism and spirituality, but I have yet to find a definitive text on the subject of astral projection. When I search for information on the internet, I find myself overwhelmed by a mass of articles, many of which seem to derive from sources that are questionable at best. Therefore, I would like to find what is considered the traditional method of inducing the type of experience that I described above. To those of you who are experienced with OBEs I ask: how did you learn, and what is your method?

[RoseRed]

I'll start with congrats on your inaugural post.

As to astral projection - you already did it once on accident. This tells me that 1) you are able to astral project and 2) your body and spirit already know how.

I think that part of the problem with achieving it again is your fear. That'll stop it in it's tracks.

Fear of your physical body being able to breathe is not one you actually need to have. Our breathing and heart beating comes from a very primal part of our brains. It's more like your body is unconscious during full astral projection than dead.

I don't think that there's a preferred method of the forum. It's a very individual type of thing.

When I first start to AP and OBE (which are similar yet different enough to be classified separately) my problem was staying in my body - not leaving it. I'm sorry but I won't be much help to get you 'out there' but once you're able to do it 'on demand' we can chit chat about actually doing it.

[Tyho]

Hi,

I am more of a lucid dreamer, I don't think my cousciousness ever leaved my body except in some dream dimensions perhaps while I was asleep so I can't be of much help on this topic. Still, you may want to take a look at some of Robert A. Monroe's works on Astral projection. This guy really mastered the art, and if there is something to learn, his books might be able to teach you some of the techniques that he used to achieve Astral projections on a regular basis. He spent a lot of time studying and practicing it, he became a reference in this field of research.

Journeys Out Of The Body by Robert A. Monroe (Dec. 1, 1992) should definitly be a starting point for you.

Here's a link to give you an idea of what the book is about based on reviews: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3479 ... f_the_Body

[Rin]

I'd also recommend the works of Robert Bruce. Although going what I've read, what he teaches is mental projection rather than the actual astral projection he names it, but I've never practiced his system, so I can't be sure.

also, generally speaking I don't think astral projection should be practiced independent of a system of spiritual development of some kind - there are a lot of things that can go wrong. Just my thoughts on the matter, and something to consider. My own school doesn't teach the students to astral project by themselves until they've been training (fairly heavily, I might add) for 4 years (although the teachers take the students out of their body while they are asleep for lectures, exploration of the astral plane, introduction to various entities, etc. Here is one example of how it can go wrong:

The Dangers of Astral Projection Amongst the Uninitiated

It was not with malice or ill-intent that the adepts of all ages have concealed their operations from the public eye, keeping them always secret within their respective fraternities. It is only recently that even the terminology of occultism has become public knowledge, and as shall be demonstrated sometimes the mere breach of occult terminology alone is a dangerous thing when someone who is curious but not trained picks up on it. One of the most prevalent dangers that result from this breach in today’s world is the attempting of astral projection amongst the uninitiated. When a trained and responsible magician looks out across the many communities and libraries devoted to occultism it is a frightening thing to see so many “How-To” books written about powers that have rightfully always been reserved for the carefully guided and disciplined initiate. Too many times I have seen books bearing such titles as “All you need to know about Astral Projection,” “A Guide to Astral Projection,” “How to Astral Projection,” and even “The Idiot’s Handbook to Astral Projection.” Suffice it to say in the least that an idiot has no place in occultism at all. Why is this disturbing to those magicians who have actually been trained and properly initiated? Not because they are selfish and desire to horde such secrets for themselves, but because they care for the wellbeing of their fellow man, who they are in fact training to help.

There was a particular woman I spoke to on occasion by virtue that she was a good friend of my cousin’s, and was often there while I was. While my cousin (who has a degree of occult knowledge himself) and I were speaking, he mentioned in passing the subject of Astral Projection. At the time this mentioning seemed innocent enough, for Astral Projection is quite the public knowledge these days, and so I took him up on a very brief conversation about the subject. As the conversation moved on so did we, and the subject was left behind. However, it had apparently hit a spark with our mutual friend, who we will call Ms. B. She mentioned nothing of her interest in the subject of Astral Projection while my cousin and I were speaking of it, but I learned later that immediately after she left his house she went to the nearest bookstore and purchased for herself a small book that claimed to teach the method of her new fascination.

That afternoon she attempted astral projection as soon as she got home. During the experience she felt as if she had become slightly lighter, a noted a strange wavering of her consciousness, but it was shortly over. Convinced that she did not astral project she decided to leave the subject alone, and made no consequent attempts at the skill. That night while she was sleeping she was suddenly stirred into motion by a pressure upon her solar plexus. She could not speak, and she could no longer control her body. Her body sat up entirely on its own, and she began to shake violently in her bed. After this physical spasm she fell back into her bed and “fell asleep,” instantly waking back up again, after which she had complete control over herself. Frightened out of her wits, she turned all the lights on in her house and spent the rest of the night awake watching television until sunrise, upon which she felt it was safe to fall asleep again, and did so this time with no disturbance.

This scenario had occurred some four or five times before she finally consulted me about it. When she told me what had been occurring every few nights, and once even during the day, I immediately asked her if she had attempted astral projection. Guiltily she admitted to having done so, and proceeded to inform me of her reactions to the conversation my cousin and I had some weeks before. This put her in a difficult situation, which I shall now describe.

It is true that she had not been entirely successful in her attempt at astral projection. Unfortunately, she had not been entirely unsuccessful either. She managed to reach that state of separation that the astral body maintains during deep sleep, during which the consciousness is still attached to the physical brain. When she did so, due to the fact that the separation was unnatural and therefore did not have the usual safeguards, she created a small astral vacuum between her physical and astral bodies. A wandering entity who happened to be “on watch” at the time, most likely a spirit of a deceased human still wandering around in the lower etheric regions, noticed and capitalized on the situation. Sliding between the astral and physical body, he was able to establish a kind of domination therein. Fortunately she was unsuccessful in separating her consciousness from the brain, which is why during these seizures she retained complete consciousness and full awareness.

The spirit could not establish complete dominion in Ms. B, and most importantly had no influence in her mind. As such, every night, when her astral body had reached that normal level of separation from the physical body, he would use the influence he had already planted and squeeze back in to try and conquer the entire vehicle. Fortunately he had been unsuccessful with every attempt. His discontent at this was likely reflected by the increasing feelings of anger that Ms. B would feel in her room after awaking from her seizure. The fact that the spirit came and left every night gave me a tremendous advantage in a situation that would have otherwise been considerably difficult to dissolve.

I went to Ms. B’s house and erected a barrier around her bed, sealing it with the proper magic names and symbols. When done, there was little doubt in my mind that nothing save an angel from God could pass through that barrier. Merely keeping the being out was not enough however; a trap had to be set to completely rid ourselves of it. I left in the barrier a very distinct signal that pointed back to me, so that even the most dull psychic or spirit would be able to figure out that if they followed the trail they would wind up at the source of the barrier. A few nights later I was laying in my bed, not yet asleep, when I began to notice that the sound my ceiling fan gave began to change into a peculiarly loud and menacing knock. The fan itself began to sway far more than usual, and a kind of subtle murmur began to be heard in the far corner of my room. Knowing by now far and well that the fish had bit the hook, I lowered my own natural defenses. As Sun Tzu aptly stated, “When strong, feign weakness.” Instantly there came over me a definite weight, and I felt myself actually get pushed into my bed mattress some two inches. My clairvoyance allowed me to see the entity quite clearly, hovering horizontally just above my bed in a film of grey mist. I quickly gathered pure vital light into my right hand (those familiar with Bardon shall know the method), and thrust my palm into the solar plexus of the human-shaped being above me. I sent the accumulated light soaring through the etheral being, and shouted “Back to The Desert with you!” The Light dissolved the spirit, and in the words of Dion Fortune, “There was a sign, a word, and then it was gone.” I sat up in my bed and vibrated ADONAI until the presence which the being had brought with it was completely dissolved. After the five or so minutes that this took, my phone rang (it was about 1:00 AM). Answering the phone, I found that it was Ms. B. She called me saying that she had woken up to a very angry force in her room, which was telepathically insulting her insecurities. Within a very short amount of time the anger dissolved and the being was gone.

There are a few key notes of significance to these details. For one, the “grey mist” surrounding the being when it presented itself to me. The aura of the spirit of a person who is still incarnate appears to the clairvoyant eye as having a feint gold color to it, whereas the aura of the spirit of a deceased person who is clinging onto the lower etheric regions of the Earth Sphere is that of a discolored grey. This leads me to believe that the perpetrator of the assault was someone recently deceased with a working knowledge of practical occultism. This individual was likely a black occultist in life, and so naturally feared the repercussions of his immoral living that he would certainly experience if allowed to pass from the Earth Sphere into the more spiritual realms. As such he used what little knowledge he had and clung to the gross ether of the Earth Sphere, where he found a fitting opportunity for a host. Whether or not possession was the aim of his endeavors I can not say, but it seems certain that his actions were out of desperation, and inadequately planned.

An explanation may also be accorded of the charge “Back to The Desert with you.” This is an old Sumerian charge, and while I translated it for the purposes of the reader, it is actually spoken as “Edin nau tsu,” pronounced “Ay-din now tsoo.” It is a charge directed at gross entities who have climbed out of the spiritual septic tank that most immoral spirits are cast into, or in some cases a spirit which has avoided such altogether. The charge itself likely comes from a shared ritual that Judaism took out of Ur. During this ritual a donkey is loaded with the burdens of sinful life and sent out of Jerusalem into the desert, the supposed prison of the demon Azziel, who according to the Book of Enoch first burdened humanity with the means to satisfy sin. The phrase “Back to The Desert with you” is the verbal expression of the symbolic act of sending the gross spiritual impurities back into “The Desert,” a place of death and decay, where they essentially had their origin.

As for the utilization of the Divine Name ADONAI to rid my room of the etheric excess, this was a matter of trial and error. Particular forces have particular agitating forces, and these are not always the same. I tried a series of divine names before I finally landed on one that, each time it was vibrated, resulted in a substantial release of the tension in the room.

http://forums.vsociety.net/index.php/topic,9824.0.html

[Shinichi]

There is a definitive method for projection, but the reason that you haven't found much out is because genuine projection is always simply one of many skills learned in any given school of magic.

Crowley explains the basic method of Mental Projection in Chapter 18 of Magick in Theory and Practice, Bardon explains the same thing as Mental Wandering in step seven or eight of Initiation Into Hermetics, and Benjamin Rowe offers a gentle introduction to a form of it in his Short Course on Scrying. Crowley then expects his students to figure out the difference between what he explained and Astral Projection for themselves and Bardon similarly offers Astral Projection only after Mental Wandering. Rowe's treatise doesn't really touch on the astral much, since his purposes are slightly different anyway.

The essential point is this: correctly leaving the physical body, mentally or astrally, requires some form of prerequisite training. It is not a simple skill that you can simply pick up with no previous training, for a number of reasons.

One of which RoseRed pointed out -- without the mental and emotional discipline to control yourself, it simply wont work to begin with. Worrying over what will happen to you comes from both a lack of basic training and a lack of education regarding what awaits you, though you may be concerned anyway once you gain the latter. Another Rin pointed out with that story -- there are dangers to separating your soul from your body. There are also many old stories of practitioners leaving their body and for one reason or another not returning. Here, too, lies a difference between Mental and Astral projection -- the projection of the mind is less dangerous than the correct separation of the soul. And then there is also the most important danger -- delusion. For if you lack the essential training of mental discipline and the senses of the soul which allow you to see through illusions and trickery, then you will lack the capacity to verify what you see while journeying, and thus it is easy to become deluded; either by your own imagination or by the trickery of spirits who find your lack of training amusing and worthy of prank.

And as for the methods I am studying for myself, there's more than one (all having several degrees of initiation preceding them). There is the extension of Awareness and Consciousness experienced by most Remote Viewers and "Clairvoyants," where you extend the mind to see the place you want to go without really leaving your body. Rowe's initial training develops this, and if you don't practice his methods to full effect his whole course can develop this quite in depth. Second is the projection of the mind in an imaginary body, as per the instruction of Crowley, Bardon, Rowe, and also others like the aforementioned Robert Bruce. And third is the actual separation of the soul itself, which is something that I feel must be learned carefully and experienced directly rather than something to be spoken much about on a forum.



~:Shin:~

[lefthandrising]

Many thanks to each of you for your detailed and helpful responses. They have given me much to consider, particularly in regard to unconscious fears that I may still harboring as well as the potential hazards of projecting without proper training. I am currently working through Modern Magick by Donald Michael Kraig, which covers several facets of magickal practice within the framework of the Hermetic Qabalah. He does get into astral projection later in the book but I have resolved not to skip ahead in the lessons. Reading through some of the other posts on the forum, I see that Initiation Into Hermetics by Franz Bardon is highly regarded by many of you and I will surely consider it in the future.

You folks seem very gracious and well-informed and I look forward to taking part in the community.

[Rin]

I am currently working through Modern Magick by Donald Michael Kraig, which covers several facets of magickal practice within the framework of the Hermetic Qabalah. He does get into astral projection later in the book but I have resolved not to skip ahead in the lessons.

A good resolution.

Reading through some of the other posts on the forum, I see that Initiation Into Hermetics by Franz Bardon is highly regarded by many of you and I will surely consider it in the future.

If you have the time, IIH and Modern Magick can be practiced side by side, I did so for a period of time and found them very compatible.

You folks seem very gracious and well-informed and I look forward to taking part in the community.

Glad we could help, look forward to seeing you around here.