Does anyone here have experience with astral projection?

[nuttynutskin]

Basically what the title say. Has anyone successfully done astral projection? Any tips for someone interested? What were your experiences like?

 

[Xorkoth]

When I was a kid I used to try, I got this book called 'Rune Magic" that described a process for astral traveling to various realms of Nordic gods. Never managed to do anything. It's something I'm curious about, but never really gotten into too much. I could believe it's all imagination, except that there are various accounts of people who have died or been very near death experiencing it, rising out of their bodies and observing things happening in the room that they could only have known if they actually saw it, but were lying there comatose or dead at the time.

@nuttynutskin Would you like me to move this to P&S? I think you'd probably get more replies there.

 

[nuttynutskin]

When I was a kid I used to try, I got this book called 'Rune Magic" that described a process for astral traveling to various realms of Nordic gods. Never managed to do anything. It's something I'm curious about, but never really gotten into too much. I could believe it's all imagination, except that there are various accounts of people who have died or been very near death experiencing it, rising out of their bodies and observing things happening in the room that they could only have known if they actually saw it, but were lying there comatose or dead at the time.

@nuttynutskin Would you like me to move this to P&S? I think you'd probably get more replies there.

Sure go for it.

 

[TripSitterNZ]

when i was a teenager i was into trying to do astral projection i had already mastered lucid dreaming. I was using kundalini yoga and hatha yoga along with charkas at the time to charge my spiritual energy. I was focused on trying to release my astral spirit from the physcial body. I had two experinces which may of been astral projection. The first one was around 8am in the morning when i attempted it and i floated out of my body walked around my house woke up and everybody was in the same locations doing the same chores. The second experince i was thrown out of my body onto the floor in my room and this "entiy" seemed to mabye a human spirit in a past life but it was evil and had attached itself to my aura and it attacked me i was pretty at it mercy the pain was very life like as it sliced my legs as i tried to run away i ended up outside in the astral realm it was very foggy cloudy but different to dream i was yelling for help to anything to save my ass from this "spirit" then this blue light light up the sky in the astral realm blasted t his thing and i was jolted into my physical body very rapidly. I woke up got a glass of water was terrified at what had occurred for the next week i felt detached from the physical world heavy depersonalize supposedly if your astral spirit doesn;t realign with your physical body on reentry it can leave people feeling off for weeks and detatched.

 

[Xorkoth]

Wow, those sound like really intense experiences.

I had one experience that I felt worth mentioning due to its extreme vividness and reality, it was during my use of GHB. Your story about the evil presence reminded me of it. I would always wake up in dopamine rebound in the middle of the night while using GHB, and then have insanely vivid dreams with a lot of getting up and moving around and then opening my eyes and being in bed. Although I have these in a mundane way (ie, dreaming I got up and started my day normally only to wake up in bed) regularly, these were different. In the most intense/realistic one, I was in my room and I woke up and was floating about where my head would have been in bed (I felt totally awake), except I was looking out into the room inside of up at the ceiling, and I had no feeling of having a body. I didn't think to try to look at my body or anything since I assumed I was awake. A sibilant presence was there with me, it was visible as a sort of shifting cloud of blades (or more like the edges of blades, just little silver cutting lines) and it talked to me, but not in English, it sounded like blades scraping against each other. But somehow it was translating to language in my mind. It told me its name was "Clicktickticlee", and that it wanted people to hurt. This presence was very eerie but I also felt a confidence, I didn't feel like it was going to hurt me, or that it couldn't. It was talking to me for a few minutes and I started to feel like I shouldn't be communicating with it, like it was trying to trick me. So I decided to wake up (it had occurred to me by then that I was not fully awake). I opened my eyes, and everything looked the same, I was seeing the same thing I had been seeing all along, except that instead of the presence there, it was just my room in darkness. I got up to pee and I still felt the lingering presence, and the darkness was shifting in liquid-like patterns in my room. That night whenever I closed my eyes, I could still see my room.

It really felt like I encountered something external to me, something alien, a real entity. But it also could have just been a dream. It didn't totally scare me but it was unnerving.

 

[Foreigner]

Yes I've done it many times. At first by accident and then later at will.

The first time I ever did it was through the sleep paralysis state. When most people experience that, they struggle to try and move. Instead, you should just think of where it is you want to go, and then suddenly you'll be there. But it's hard at first because usually SP triggers a lot of fear. However, the key thing about SP is that the mind is awake while the body is asleep, which is essentially what astral projection is. During SP, you are already in the astral, you just haven't stepped outside of your body. This was how I first discovered astral projection.

My early experiences were very disorienting. In the astral, you can see in the 360 degrees because you don't have physical eyes. You can also go anywhere you want instantly, but the problem is that if you think of more than one place at a time, you'll bounce all over the place really jaggedly. In my early experiences, I wasn't fully aware I was astral projecting until after I woke up. I would visit my parents' bedroom and watch them while they were sleeping, not realizing I was doing it... but because they were my parents and I felt close to them, it was only natural to go to them. I often slept in their bed anyway, so visiting them in the astral was just an extension of that.

The usual way that I enter it now is through the dream state. Once I realize I'm dreaming I decide to leave the dream and then I'm just out of my body. It took many years to be able to recognize when I am dreaming and make conscious choices, all without waking myself up accidentally. The dream state and the astral state are basically the same, though they exist on a spectrum. A lot of times, people are in the astral but the dream state is overlaid as a projection, or perhaps a coping mechanism, so the mind can interpret what it is seeing. I say coping mechanism because most modern people can't handle the experience of their consciousness being separate from their body, so they need the dream construct to safely process the astral experience.

Some dreams are just dreams (mundane physical brain processes), while other times they have a very particular flavour that lets you know they're astral... like really vivid colours, bright lights, and an other worldly quality. That's what I mean by a spectrum... the dream state and the astral state can be blurred together in varying degrees. Sometimes you are 90% seeing the astral but there are some dream projections/characters floating around. Other times you're 90% dreaming but you get brief little windows into the astral, but you can't maintain the clarity and the subconscious dream forms take over again. Sometimes it's totally one, or the other.

If you can recognize that you're dreaming, then you can decide to leave the dream. Once you decide, the dream projection will dissolve and you'll be able to see the astral clearly. It's not always possible. If I'm genuinely tired then I may not be able to enter the astral even if I want to because my physical body needs rest... so the dream construct will pull me back in.

Theosophists call the dream layer the causal level, or the emotional level. Most humans enter the astral through the causal plane of consciousness. It relates to the third chakra. In Daoism, the liver is the one organ whose soul can detach and travel separately, called the hun or ethereal soul. The liver system is part of the third chakra. According to the ancient philosophies, there is a part of us that does not wish to remain confined to a human body and needs to leave to travel even while we are alive. This is usually done through the dream/astral state.

 

[Xorkoth]

I really want to be able to get there, Foreigner. Thanks for the post, it was informative. I have experienced sleep paralysis a handful of times but it's only been when my serotonin was depleted (after several days in a row of MDMA or AMT). I was never able to get past the fear, but once I broke the paralysis and fell back to sleep I would have the most insanely vivid dreams.. I have never had sleep paralysis besides in that state, but I have gotten a lot better/more lucid at dreaming, so I think if I were to experience it again, I'd be able to banish the fear and see where it takes me. But I can't trigger sleep paralysis, no idea how to do that.

 

[nuttynutskin]

Great posts... Didn't really think this was going to get anything.

 

[Foreigner]

I really want to be able to get there, Foreigner. Thanks for the post, it was informative. I have experienced sleep paralysis a handful of times but it's only been when my serotonin was depleted (after several days in a row of MDMA or AMT). I was never able to get past the fear, but once I broke the paralysis and fell back to sleep I would have the most insanely vivid dreams.. I have never had sleep paralysis besides in that state, but I have gotten a lot better/more lucid at dreaming, so I think if I were to experience it again, I'd be able to banish the fear and see where it takes me. But I can't trigger sleep paralysis, no idea how to do that.

Sleep paralysis is very tricky. In the past, I have also seen disturbing forms around me in the SP state, which makes it all the more frightening, even though they were just projections. When I forget that I can change the situation and instead try to move my physical body, it feels like an electric field is holding my body down. What's really happening is that the motor system of the brain is turned off to protect you from walking around while you sleep and hurting yourself. Some sleep walkers can override this, but it's not common. Most of us just experience paralysis. Nothing is holding you down, your body is just asleep, but it feels like a restraint which is what makes it terrifying.

You don't want to trigger sleep paralysis. It's not a useful way to get into the astral because it's extremely disorienting. I just mentioned it because if it happens to you, you may be able to use it.

Splitting up your sleep into several phases at night is a good way to astral project. Like setting an alarm for every 150 minutes. Most people do a full sleep cycle in 90 minutes, so interrupting it teaches you how to intervene in your own sleep. Sleeping for, say, 4 hours at night, and then waiting until dawn to sleep for the next 4 hours can increase the probability of the astral too. For some reason, entering a sleep cycle as the Sun rises is very triggering to the astral. I can come up with some spiritual explanations for this, but not scientific ones. The majority of the time I've astral projected is when I have slept in past sunrise, after initially waking up... like 70% of the time.

One time I set my alarm because I was expecting an international package and I had to be awake for it. Well, the guy didn't show up, so I fell back to sleep. When he came to my front door, I jumped up immediately and ran to the door, but my hand went through the door knob. It took me a good minute to realize I hadn't physically gone to the door. Then I whooshed back into my body, woke up with adrenaline, and ran to the door in a half-awake state.

The whooshing back is the hard part, when you are flung back into your body. You wake up like a bat out of hell. Also part of the learning experience.

Some basic dream work you can do is... when you're awake throughout the day, look at your hands periodically. Observe the lines of your palms. Ask yourself out loud, "Am I awake?" Answer your question. Do this a lot during the day. Eventually it becomes so ingrained that you'll start doing it in your dreams, but your hands won't look normal or the lines will be gone, and you'll know it's a dream. Then you can maybe make choices. At first, you may get excited by the realization and wake up; or the opposite, where you go from being lucid to back in the immersive dream state again. That's all okay, baby steps.

As you fall asleep at night in a state of relaxation, state a circular logic phrase to yourself: "Tonight I will leave my body while I sleep because leaving my body is easy to do." Say it out loud over and over, while staying relaxed. Sometimes that's enough to do it for me. You can also write it out on paper over and over before going to bed. There are many methods.

Sometimes I end up in the astral through no apparent effort or reason. I am just dreaming and then suddenly I am in my bedroom. It takes a second to realize I'm not actually sleep walking but just out of body. I have heard some newbies say that they would train to do astral projection for months with no luck. Then when they gave up trying, they started having it happen spontaneously.

 

[Foreigner]

The main problem with the way we are raised is that we treat the dream world as unreal and the waking world as real. In other cultures, they treat them as one consciousness. When you're awake and when you're asleep, it's all just one continuous experience. So we have learned to dismiss the dream state, and therefore not really connect with it. By doing things in the waking world (like looking at your hands) that you also do in the dream world, you begin bridging the consciousness until there is no real difference between the two. It all just becomes one living experience. I mean, dreaming is living too, right? It's just another kind of living. Once you let go of that thing people say, "Oh, it was just a dream", and you start treating it as an important part of your life, you begin to integrate it. Then it's less about "controlling" dreams in such an objectified way, and more about maximizing just another part of your lived experience.

I wish people would let go of "what dreams mean" and just treat them as life. Like... I just went to the supermarket and bought groceries. What did that mean? I dunno... probably nothing. I needed food. Well, why is a dream any different? If I meet an elephant in my dream, why even ask what the elephant meant? It matters much more to me the details of the interaction, the experience, what I might like to do differently next time, etc. When I walk down the street, I can go straight, I may turn left or right, I may stop to smell a flower or pet a dog, or talk to a person. These are all choices I know I can make. The dream construct, although it has a different flavour, is no different really. The dream doesn't happen to you, you are happening to the dream.

I mention all this because the key to lucid dreaming is simply learning to treat dreams as life. Our waking life is lucid, right? I mean, we have agency and choice... we have lucid control over what we do. Well the same is true of dreams. The only reason why we don't realize it is because we are taught that dreams are separate, otherly, and not to be taken seriously. Well, if that's your belief, then of course you'll lose control over that reality.

 

[Xorkoth]

Then you can maybe make choices. At first, you may get excited by the realization and wake up

Every time in my life (except once when I was trapped in what seemed to be an alternate reality where I was insane and had imagined my whole life - this was during serotonin depletion after sleep paralysis) that I have realized I was dreaming while dreaming, I have started to wake up, I can't seem to stop it yet. Sometimes I'll start to manipulate my surroundings, one time I told myself "I am going to fly now" and started to soar, but it got less and less immersive until I was aware I was laying in bed and just imagining the sensation of flying.

Splitting up your sleep into several phases at night is a good way to astral project.

As I've gotten older I sleep a lot less deeply and I think this has a lot to do with my dreams getting more vivid. One of my cats usually wakes me up right as the sun is just starting to come up, and then I sleep lightly for another couple of hours, and this is when I always have my most vivid dreams. A recent period where I was tapering/withdrawing from phenibut and was comfortable at night but had pretty bad insomnia was the most intense and vivid dreaming period of my life because I was waking up or almost waking up a bunch of times.

Sometimes I end up in the astral through no apparent effort or reason. I am just dreaming and then suddenly I am in my bedroom. It takes a second to realize I'm not actually sleep walking but just out of body.

Actually this happens to me a lot but I basically always believe I have actually woken up. I will go do relatively normal things, and then wake up again, but sometimes I'm still not actually awake, like the movie Inception except really ordinary (usually). Somehow I will be aware I had been dreaming and had been fooled, but will not stop to consider that maybe I'm still dreaming, until I actually do wake up, then I will think to myself "I wonder if I'm still dreaming and will wake up again", and that lets me know I am actually awake.

 

[nuttynutskin]

One of my cats usually wakes me up right as the sun is just starting to come up, and then I sleep lightly for another couple of hours, and this is when I always have my most vivid dreams.

Cats are assholes like that. Gotta love 'me tho.

 

[Hylight]

Does anyone here have experience with astral projection:

I wish . But I just wanted to log out with wishful thinking ! . . . . soon I hope.

 

[Foreigner]

Every time in my life (except once when I was trapped in what seemed to be an alternate reality where I was insane and had imagined my whole life - this was during serotonin depletion after sleep paralysis) that I have realized I was dreaming while dreaming, I have started to wake up, I can't seem to stop it yet. Sometimes I'll start to manipulate my surroundings, one time I told myself "I am going to fly now" and started to soar, but it got less and less immersive until I was aware I was laying in bed and just imagining the sensation of flying.

I know exactly what you're talking about, and I've thought deeply about this. I feel like our reaction to suddenly realizing it's a dream is part of our trained upbringing. It's as though once we realize it's a dream, we either feel like it has fooled us or that it is somehow unsafe, and the only way to regain control is to exit. When it comes to nightmares, there's also a certain satisfaction to knowing you've bested the dream by seeing through it and escaping. I think though there's some misattribution happening. Whether the essence of the dream is coming from inside of us, the astral, or somewhere else, the projected imagery is definitely something that the dreamer is creating.

The same is true of the waking state. The brain takes raw sensory data of "the world" and projects a reasonable facsimile of it into itself, which the mind then experiences as "the world". Strictly speaking, our experience of reality is only ever experienced inside ourselves. No matter how accurate the sensory data, we are still not really seeing what's "out there". It's all internalized. That's why there is functionally not much difference between the you that's projecting into the dream and the you that's projecting into the waking world.

As I've gotten older I sleep a lot less deeply and I think this has a lot to do with my dreams getting more vivid. One of my cats usually wakes me up right as the sun is just starting to come up, and then I sleep lightly for another couple of hours, and this is when I always have my most vivid dreams. A recent period where I was tapering/withdrawing from phenibut and was comfortable at night but had pretty bad insomnia was the most intense and vivid dreaming period of my life because I was waking up or almost waking up a bunch of times.

Sounds like you've got a lot of raw material and opportunity to work with there. I used to have a lot of nightmares due to various traumas, so for me learning to do dream work was kind of mandatory in order to regain some sanity in my life. My insomnia was hardcore.

Actually this happens to me a lot but I basically always believe I have actually woken up. I will go do relatively normal things, and then wake up again, but sometimes I'm still not actually awake, like the movie Inception except really ordinary (usually). Somehow I will be aware I had been dreaming and had been fooled, but will not stop to consider that maybe I'm still dreaming, until I actually do wake up, then I will think to myself "I wonder if I'm still dreaming and will wake up again", and that lets me know I am actually awake.

So you are already doing it and can remember it. The next step then is to cultivate recognition that it's happening.

You can create a logical loop like I mentioned before, such as, "I will leave my body tonight and recognize it's happening because leaving my body and seeing what's happening is easy to do."

Alternatively, around bedtime, you can write (by hand, not at a computer) about an out of body experience that already happened. Write the story the way it actually happened, like a factual journal entry. Then, write it out a second time and edit the story to include a part about you suddenly realizing you're out of body and having full control of the experience. Rewriting the story gives your subconscious a new queue.

I used to do this with my nightmares. I'd write out the nightmare and then I'd edit it so that the nightmare happened differently. Then if the nightmare reoccurred I could realize an alternative way. In one case, I stopped the nightmare figure pursuing me, asked him what he wanted, and demanded a gift from him. Then he showed me something about myself that I was avoiding.

By using your awake time to write about your dream time or out of body time, you begin to integrate the various consciousness states into one pliable form that you can work with in any state. The trippy thing is that you will start noticing symbols and images in the waking world that were in your dreams, and then you'll start to realize that the whole thing is non-linear and not so compartmentalized like we were taught.

 

[Xorkoth]

Thanks @Foreigner, that's really helpful.

 

[Zopiclone bandit]

The first one was around 8am in the morning when i attempted it and i floated out of my body walked around my house woke up and everybody was in the same locations doing the same chores

One MXE trip I did with quite a high dose I had the same thing happen myself.

 

[F.U.B.A.R.]

This has happened exactly once in my life. I was about 18 and no drugs were involved (except maybe for a bit of hash, but that was the norm).

I was lying in bed on my side trying to get to sleep, when I suddenly became aware that I could see the pictures on the wall opposite my face. I checked to see if my eyes were open, but they weren't. It was as if I was seeing through my eyelids. Then the pictures started to slowly move downwards. It was then I realised that my viewpoint was actually rising, which instilled a momentary panic that nearly cut the experience short. But I managed to overcome the resistance and float up until I seemed to be just under the ceiling. I then started to slowly rotate, taking in every detail of my room (which was illuminated in an unnatural light) from this vantage point. I didn't quite manage a full revolution before it became too much and I was suddenly pulled back into my body like I was on a piece of elastic. I was instantly wide awake thinking wtf?

I've experienced many extremely realistic and/or disturbing and/or lucid dreams in my life, but when awake, I've always been able to identify them as just dreams. This was different, and even now, just thinking about it creeps me out a little bit because I still identify it as real...

 

[nuttynutskin]

Interesting experiences... I haven't really tried anything yet. I think part of the problem is I wait until I'm exhausted to go to bed.

 

[iridescentblack]

Yes I've done it many times. At first by accident and then later at will.

The first time I ever did it was through the sleep paralysis state. When most people experience that, they struggle to try and move. Instead, you should just think of where it is you want to go, and then suddenly you'll be there. But it's hard at first because usually SP triggers a lot of fear. However, the key thing about SP is that the mind is awake while the body is asleep, which is essentially what astral projection is. During SP, you are already in the astral, you just haven't stepped outside of your body. This was how I first discovered astral projection.

My early experiences were very disorienting. In the astral, you can see in the 360 degrees because you don't have physical eyes. You can also go anywhere you want instantly, but the problem is that if you think of more than one place at a time, you'll bounce all over the place really jaggedly. In my early experiences, I wasn't fully aware I was astral projecting until after I woke up. I would visit my parents' bedroom and watch them while they were sleeping, not realizing I was doing it... but because they were my parents and I felt close to them, it was only natural to go to them. I often slept in their bed anyway, so visiting them in the astral was just an extension of that.

The usual way that I enter it now is through the dream state. Once I realize I'm dreaming I decide to leave the dream and then I'm just out of my body. It took many years to be able to recognize when I am dreaming and make conscious choices, all without waking myself up accidentally. The dream state and the astral state are basically the same, though they exist on a spectrum. A lot of times, people are in the astral but the dream state is overlaid as a projection, or perhaps a coping mechanism, so the mind can interpret what it is seeing. I say coping mechanism because most modern people can't handle the experience of their consciousness being separate from their body, so they need the dream construct to safely process the astral experience.

Some dreams are just dreams (mundane physical brain processes), while other times they have a very particular flavour that lets you know they're astral... like really vivid colours, bright lights, and an other worldly quality. That's what I mean by a spectrum... the dream state and the astral state can be blurred together in varying degrees. Sometimes you are 90% seeing the astral but there are some dream projections/characters floating around. Other times you're 90% dreaming but you get brief little windows into the astral, but you can't maintain the clarity and the subconscious dream forms take over again. Sometimes it's totally one, or the other.

If you can recognize that you're dreaming, then you can decide to leave the dream. Once you decide, the dream projection will dissolve and you'll be able to see the astral clearly. It's not always possible. If I'm genuinely tired then I may not be able to enter the astral even if I want to because my physical body needs rest... so the dream construct will pull me back in.

Theosophists call the dream layer the causal level, or the emotional level. Most humans enter the astral through the causal plane of consciousness. It relates to the third chakra. In Daoism, the liver is the one organ whose soul can detach and travel separately, called the hun or ethereal soul. The liver system is part of the third chakra. According to the ancient philosophies, there is a part of us that does not wish to remain confined to a human body and needs to leave to travel even while we are alive. This is usually done through the dream/astral state.

I have to say that this was very helpful to me. Thank you. I have experienced sleep paralysis ever since I was probably 17 or 19. Prior to finding your post here I decided to check the Bluelight forum because of a dream I had, I posted in another thread, where I had once again found myself sleep paralyzed. Over the years I've become accustomed to it so it's not something that freaks me out anymore. Although the first time it occurred was especially freaky, I'd rather not talk about that. In this recent dream, however, I found myself in my own bed and was unable to move until I realized that wanting to place my hands and arms in certain positions rendered them (somehow) immediately there. So I had spent what felt like a great deal of time rearranging the positions of my arms before I finally wound up in front of the wall next to my closet, but there were no pictures like there usually are. I felt this strange sensation and I realized it was an OBE occurring. I also realized the OBE was related to my spirit guide, a nine-tailed spirit fox. HAHAHA. It just makes me crack up thinking about how I spent the next section of time within the dream kind of rocking back and forth without totally realizing what I was doing before being plummeted into the Foxes' territory. I guess if I had found your post here earlier I would have had a better understanding of what to do. But I like these synchronicities and how they occur because like you said here with "experience" that's primarily what it was. The experience was important as was the lesson that you provided in your post.