What is Astral Projection?
Astral projection, otherwise known as an out of body experience, is a state where a person’s consciousness temporarily leaves their physical body. This enables a person to travel, unbound by the rules of physics. Usually astral projection occurs during meditation or an altered state of consciousness and takes some practice to achieve, however it can happen spontaneously in rare cases.
People are still undecided as to what actually happens when people astrally project. Some people put it down to hallucinations, whereas others think that the soul actually leaves the body, and is secured by a thin cord to the physical body. There is as yet no scientific explanation for astral projection.
The occult view is that we have several bodies – not just our dense physical bodies, but several bodies made of energy that we cannot see or touch – including our astral body. The theory is that our astral body is able to disconnect from our physical body, and travel around the astral plane, which is a close copy of the physical plane, but more malleable. People astral project for different reasons – for entertainment, knowledge, manifestation and more.
Following are five of the easiest and most effective methods for having an out of body experience. As with all things, it may take a few tries until you’ve gotten used to the method, but keep persisting!
Astral Projection Techniques
Apart from the lucid dreaming method, these techniques should be practised in the morning or after a nap, and not when you are tired enough to fall asleep.
1. The Lucid Dreaming Method
For this method to work, you need to learn how to lucid dream. This is actually very easy – it just takes practice. What you need to do is find a reality check that tells you when you are dreaming. Repeat this reality check several times a day while asking yourself if you’re dreaming, as often as you can remember. After some days of doing this, you will find yourself performing the check in a dream. The results of the reality check will be warped in the dream, and this disruption of the regular pattern will alert you to the fact that you’re currently dreaming.
Some examples of reality checks:
- Turning on a light switch – if the light doesn’t turn on, you’re in a dream (or haven’t paid your electricity bill!)
- Counting the fingers on your hand. If it’s anything other than five, you’re dreaming.
- Reading text (in a book, or on a screen). If the text seems fine, look away, and back again to see if the text is the same.
- Checking your watch once, look away, and check it again immediately to see if the time is the same.
Once you know that you’re dreaming, you can easily enter the astral realm by merely intending to (and some people feel that the dream realm and the astral realm are one and the same).
2. The Rope Method
This method was created by Robert Bruce. It involves lying down in a relaxed place, and reaching a meditative state.
Once you have relaxed your body completely with the method of your choosing (deep breathing alone works wonders), imagine feeling a light buzzing all over your body. These vibrations are a hallmark of the state of your astral body getting ready to leave. While you will just be using your imagination at first, this will get your body into the right state.
Now imagine that there is a long rope hanging right above you, stretching up further than you can see. Without opening your eyes or moving your physical body, visualise yourself reaching out your hand to grab onto that rope. Feel all the sensations that you would feel in your hand and arm if you were to really do this. Once you’ve gotten the hang of this, start visualising climbing up the rope, slowly at first, then faster, feeling the weight of your body. If you can, increase the buzzing sensation, until it comes naturally. Continue climbing until your astral body separates from the physical.
3. Vibrations – The Monroe Technique
This method uses the vibrations touched on in the rope method, but to a greater degree. It teaches your body to naturally assume the state of astral travel.
First of all, you need to relax your body completely. You are going to enter the state just between sleep and wakefulness, known as the hypnagogic state.
To enter a hypnagogic state without fully falling asleep may be a bit tricky, but one suggestion is to hold your forearm up, so that it will fall down and wake you up if you start to go to sleep. Another suggestion is to enter the state by concentrating on an object – all your other thoughts will fade away, and eventually images will start coming into your mind. Just watch these images passively, and deepen your relaxation.
Stay in this state for a while, just looking through your closed eyelids at the blackness in front of you. Ignore any visuals that come up and just do nothing. You will know when you have reached the right state of relaxation, because you will start to lose all awareness of your body, as if you were in a black void.
The next step is to induce vibrations in your body. These can be felt as a mild tingling, or as an electric buzzing. At first, you will have to imagine them, but after a while, you will feel them start to become real in your astral body. Try to intensify them as much as you can, and practice controlling them – push them into your head, down to your toes, and make them surge throughout your body in waves. Practice this until it’s easy for you to control the waves.
Once you can control the vibrations and you’re feeling them strongly, all you have to do is visualise yourself leaving your body. You can do this by trying to roll over, or you can visualise yourself floating up out of your body.
4. The Chakra Method
This method uses the chakras to tune into the astral body and charge it with energy.
Lie down and relax your body as deeply as you can. Make sure to lie with your body straight, as the energy will flow better between your chakras if they are in a straight line.
When you feel completely and totally relaxed, focus on your root chakra, at the bottom of your spine. Visualise energy building up at the base of your body, and send it into your root chakra to charge it. Feel your root chakra filling up with this tingling, buzzing energy and activating it. Once you have done that, feel the energy flowing through your root chakra to your sacral chakra, filling it up with energy. Continue the same method with your solar plexus chakra, heart chakra, throat chakra, third eye chakra, and crown chakra, until they are all charged and buzzing with energy.
Intensify this buzzing sensation as much as you can, and proceed to astrally project by visualising yourself floating up into the air.
5. The Binaural Beats Method
Binaural beats are recordings of sounds that automatically change brainwaves. They consist of two tones of separate frequencies, each playing in one ear. When your brain is exposed to these two tones for long enough, it starts creating its own tone in order to harmonise the two frequencies. The frequency of the tone created by your brain will be the same as the difference between the two recorded frequencies.
Binaural beats creators use different frequencies in order to induce different brain waves. The ones we are interested in for astral projection are theta brainwaves, which aid in relaxation, dreaming and getting in touch with the subconscious mind.
To use binaural beats for astral projection, you need a set of headphones, in order to hear a different tone in each ear. There are several free binaural beats available online (YouTube is a good place to start looking), but if you want binaural beats engineered specifically for astral projection, Unexplainable Store has well-made recordings.
Lie down and consciously relax your body while listening to the recording. Clear all thoughts from your mind, and enter a meditative state, just focusing on what you are hearing. Once you feel yourself becoming deeply relaxed, you can use methods 2-4 to induce an astral projection, or you can just continue listening to the recording until it happens naturally.
