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hTx
(:



Registered: 03/27/13
Posts: 5,724
Loc: Space-time
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On Astral Projection 1
#26713109 - 06/02/20 06:12 AM (3 years, 8 months ago) |
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“The greatest illusion is that mankind has limitations.” ― Robert A. Monroe
I was debating myself on whether to post here or S&M. At first, second, and third glance the subject seems hand in hand with new agey spiritual experience. The very definition of woo. Astral Projection takes the typical out of body experience (a term already drenched in woo) MUCH deeper. Here we are introduced to astral planes, entities, remote viewing...the topic can easily send one right down the woowoo rabbit hole. Alas, despite the connotation with woo and regardless of empirical verification...Ultimately and obviously, I decided to post the topic here.
Why? I am going to share my experience, thoughts and theory. Approaching astral projection like a scientist, I came up with some ideas not entirely woo which may explain the perceived phenomena without invoking any sort of mysticism. I find the what if scenario to be a nice primer towards the discussion of very real philosophical ideas.
I am not necessarily a naysayer, nor am I believer. I read Robert Monroe's first book on the subject and came away very skeptical. It seemed very grandiose. However, having grown up a lucid dreamer during a time when lucid dreaming was not yet proven, during a time when lucid dreaming was considered new agey woo, the skeptic in me considered the possibility and decided to actually try the techniques described by Monroe to go out of body.
After many a night and many failed attempts, I began to suspect that astral projection was simply a fancy lucid dream...in fact when lucid, i could manifest my room as dreamscape, even see myself sleeping..but this was nothing like what Monroe described. There was no sleep paralysis. No vibrations. No pulling myself out of myself, or flipping out of myself...simply willpower. So I upped my game. Monroe alleged binaural beats at certain frequency could induce an OOBE, so I began falling asleep to binaural beats every night and began using techniques to induce sleep paralysis. The majority of the time I experienced strange dreams where lucidity was just out of reach. After a month of experimenting and failure, I felt even more confident that Monroe was describing a sort of half lucid dream.
I say half because he describes having conscious intent and willpower while "out of body" yet does not realize he is actually dreaming...instead he believes he is in the "astral planes", literal objective realities shared by multiple entities. Lucid dreams normally happen when one realizes they are dreaming while still in the dream...this allows for conscious intent and control over the entire dream. It seemed more and more that "astral projection" was no more than a ritualized half-baked lucid dream... the background thereof manifests subconsciously (as with a regular dream) as the room you fall asleep in...so even though it is your own willed creation, with ritual(the technique he teaches to astral project) it seemed totally plausible that one could unintentionally imprint such a dream background never realizing it is their own creation. It seemed plausible than that even though one may not realize they are dreaming, the dream of emerging out of ones body in the room they fell asleep in would be odd enough to induce lucidity IE control of yourself and intentions and odd enough to make one believe they are actually out of body versus simply dreaming. Although I still had not had the experience as described by Monroe, the theory seemed to fit so I slowed experimentation way down but not completely.
Well one morning I was half-awake, tried to get out of my bed and realized I could not move. I felt his sort of buzzing increasing all around me that wasn't very comfortable. Whatever. I thought i must have somehow cut circulation off to my entire body while I was sleeping never realizing this was exactly what Monroe described as the precursory happenings before the happening. I remember thinking I needed to move to get the blood pumping and so made a major effort to roll myself out of bed. Well, I actually rolled out of my body instead of bed. It felt like I had 'popped' out of my shoulder. There was this dual awareness, both of my sleeping body, and of my disembodied consciousness. I could not believe it. I floated in awe for a few seconds and then something grabbed the 'astral' me, and very quickly dragged me out of my room, down the stairs and was heading into the bathroom. It all happened so fast I didn't even think to resist until I realized we were headed into the bathroom..for some reason, I thought this thing was gonna take me down a drain to some hellish oblivion. I thought perhaps I had died and my soul was being dragged away. I felt a surge of resistance stemming not from fear but anger.
"no! Not the bathroom!! Get off of me!" instantly upon thinking this, there was a flash of light and the thing (was like this shadow blob) let me go and high tailed it out of there, leaving me floating in the living room downstairs. I was in awe. Things were happening just like Monroe had described...I was excited to test this further but my mother woke my body up and I was quickly zipped back upstairs and into regular waking consciousness. However, My suspicions concerning the possibility of astral projection being a type of lucid dream were actually strengthened.
You get the same kind of dual awareness when you lucid dream. While lucid, you can feel your 'self' sleeping and your 'dreamer' dreaming. The trick to lucid dreaming is to keep these selves balanced so as to maintain dual awareness. If the awareness of self is to high, you will wake up and leave the dreamer behind. If awareness of dreamer is to high, you will slip out of lucidity and lose your self in regular dream.
The dual awareness I experienced when i went "out of body" was admittedly different in the sense that it felt like I had struck the perfect balance of self and dreamer where neither awareness was threatened by the other. It just was. I did not need to balance my awareness like with regular lucidity...it was automatic. Another similarity I found was my control over the entity...while it did take me by surprise, it stopped the moment I willed it too. The weird thing was that it ran away like it did even when I was trying to will it back.
In lucid dreams, dream characters can carry a conversation with you. they may even surprise you with the stuff they say. tell them they aren't real they'll joke the same back to you. One time a dream character said "Whoa looks like its back to the meatbag with you" right before I was rudely awakened. While they may have some sentiment of a personality, when I am lucid i can always make them do what I want them too when I want them too. Not really the case with shadow blob.
I am increasingly bothered by the differences in my old age but my theory seems to fit well enough.
I never listened to binaural beats again. I never 'popped' out of my body again. This was nearly 10 years ago. To be honest, I was freaked out. Despite having a somewhat logical theory that could explain everything, the whole experience gave me "i know nothing" vibes and shook me to the core
I cannot deny there was a significant difference in how a lucid dream and an astral projection both feel and occur.
At the same time, I cannot deny the similarities between both experiences...and Knowing the vast possibilities of our dreaming minds the similarities I believe are more important here than the differences. So while I feel my theory is probably correct nowadays I equally feel that i could be wrong.
Since my experiment, the only other out of body experiences i have had have been induced with drugs (dmt/high dose lsd/ketamine) and near-death.
which brings me to another point... out of body experiences, falsely perceived or real, seem to be something our brains are INDEED capable of...a state that can be reliably induced via stimulation with certain chemicals, conscious intent, or as Wilson and Leary might say, "mutation".
While the reality of the 8th circuit, described in the 8 circuit model at different times by Leary, Wilson, even our very own DividedQuantum, may not be as grandiose, evolutionary, or mystical as their very poetic description may imply...the fact is the described phenomena is a very real happening. this fact means the 'metaphors' used in their descriptions may actually be quite literal. There do indeed seem to be 'circuits', mechanisms in the brain which code both ordinary and extraordinary perceptions...the earliest circuits (1st invertebrates and 2nd in vertebrates) can be seen in all life..including our own. It is sort of strange to think about how DNA seems to work a bit like object oriented programming. Take a liver for example. A liver has the same function across every species that has one (every vertebrate? at the very least every mammal) these reusable designs, including circuits of consciousness could be compared to how 'classes' are created and used in software development. This does not require intelligent design, God, or aliens...but it certainly implies that life is much more connected than we realize.
-------------------- zen by age ten times six hundred lifetimes Light up the darkness.
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redgreenvines
irregular verb


Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 37,703
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Re: On Astral Projection [Re: hTx]
#26713329 - 06/02/20 08:03 AM (3 years, 8 months ago) |
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I was dreaming incredible sex this morning, that's the kind of proof that gets my vote. astral sex is great.
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OrgoneConclusion
Blue Fish Group



Registered: 04/01/07
Posts: 45,414
Loc: Under the C
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Quote:
astral sex is great.
As long as you have a maid.
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redgreenvines
irregular verb


Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 37,703
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astrally, I do, rally I do
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Yellow Pants



Registered: 05/14/17
Posts: 1,386
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I disagree with your equivalence toward balancing the two selves. Lucid dreaming yes but projecting no. I can only remember 1 projection and it was also about 10 years ago. In that state I didn’t detect any simultaneous self that was dreaming the lucid dream so to speak like you get in the lucid dream. Rather the astral body has the thought or memory of the body laying in the bed. Different from being aware of both states. The astral self seems to literally detach out of the physical/imaginary self and occupy some neutral zone between the astral and physical plane. Incredible I thought.
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EternalCowabunga
Being of Great Significance



Registered: 04/04/05
Posts: 7,152
Loc: Time and Space
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Great post, hTx. It's been about 10 years for me as well since the last time I astral projected. I too was influenced by the fascinating Robert Monroe. I wasn't able to astral project until I got really really good at lucid dreaming while also learning how to ride the sleep paralysis vibration wave the correct way.
I had only two astral projections - one I was able to initiate from sleep paralysis and the other I achieved through a lucid dream. I recall the "pop" sensation both times and for me it had a strikingly different quality than a lucid dream.
The first thing that was different, was that I was just floating around in my own house. The "speed" of the experience was unlike a lucid dream - lucid dreams can often feel to me almost like it's happening in slow motion or very "bubbly" while this felt incredibly sober and kind of sketchy at the same time. Unlike a lucid dream, I didn't seem to have a body but I experienced myself almost like a tiny point of light or point of energy that could zip around quickly - does this match with your experience?
I zipped around my house and it was exactly how it looked like in reality except in the basement there was a blue scorpion in a cereal bowl which was strange. The energy I felt was very sketchy and I was a little scared so I zipped back to my body and woke up.
It's hard for me to recall the second experience that I achieved through lucid dreaming but it was mostly similar to the first. I want to say that I broke through this black electrical field in my dream but I might be thinking of just a regular lucid dream I had.
Anyway, after those two experiences I never had an OBE again. I used to listen to Monroe's tapes where he guided you into an astral projection right from waking reality but it never worked for me. I loved the weirdness of the tapes though and they were fun to fall asleep to.
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hTx
(:



Registered: 03/27/13
Posts: 5,724
Loc: Space-time
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Quote:
redgreenvines said: astral sex is great.
Indeed it is so.
-------------------- zen by age ten times six hundred lifetimes Light up the darkness.
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The Blind Ass
Bodhi



Registered: 08/16/16
Posts: 26,731
Loc: The Primordial Mind
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Re: On Astral Projection [Re: hTx]
#26715518 - 06/03/20 12:28 AM (3 years, 8 months ago) |
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Amen to that. Apparition sexy.
-------------------- Give me Liberty caps -or- give me Death caps
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hTx
(:



Registered: 03/27/13
Posts: 5,724
Loc: Space-time
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Quote:
Yellow Pants said: "Rather the astral body has the thought or memory of the body laying in the bed. Different from being aware of both states."
...pretty sure the thought or memory of something is pretty much the definition of awareness.
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hTx
(:



Registered: 03/27/13
Posts: 5,724
Loc: Space-time
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Quote:
"Unlike a lucid dream, I didn't seem to have a body but I experienced myself almost like a tiny point of light or point of energy that could zip around quickly - does this match with your experience?"
Yes. It felt very...first person.
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The Blind Ass
Bodhi



Registered: 08/16/16
Posts: 26,731
Loc: The Primordial Mind
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Re: On Astral Projection [Re: hTx] 2
#26715545 - 06/03/20 12:51 AM (3 years, 8 months ago) |
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It’s like in some video games when you die (FPS) but you can now move around freely as a purely disembodied observer while waiting to respawn.
-------------------- Give me Liberty caps -or- give me Death caps
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Yellow Pants



Registered: 05/14/17
Posts: 1,386
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Re: On Astral Projection [Re: hTx]
#26716479 - 06/03/20 11:04 AM (3 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
hTx said:
Quote:
Yellow Pants said: "Rather the astral body has the thought or memory of the body laying in the bed. Different from being aware of both states."
...pretty sure the thought or memory of something is pretty much the definition of awareness.
First person awareness rather. During a lucid dream I am aware what is going on is going on inside the skull. Like I can directly sense the exterior of the skull and the rest of the body to a minimal extent. The energy experienced is going on internally. But in a projection it’s like that same energy gets expelled out of the body yet it retains its state and is able to move around outside the physical body yet also can think and has memory etc. Maybe that makes more sense or is also how you experience it.
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redgreenvines
irregular verb


Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 37,703
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I am sure it is as real as anything to you.
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lostintimenspc
Stranger
Registered: 03/13/20
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Last seen: 8 days, 2 hours
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Astral projection is a bit like meeting the angels or something.
Life is sacred. I feel I am being utterly unusual when I leave the body, or when I used to.
Meta-programming can bring you into other dimensions in reality. This is in accord with the divine body.
Out of body... you're looking at warping the psyche permanently.
-------------------- LSD, mushrooms and DMT are different structural levels within the same magically simulated mystery sometimes blandly called 'life' Your life, your call.
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