Astral travel with a guide, inevitably, in a dream
There are thousands of reports of out-of-body experiences (OBEs) from people of all ages and professions. Such experiences played an important role in shamanic rituals and esoteric schools of many previous cultures. Occult literature is replete with unprovable claims to the possession of knowledge of the essential nature of the world, allegedly obtained from visitors from the "higher planes". Certain examples of such literature are in fact of certain interest, making it possible to look more broadly at the EPP phenomenon. Ramacharka gives a typical "occult" description of astral travel:
A person can separate his astral body (from the physical - approx.) And travel in it to any point on earth, while experienced occultists, in the presence of favorable circumstances, are able to do this at will. Other people undertake astral travels by accident (not even suspecting that these are travels, and then remembering them as special and incredibly vivid dreams); many of people, making astral travels while the body is in sleep, unconsciously establish an astral connection with persons whose interests are related to theirs. With the help of such unconscious contact, we at times receive a significant amount of information on the subject of interest to us.
Conscious and arbitrary acquisition of knowledge in this way is possible only for those who have already advanced quite far along the path of spiritual development. An experienced occultist simply introduces himself into the proper mental state, and then wants to be in a certain place, and at the speed of light or even greater his astral body is where he was sent. The aspiring occultist, of course, does not have this degree of control over his astral body and manages it with less knowledge and less dexterity. The connection between the astral and physical bodies is maintained by an astral thread that connects them, reminiscent of silk. When this thread breaks for some reason, the astral body loses the opportunity to return to the physical body, as a result of which the latter dies.
Perhaps the best way to explain in general terms to the reader what the Astral World is is to describe to him an imaginary journey that he could take into this world, accompanied by a guide, an experienced occultist. We will now take you on an astral journey using your imagination; however, it must be remembered that in reality for this kind of journey you must have a sufficiently high level of spiritual development, because otherwise no guide will be able to take you any far - unless by making heroic efforts, which he most likely will not will do unnecessarily. So, are you ready for such a journey? Your guide is next to you.
To the Astral World with a guide
You plunge into a special state, called the "state of silence", and suddenly you feel that you have left the physical body and are in the astral body. You stand next to your physical body and see how it sleeps on a bed; at the same time you realize that you are bound with him is a bright silvery thread resembling a spider web. You also feel the presence of a guide that will accompany you on your journey through the astral plane. He also left the physical body and is in his astral form, which looks like a human figure with somewhat indefinite outlines - a figure, through which it is possible to see through and which can, if desired, penetrate through solid objects, walls, etc. Your guide takes you by the hand, says: "Let's go", and at the same moment you feel that you have left the room and are flying like a summer cloud high above the city. You have a fear of falling, and only the thought of falling comes to your mind, you immediately feel that you are starting to fall. “Try to think that you cannot fall, that you are lighter than air, and you will really become that way.” Following his advice, you will delightfully discover that you can float in the air, move at will in any direction.
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You can see huge clouds of thoughts rising above the city like clouds of smoke, floating across the sky and descending here and there to the ground. In some places, you also see clearer and clearer clouds, which, in contact with dark clouds, have the ability to dispel them. Here and there, you can see bright and thin lines of light, like electric sparks, quickly flying through space. Your guide tells you that these are telepathic messages sent from one mind to another, and that they glow thanks to the Prana, which is charged with any thought.
Descending to the ground, you see that all people are enveloped, as it were, in a colored iridescent cloud of egg-shape. This is their aura, which reflects their thoughts and the prevailing mental state, while the color of the aura depends on the nature of the thought. Some people have a beautiful aura, while others seem to be enveloped in a black smoky cloud, in which lightning bolts of red fire flash. Some auras are painful for you to look at, to such an extent they make a repulsive, rude impression. Obviously, when you are no longer in the physical body, you see what you usually cannot see and feel what you usually don’t feel. But do not waste time on these observations, your travel time is limited and the guide is calling you further.
But your movement does not consist in changing places: everything around you changes, like in a panorama. Now you no longer see the physical world with its astral phenomena, but seem to find yourself in a new world filled with strange forms. You see floating around the astral "shells" - the abandoned astral bodies of those who threw them, moving to higher planes. These are astral corpses: you are, as it were, in an astral cemetery. The sight is not pleasant, and you hurry with your guide further.
In order to leave this second vestibule of the true Astral World, the guide gives advice to you to weaken your mental dependence on your body - to think that you, your real I, are absolutely independent of the astral body and can do without it in the same way as now you can do without a physical body. Having followed his advice, to your surprise you leave the astral body, leaving it in the world of shells, remaining, however, nevertheless connected with it by means of a silky thread, just as, on the other hand, the astral body continues to remain connected with the physical body. which by this moment you have almost completely forgotten, but with which you are still connected by these almost invisible ties.
You continue your journey in a new body, or rather, now your vestment is a deeper cover, because it all looks as if you, one by one, were throwing off the clothes from the unchanging YOURSELF, which continues to be yourself, and you smile, remembering, what at one time you called the astral body and even the physical body “you”. The plane of the “astral shells” remains behind, and you seem to enter a huge room filled with sleeping forms. Everything is motionless here, only the shadows of beings who have descended to this plane from the higher spheres to help their younger brothers move. When at times one of the sleeping people begins to show signs of awakening, one of the assistants immediately embraces him and, as it were, dissolves with him in some other plane.
But the most amazing phenomenon that can be observed in this area is that as the sleeping person awakens, his astral body gradually separates from him (just like your physical body and then your astral body left you earlier) and goes into the area "Shells", where it slowly decomposes, disintegrating into its constituent elements. Such an astral shell, thrown off by the awakened soul, is not connected with the physical body, since the latter has long "died" and is buried; It is also not connected with the soul, because the latter got rid of it completely and went into the higher spheres. In your case, the situation is different: you just left your astral shell in the "hallway" for a while and, having returned from the Astral world, will again use it.
The scene changes again and you find yourself in the realm of awakened souls. You notice that as the awakening souls go higher and higher, they lose one by one the veils of their mental bodies (this is the name of the higher forms of veils in which the soul is clothed). You also notice that as you move into ever higher planes your own form becomes more and more subtle, and as you return to the lower planes it becomes coarser and denser, although it still does not reach the density of the astral body you left behind, and, of course, it remains infinitely more subtle than the physical body.
And you will also notice that on some of the planes the process of awakening of each individual soul ends. Your guide will explain to you that on which of the planes this will happen is determined by the level of spiritual development achieved by the soul in her past lives (because she has visited the earth many times), and that it is for her to rise above the plane to which she belongs. almost impossible. On the other hand, souls who belong to the higher planes can freely visit the lower planes. This law of the Astral world is not arbitrary; it is a law "common to all nature …"
This description is very similar to other stories coming from such different sources as "The Egyptian Book of the Dead", "The Tibetan Book of the Dead", evidence of the Platonic Era, Dante's "Divine Comedy" and the work of Swedenborg.
Of course, not all those who leave their body are able to travel to the empyrean heights, if any. Often, involuntary exits from the body can occur under the influence of hypnosis, deep relaxation, anesthesia, stress, drug use, and also as a result of accidents. Below is a typical example of a "reluctant exit" experienced by a 70-year-old man from Wisconsin:
Leaving the body "involuntarily"
“One winter day, he harnessed a team and went to the village for firewood. He returned, sitting on top of a loaded sleigh. Light snow was falling. Suddenly a hunter, passing by the very road, shot at the rabbit. The horses jumped, jerking the sleigh, and the man flew to the ground upside down. He said that after the blow he immediately got up and saw another “me” lying breathlessly by the road with his face in the snow. He saw the snow falling, how the steam rises from the horses, how the hunter runs to him. All this was very clear; but what infinitely surprised him was that there were two of them, because at that moment he thought that he was observing what was happening from another physical body.
When the hunter approached, everything seemed to be covered with a haze. In the next instant, he found himself lying on the ground and that the hunter was trying to bring him back to life. Everything that he saw from his astral body was so real that he could not believe that his second body was not physical. He even tried to find his footprints in the snow in the place from which he observed the whole picture."
Out of body in a dream
Most often, the exit from the bodies occurs in a dream. The case below is a classic example of an ECP of this kind. It was reported in 1863 by Mr. Wilmot of Bridgeport, Connecticut:
“I was heading from Liverpool to New York on the steamer“City of Limerick”… On the evening of the second day … a terrible storm began, which lasted 9 days … On the night of the 8th day … I enjoyed a refreshing sleep for the first time. In the morning I saw a dream like a cabin door my wife, who remained in the USA, opened and walked in; she was wearing a nightgown. When she entered, she seemed to notice that I was not the only inhabitant of the cabin; after hesitating a little at the door, she walked in my direction, bent down and kissed me, and then withdrew slowly.
When I woke up, I was surprised to see that my fellow traveler, leaning on his elbow, was staring at me. “Well, you seem to be a pretty little thing,” he finally said, “since the lady visits you in this way and in this form.” I demanded an explanation from him … and he told me about what he saw lying awake on my bed.”All this exactly coincided with my dream …
The day after arrival, I went to Watertown, Connecticut, where my wife and children … stayed with her parents. Almost her first question after we were alone was the following: “Did you feel that I came to you last Thursday?” “But this could not be, - I objected. - What do you mean? " Then she said that after learning about the weather forecast … she became very worried about me. She could not sleep for a long time that night; she thought about me all the time, and at about four o'clock in the morning it seemed to her that she had gone to visit me … In the end she came … to my cabin. “Tell me, does the upper berth protrude above the lower one in all the steamship cabins, as in the one I saw? - she said. - The man who was lying on the top bunk looked directly at me, and for a moment I was afraid to enter, but then I entered, bent down,hugged you and kissed you, and then walked away "… The description of the ship, given by my wife, coincided in every detail, although she had never seen it."
Jeffrey Mishlav