Not How You Imagine, You're already there Options

Okay, I have read the work Robert Bruce, and I have tried enough techniques to get me to 'project' that I could write my own book

Enough is enough. I am here to tell you that there is no leaving the body.

Wait! I am not saying that people don't indeed experience OOBEs or anything of the sort. I am saying that you can't leave your body because you were never in it.


You and I exist on all planes. Our being covers all of infinity, and all that is necessary is that we attune and focus our consciousness to one part of this vast terrain. We are already everywhere we could want to go, and our bodies don't keep us here. In fact, we aren't kept here at all.

If you ask any occultist (seasoned, budding, or otherwise) they would tell you the astral is made of thought. All sorts of though in different fields of vibration that change and shift as we change and shift; this is all occult 101. But what all the books and all this thought fails to portray is what this entails.

Where do you think your consciousness is at? Your brain, your spirit, your mind? You can't find an exact location, can you? This is because it is everywhere! The brain are just a radio and the mind is just the station... consciousness is everywhere like the waves that the radio receives.

If you still haven't got my point yet, hang in there. What I am trying to say is that our consciousness is already on the astral. What we assume to be imagination is actually what the astral is! Have you ever imagined yourself moving, dancing, or getting so anxious inside a thought that you began to notice your body was involuntarily moving to react to it? I know I have.

So sure, you can try to project out of your body, and I am sure that (given time) you will succeed. But there is an easier, more gradual (and more mind-bending) way to go about it. Daydreaming. But not just ordinary run-of-the-mill daydreaming, I am talking very intense visualization and the gradual use of other senses here. And when you do hit that moment where more of your consciousness is attuned to the astral than it is to the physical...it is like you fall directly into the astral. This way, you come to understand the astral as *inside* of you....not as some distant realm. It makes the astral feel like home, like someplace you've been a thousand times before but took for granted.

And if you are wondering about whether or not I am just accessing my own consciousness, I can assure you that this method also brings you into the collective. I found this out when I decided to try pathworking my way through the path to Yesod completely by my own knowlege, only to find out it is perfectly in line with how others perceive it to be.

This method also brings your everyday consciousness lucidity directly to your dreams. Not long after I started using this method, I had my first lucid dream in about a year or so (probably more)...and I had one of the most vivid dreams of my life that very same night.

I'm not trying to say that people like Robert Bruce are wrong, but I am saying that there way isn't the only way. I am just suggesting a different road to the same destination....one that I think might save some people some time.

So work with daydreaming...work with imagined things! Work with them until the lines between real and daydreamed are blurred, and until you find yourself falling into the astral instead of trying to climb up into it.
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You can take it or leave it. This is what I have found to be true for myself, and I am in no way trying to invalidate other's methods and beliefs.

Edit: My pathworking was identical to that of the same path in The Shining Paths, as stated by BrotherM.

I'm curious as to your method of gaining such deep experiences, Serpenti. Are you able to share it/them, or perhaps give some insight into other methods (I always love to try new things...it would give me something to play with? Any information is very gratefully received.

First, what I have are experiences and opinions on them. I know what it feels like to wake up and walk around the house without a body, be ripped from the body (or so it seems) and have fully waking conscousness while interacting with others, or to simply drift into a dream that becomes lucid and progresses into an encounter with information on what's taking place in some other spot on the globe. What I don't know is how to classify them, or describe how they come about. For the most part, the first two have happened without my expecting them to.

The method of using visualization skills to slip comfortibly into an astral experience is one that is also taught in several Orders. It does work, and is certainly my prefered method. It also has the beniefit of translating into the ability to effect the natural world... as above, so below.

I believe, as you've said, that we already inhabit the astral as well as the other realms (etheric, mental...). The big jump comes when we can be fully present in those realms with lucidity and full sensory perception. As for encountering things that might contradict the idea that all that exists can be found within, I've had a couple run-ins with things that certainly SEEM to be external. Visible OOBE's, where another can see a person walk out of their body, is one that at least hints at this idea. When a person is so fully present in the etheric that they can, like a ghost, manipulate the physical world, it's hard to say that OOBE's are taking place only on an internal level. I've had one experience of being the one who is seen as a ghostly form, and I've talked to others who have witnessed this type of thing. You believe, while in this form, that you really are physical -other than a feeling similar to being slightly drunk.

Other things that make me doubt OOBEs are strictly an internal journey to explore the inner or outer worlds are more difficult to describe. Again, it's the point where you no longer have any say in what form the visual terrain takes, and the beings you are interacting with seem to have control in both the physical plane and imaginary planes simultaniously. While I could post journal entries about them, but don't want to, I still don't think they would be able to convey the actual feelings and senses that are percieved during the encounters. They haven't been things that I have planned out or tried to experience. Some things just defy explanation... and I'm not very good at explaining things to begin with. In the end, it's my opinion that for the most part OOBEs are an interal way to access the internal and exernal world... but exceptions do exist.

This post has been edited by Serpenti: Jun 12 2005, 12:10 PM