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 contents

COVER

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

INTRODUCTION

1 SPONTANEOUS OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCES

2 PREPARING FOR ASTRAL TRAVEL

3 TWENTY STRATEGIES FOR PLANNED ASTRAL TRAVEL

4 PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

5 MORE ADVANCED ASTRAL PROJECTION TECHNIQUES

6 EXPLORING OTHER DIMENSIONS

7 PAST AND FUTURE LIVES AND HEALING THROUGH ASTRAL TRAVEL

8 REACHING THE HIGHEST REALMS IN ASTRAL TRAVEL

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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INTRODUCTION
Many people are convinced we are spiritual beings within a physical body.
The physical body grows, declines, and eventually dies. The astral energy
body that is contained within the physical body detaches itself on death and
continues—according to your belief system—either to live on in the astral
or spirit realms, to become reborn, or to rejoin the undifferentiated cosmic
and earth energies from which it was created.
It is frequently reported that a cloud or mist will be seen leaving a dying
person. At the point of death, many have also observed deceased relatives
as ethereal forms or lights.

USING THIS BOOK

In this book, we will explore practical and effective ways to travel with
your spiritual body, whether across the world or to other realms, whenever
you wish. Literature throughout history contains numerous descriptions of
this inner spiritual body that animates the physical body. It is variously
called the ethereal body, spirit, astral body, or soul body. Some believe there
are other levels of bodies within it. But whatever ultimately feels right for
you, astral travel or projection essentially involves the ability to travel
within this nonphysical body that some believe survives different lifetimes
and is, in fact, our essential self. In the following pages we will learn to
travel free of physical restrictions during our earthly lifetime by temporarily
transferring our consciousness to the astral body.
I find the designations astral body and ethereal body the most helpful
and all-embracing of these terms. Astral travel, or temporarily projecting or
setting this astral body free, can involve traveling across the physical world
but without the constraints of time and distance and with the ability to
disregard physical barriers by thinking yourself through them. As you move
beyond the physical world and enter the astral realms or planes, you will
encounter spirit guides, deceased relatives, angels, and even—some believe
—other galaxies. Some theorize different levels between these areas, and in
later chapters I will describe one popular system that uses colors. However,
if this complicates matters too much, you can visit and receive their wisdom
while still calling them the generic term astral planes, from the Latin astra,
meaning “star.”
This all-embracing term will enable you to expand your range of
spiritual movement from floating above your body to visiting the records
that hold the secrets of past and future, for the purpose of the book is to
learn practical methods to attain this exciting psychic state.

THE LIVING EXPERIENCE

The ability to detach the energy form from the physical body both
spontaneously and deliberately is most frequently experienced during
childhood and adolescence, before logic, learning, and daily life block the
interflow of the spiritual and physical worlds. This spiritual connection may
return later in life in times of loss or crisis.
Out-of-body experience is spontaneous, while astral projection is
deliberately induced. That is the key difference.
Alison, who now lives on a Scottish island, described how, when she
was at school, she could move from place to place just by thinking about it.
She did not actually fly; she described the movement as lifting, vibrating,
and traveling like a hovercraft just above the ground.
Alison recalled: “On one occasion I wanted to hear what some children
were saying on the other side of the playground, so I lifted myself up and
went over there. They were not aware of my presence, but I could hear their
words quite clearly. Another time while playing hide-and-seek I lifted
myself up and, without them noticing me, went to see where the other
children were hiding.”

IS THE SOUL-SELF MORE THAN IMAGINATION?

One of the strongest indications of the existence of this soul or astral self is
when a person momentarily dies after an accident or during an operation.
They invariably describe floating over the scene in their astral form above
their physical body, traveling along a tunnel toward a point of light. At the
end of the tunnel is a beautiful place where a deceased relative or angel will
be waiting. They may be told their work on Earth is not ended, so the astral
body chooses to return to its physical form.
 The consistency in descriptions of near-death experiences across
cultures and even among children who know little of religious doctrine,
lends credence to the validity of such claims.
Paul was five when he died during an operation. When he was brought
back to life, he described an old lady who had taken care of him. She could
not be identified by the family. Years later, some old photos were unearthed
from the attic. Paul, who, like most who experience the otherworld, adult or
child, recalled every detail years later, identified the old woman in a faded
photo as the lady who had sent him home from the beautiful garden to his
family. On investigation, she was his great-great-grandmother from a
branch of the family they had lost contact with many years before.

PLANNED ASTRAL TRAVEL

Spontaneous out-of-body experiences often occur during crisis situations
that mirror the near-death experience, such as childbirth, except the woman
is not dying.
By learning the different techniques described in the following chapters,
some of which we can identify in spontaneous experiences, we can
temporarily release our energy-made astral form from the limitations of the
physical body and the material realms, time, and distance.
This seems to occur by temporarily transferring our conscious awareness
into the separated ethereal body, hypothesized to be a perfected double of
the physical body, when the physical body is deeply relaxed or at the point
between sleep and being awake.
We can travel in that spirit body to float or fly above the physical body
and move through solid objects such as walls by seeing ourselves instantly
on the other side, traveling seemingly in seconds hundreds of miles to visit
friends and family in other locations. This has been verified in a significant
number of accounts by us travelers noticing a new feature in the destination
home or a change in the personal appearance of the person we visited that
we had not been told about previously. We can connect with lands we have
always wanted to explore and, on visiting perhaps years later, will identify a
feature we saw during travel that is not mentioned in tourist literature. With
practice we can explore realms where deceased relatives, angels, nature
essences, devas, spirit guides, and, many believe, other galaxies. Indeed,
many extraterrestrial experiences may take the form of astral body
communication.
Wishful thinking? Imagination? We are often given small but tantalizing
proof, not reproducible in experiments but based in real emotions, the
trigger for many astral encounters.
Ginny, a nurse, found herself sitting on her friend Julie’s bed in the
nurses’ home on Christmas Day when Julie was on duty and could not go
home. Ginny was more than a hundred miles away, and later Julie described
how she had felt her bed go down and Ginny’s presence when she was
wishing Ginny was there to keep her company, at a time Ginny was
thinking of her. Ginny had seen in Julie’s room an unfamiliar bright orange
duvet cover on Julie’s bed instead of Julie’s customary blue one. Julie had
been given an orange duvet from her family that Christmas morning and put
it straight on the bed.
Often emotion is a trigger for astral travel to visit loved ones, as shown
by the number of wartime accounts of soldiers, sailors, and air force
personnel appearing to a relative before news arrived of their death, just
before or at the point death was occurring.

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE ASTRAL BODY

The spiritual or astral body is energized by your aura energy field, often
described as seven different-colored layers empowered by and mutually
empowering seven inner psychic centers called chakras, with many
additional minor ones and their connecting energy pathways. It would seem
that both our aura energy field and chakras are an integral part of our
ethereal body and are significant during astral travel, while the heart, lungs,
and other organs keep the body operating while the astral self is traveling
though the consciousness is absent.

UNDERSTANDING THE ASTRAL EXPERIENCE

Each chapter in this book will deal with an aspect of astral travel, offering a
range of methods you can try to direct your astral self safely and positively.
The earlier chapters offer techniques you may already have already
encountered that are themselves astral travel by a different name, such as
lucid dreaming, which is knowing within a dream that you are dreaming
and so being able to direct the experience and your movements.

THE POSSIBILITIES OF ASTRAL TRAVEL

Because the astral realms, like the astral self, are made of energies, it is
possible to explore within your energy body and travel to different realms,
past worlds, and a future you have yet to make. This time fluidity, as astral
body and realms merge, allows for the possibility of changing what you do
not wish to come to pass and overcoming past-world trauma and fears.

THE SILVER CORD

The silver cord is considered by a number of practitioners as a line of white,
silver, or luminous light or energy that joins the physical and astral bodies,
from the forehead or third eye of the physical body to the navel, the Sacral
energy center chakra of the astral body, or sometimes navel to navel or
brow to brow. The cord is regarded as having no inbuilt physical limitations
of distance: it is indestructible and severs only on bodily death. Referring to
it is a secure way to guide yourself home after an astral experience.
Ultimately, it is your fail-safe while you travel.

THE ASTRAL JOURNAL

Just as dream recall is more vivid when you write all you can remember as
soon as you wake, so recording dreams, especially lucid ones, is excellent
training for retaining what may be even more elusive out-of-body
memories.
It may be helpful to start a separate journal for your astral experiences or
speak into a recorder immediately when you awaken in that shadowy and
brief state between sleep and being awake. Details rapidly become less
accessible as they are stored in your astral body rather than your physical
body and memory. Writing them down or speaking key words immediately
after returning to the borders between sleep and wakefulness ensures that
you transfer this valuable material to your physical memory.
In the first chapter I will describe different kinds of spontaneous
experiences and how these can be used for more planned journeyings.
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 1
spontaneous out-of-body
experiences

Out-of-body experiences that occur spontaneously can help us understand

planned astral travel. Features of spontaneous travel offer paths to
projection navigated by the inner spirit or astral body at times and to
destinations of our choosing, rather than randomly.
Spontaneous experiences may be verified when the astral traveler
reports an unusual item on top of a cupboard or on an outdoor window
ledge out of physical view. On occasions the astral presence is witnessed by
a third party while physically the astral traveler was miles away. Such proof
is reassuring, for successful planned astral travel relies heavily on the astral
projector having the firm belief that it will occur at chosen times and is not
a product of the imagination.
I will describe strategies for achieving the astral state to travel by choice
in detail throughout the book. You’ll notice that these chapters include some
first-person accounts of traveling through the astral plane, both by choice
and spontaneously. These come from my own studies of out-of-body
experiences in adults and children. Much of my original study was carried
out at the Alister Hardy Research Centre for Religious and Spiritual Studies
in Oxford in the UK. One of the most intriguing findings that has given me
pause is how clearly the subjects of the study remembered their experiences
many years later.

WHY SEEK TO ASTRALLY TRAVEL?

Astral travel is a psychic ability we can all develop in ways that are
pleasurable, informative, and safe and in doing so strengthen and be
strengthened by other spiritual gifts.
Planned astral travel expands spiritual awareness and allows knowledge
and wisdom of the psychic world as well in more advanced exploration that
offers glimpses of other worlds.

FLOATING AND FLYING

Floating and flying are the most common reported phenomena in
spontaneous experiences. Many children under the age of five, when their
psychic powers are at their height, consistently describe the sensation of
floating or flying downstairs. Since the child is often found sitting, confused
but totally unhurt, at the bottom of the stairs, this would seem to involve the
psychic rather than the physical body.

Adult Experiences of Floating and Flying

After adolescence, work, life, and family commitments tend to push
spontaneous astral travel to the back of the mind, and it has to be relearned,
like many psychic skills. However, during perimenopause women may
naturally experience reawakened psychic powers, including the ability to
astrally travel, perhaps because the churning hormones are, as in
adolescence, reactivated. However, some adults, when relaxed, may have a
floating spontaneous experience before sleep.
Gaynor described spending a lovely evening with her husband and
friends before going to bed when she was in her early fifties. Her husband
fell asleep almost at once. Suddenly Gaynor was aware of lots of small
white or pale-yellow balls of light, which were flying at her from two
corners of the room. As soon as they reached Gaynor, they flew away. Then
Gaynor felt herself floating off the bed and continued up toward an ever-
growing white cloud. She then panicked and grabbed her husband’s arm to
prevent herself from disappearing. She was back in bed wide awake.

What We Can Learn from Spontaneous Floating and Flying

Experiences
Lights and mists are features of these experiences and can be used to trigger
the floating or flying sensations. There are other ways we can as adults
simulate these floating and flying experiences in actuality—for example,
traveling by plane to imprint the feeling on our consciousness. Then we can
visualize the sensation of the physical experience as we are drifting into
sleep but still conscious.

LUCID DREAMING, GATEWAY TO THE ASTRAL WORLD

Lucid dreaming is the ability to know when you are on the dream plane,
which many consider an identical realm to the astral worlds. In this state
you can control your actions on the dream plane, go anywhere, overcome
foes, and even travel to other worlds. Lucid dreaming forms the basis for
many out-of-body experiences during sleep. While it may occur naturally,
lucid dreaming can be learned as an entry point to astral worlds during
sleep.
Debi, a web designer who lives in central France, recalls that between
the ages of about eleven and eighteen she controlled dreams of flying or
floating. Each time she went to sleep, she chose that night’s adventure,
often walking underwater but finding it easy to breathe, exploring the
bottoms of lakes and finding secret rooms there.
The last flying dream after a gap of many years occurred when Debi was
a mother herself (motherhood seems to reawaken psychic phenomena). As
she drifted off to sleep, she found herself thinking about how she would like
to fly over the Acropolis in Athens. Instantly, she was flying and saw the
sun coming up over the horizon and the Acropolis in the distance. Debi’s
whole body was full of excitement, but the alarm clock went off and she
woke, deeply disappointed to be taken from her experience.

What We Can Learn from Lucid Dreaming

Dreams are a powerful tool for planned astral travel. Once you have learned
or relearned to lucid dream, the key to deliberate astral travel is to plan the
destination in advance before sleep and focus on a relevant, recognizable
symbol. Drift into sleep reciting slowly and rhythmically an affirmation of
the dream topic and visualizing the symbol, both of which you will with
practice recall during the dream to put and keep you on track (see chapter 2
for detailed instructions).

THE NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE

The most dramatic evidence of unplanned out-of-body travel comes from
accounts of near-death experiences. Evidence from studies throughout the
world focused on when the physical body dies momentarily, either in an
operation or during a serious illness or accident, would suggest that the
spirit or soul, manifested as the astral self, can exist independently of the
physical body. I mentioned a childhood near-death experience in the
introduction as corroboration that even though a child knows nothing of this
phenomenon, they will describe spontaneous experiences that mirror those
of adults who have momentarily died.
Near-death characteristics include:
• A sense that the self has moved beyond the body, usually by floating.
The person looks down on their own inert body.
• Traveling through a dark space or tunnel toward a point of light,
sometimes accompanied by rushing wind. This can occasionally be
frightening, especially if the journey seems to be downward (but
descending can be a positive way of inducing astral travel).
 • Reaching a place filled with golden or white light, usually resulting in
a sensation of bliss. There may be beautiful gardens or cotton-candy
clouds.
• Meeting deceased relatives recognized from life or verified as
relations after the experience by old photographs. Children may see
living relations who call them back to life.
• There may also be encounters with sacred beings of light or icons,
such as angels from one’s own or other religious traditions.
Alternatively, an authoritative voice may be heard.

Childhood and Adolescent Near-Death Experiences

Below is an example of a childhood near-death experience.
Lily, now in her eighties, recalled that when she was seven, she had
measles and was very ill. Slipping in and out of consciousness, she
suddenly found herself in a lane flanked by very high ornamental golden
gates. Beyond the gates was the most beautiful garden. There was no lawn
or path, but there were flowers of every kind. Those that attracted her most
were the roses, but there were many, many more. She wanted to go in, so
she pushed the gates and they gave way, but try as she might, she still could
not enter. Something on both sides seemed to be stopping her, so she finally
gave up trying. She opened her eyes and saw her mother and father on
either side of the bed, crying. Lily never told anyone but can remember this
experience as if it were yesterday.

Adult Near-Death Experiences

I have heard many stores of adult near-death experiences. Here is one that
particularly stood out.
When Wendy was twenty-five, she died momentarily during an
operation for a ruptured appendix and recalls shooting at a great speed
along a black tunnel toward a point of light. When she reached the end, she
was floating in cottony clouds toward a big gold door that swung open, and
there stood her grandfather, who had died when she was fifteen. She hugged
him, and he told her she had to go back because he wanted great-
grandchildren to play soccer for his favorite team. She told her grandfather
she had split with her husband, but her grandad promised that her husband
would be back. Then she shot back down the tunnel and woke up with her
ex by her bedside, crying.
However, not all near-death experiences follow the expected format.
Bess described how, when she was in her middle years and divorced, she
became very ill with viral pneumonia. Alone in a hospital room, she
struggled to breathe and was not expected to live. She asked God to free her
from her suffering, but a voice told her she had work to do on earth. She
then found herself on a high hill at night, looking down on the suburban
town in which she lived, with all the bright lights of the road before her. She
flew like a bird and saw the town center laid out like fairyland below. Then
there was a great wind, and she was in bed and in pain again. But from that
moment she did get better, and soon she met Alf, who had just lost his wife.
Before long, they got married. She believes that is the reason she was sent
back: to make him happy.

What We Can Learn from Near-Death Experiences

The “tunnel of light,” common in many spontaneous near-death
experiences, is one of the easiest and most effective ways of inducing
planned astral travel (see chapter 3). Speed is often involved.

Finding Your Wise Guide

Another feature that is central to the near-death experience, whether in
childhood or as an adult, is the presence of a wise guide, whether a
deceased relative, angel, or spirit guide, known or unknown. Sometimes the
guide is present, and other times you hear just their voice. The wise guide is
the figure who often sends the traveler back to the world.
Before exploring astral worlds, you should discover the guardian who
will protect you if ever you feel worried or frightened during astral travel
and who will guide you to only positive experiences before finally showing
you the way home. You can use crystals, mirrors, and candles to identify
this guide, who may have appeared in your dreams from childhood. You can
create a symbol or signal that will bring your guardian to you as you start
on your astral journey.
Fragrances
Beautiful gardens of fragrant flowers are a feature of many near-death
experiences. You can work with timeless fragrances or those associated
with a deceased relative in quiet, beautiful places as a trigger for entering
other dimensions or making contact with deceased relatives.

THE NEAR-BIRTH EXPERIENCE

During the course of my research, I came across a phenomenon that I called
the near-birth experience. In this, a woman during labor or before or
immediately after childbirth has an experience akin to the near-death
experience, even if her life is not in danger, though the birth may be
difficult. She may rise out of her physical body and see visions of beautiful
places or converse with shining forms.
Bess’s near-birth experience took place when she was twenty, just after
her baby was born. She was left alone in extreme pain, although her life
was not in danger. She dropped off into an uneasy sleep and awoke to find
her nose one or two inches from the ceiling. She looked down on her body
and found herself drifting peacefully and naturally down a dark tunnel with
a bright light at the end. This seemed to happen very quickly. She arrived at
the end of the tunnel, and a voice spoke, but she couldn’t see a form, as the
light was so bright. The voice asked, “Who would look after the baby if you
died?” Bess agreed she had to go back to care for her daughter. Instantly she
was back in her body and in pain.
Elizabeth, a nurse, described her out-of-body experience the night before
her son was born. She became aware of rising out of her body and looked
around at her physical body asleep on the bed. To her amazement, as her
new body had no weight, she only had to wonder about going somewhere
and she was gliding toward that spot. She looked at the door and wondered
if she went out of the ward whether she would be able to return. After just
looking at the doorknob, Elizabeth found herself accelerating so fast toward
it that panic took hold. It was as if a piece of elastic attached to her back
yanked her back into her body. Elizabeth’s piece of elastic that pulled her
back was perhaps the “silver cord” (see page xii).

What Near-Birth Experiences Tell Us about Planned Travel

During near-birth experiences, remembering the baby and thinking or being
reminded about the baby or another child who needed maternal care proved
to be the incentive to return to the physical body.
My own hypothesis is that when a new life comes forth and the infant’s
psyche is still only partly attached to the physical body, the coming together
of the mother’s and the baby’s psychic energies for a brief period parts the
veil between alternative realities. Certainly, new mothers seem to have a
psychic radar for knowing when their young child needs them, even when
parted by distance.
These near-birth experiences more than any other suggest that the bond
between mother and child is not rooted in the physical or entirely in the
psychological, but in the dimension of the spirit. This can be forgotten in
the modern technological birthing processes that emphasize the physical
well-being of mother and child over the spiritual and emotional links and
thus may adversely affect bonding.
The link with the baby suggests it may be possible to connect with the
unborn baby in the womb, a belief in many cultures, and it may be that the
physical umbilical cord is connected with a spiritual cord linking mother
and child. Through gentle visualization it may be possible for an expectant
mom or dad to astrally visit the unborn child and allay fears, or even a yet
unconceived little spirit seeking birth that may reassure prospective parents
who are anxious to conceive.
In the following chapter we will explore different techniques for easing
into planned astral travel.
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preparing for astral travel

The astral body is the perfected double of your physical body—free from
disabilities, aging, and illness. Travel within this astral body is a powerful
instrument that can even assist in healing the physical body.
Once you learn the basic techniques of planned astral travel, many of
which are based on spontaneous astral travel experience, you can choose
where to travel in your astral inner self.
At first you may find it easiest to journey in your astral body within the
physical world, though that does not stop you traveling thousands of miles
in seconds across the globe. The laws of gravity, chronological time, and
distance do not apply once you are traveling beyond the physical body.
When you are confident exploring earthly realms in your spiritual form, you
can begin to discover the spiritual realms beyond the physical world.

WAKEFULNESS VERSUS SLEEP TRAVEL

While astral travel is most usually defined as the spirit body temporarily
leaving the physical body, in the shadowy state between waking and sleep,
it may be easiest initially to experience astral journeying through lucid
dreaming while asleep.
Lucid dreaming is being aware or conscious that you are on the dream
plane, and thus you can enter different realms as your dream self, which is
essentially the same as your astral self.
Remote viewing, regarded as traveling in the mind to distant places
within the physical world, is also a form of astral travel, though how much
the mind and astral body are intertwined cannot be measured.
The main difference between remote viewing and pure astral body travel
by the detached spirit body is that remote viewing occurs while awake or in
a light trance and it cannot alter or affect events at the scene visited, though
the astral presence may be detected by those being visited.

LUCID DREAMS
Lucid dreams, though the deepest level of astral travel, are the easiest astral
exploration to learn and often occur spontaneously. Indeed, they may
kickstart remote viewing or the spirit leaving the physical body in a deeply
relaxed state. Lucid dreaming usually occurs during the rapid eye
movement (REM) phase of sleep, the deepest level of sleep.
Because you are aware that you are dreaming and your conscious mind
is fully present in your dream/astral self, lucid dreaming allows total access
to an ethereal version of the material world where daily events can be
changed and fears overcome. It is also a gateway to the astral spirit realms.
In these dreams you are aware you can fly, float, or cross the Atlantic Ocean
or the Milky Way in seconds by the power of your mind and spirit control.
Lucid dreaming offers release from the constraints of time and space and
enables you also to explore past and future worlds. Valuable in itself, it is
the stepping-off point to traveling with your out-of-body self as the dream
self. Some practitioners use this as their sole means of astral travel if they
find balancing between sleeping and waking as a method of releasing the
spirit self difficult.

Working with Lucidity

As well as being able to control events in spontaneous lucid dreaming, you
can create dream scenarios immediately before sleep for your astral or
dream self to explore.
If you are not yet aware of recalling lucid dreams, the fastest way to
become aware of lucid dreaming and its possibilities for traveling is to
create a vivid positive symbol you can visualize as you drift into sleep and
chant its name. After a while, you will not need such triggers.
When you are relaxed, picture, for example, a golden peacock or
gigantic rainbow butterfly, chanting as you drift into sleep, When I see the
rainbow butterfly I will know I am dreaming and can travel anywhere.
Let yourself drift into sleep but keep your intention to know you are
dreaming and your dream symbol in your thoughts, reciting these words
slowly and mesmerically as a mantra so that these are the last remaining
things in your mind before you fall asleep.
If you do not enter the desired scenario or see your symbol in your
dreams that night, as you wake, reenter the desired visualized dreamscape.
Evoke the symbol in the half-waking state and repeat the mantra so that you
can experience a half-waking lucid dream.
The next evening, continue this process using the same dream symbol
and chant until it finally appears in your dreams or your psyche makes you
aware that you are dreaming in a lucid state a totally unrelated dream.

Moving into Other Dimensions in Sleep

Once you know you are in a dream, you can experiment with creating
doorways into other realms, diving into underwater worlds, exploring
jewel-encrusted tunnels, climbing the cosmic world tree to the stars, and
flying or floating across space to realms where deceased family members,
wise ancestors, and beings of light who have never taken human form can
offer wisdom. You can travel back to Atlantis or ancient Egypt or forward to
the realms of future potential that can be shaped by the choices and actions
made now.

REMOTE VIEWING
You can follow lucid dreaming with remote viewing. If the idea of actually
leaving your body seems a little unnerving at this stage, you may prefer to
start with the closest form of astral experience to the physical world. It has
been suggested that the US Army and clandestine services use remote
viewing to find missing planes and locate targets and that the Russians and
Americans use it for espionage.
Whatever the mechanics, remote viewing is another skill, like lucid
dreaming, that if mastered offers a door to full astral travel. It would seem
the mind or consciousness enters the spirit body when it travels away from
the physical form.

Psychic Hide-and-Seek
Have you ever wondered why children are skilled at finding hidden objects
or people in childhood games?
All children are naturally psychic and unobstructed by logic. Ask a child
or a psychic friend to hide an item to which you are emotionally attached.
Since everything has an energy field and you are emotionally linked with
the item, before you start looking, sit with your eyes closed and picture the
object and a cord of light between you and it.
Follow the cord in your mind, picturing the energies around the item
shining like a beacon despite what is obscuring it.
Walk in circles, gradually moving closer as the feelings get stronger.
Persevere, and if you are finding it hard, stop second-guessing, close your
eyes, and visualize the direction of the light.

Practicing Remote Viewing over Distance

Remote viewing is not limited by miles but operates within the material
world rather than other dimensions.
• Immerse your mind in images of the place you wish to view or picture
the person you intend to visit remotely carrying out a regular routine
task or at leisure. Your mind will take you to where they are during
 your travel, even if they are not in their customary location at the time
of the connection. Do not alert them in advance.
• A strong attachment to the person you plan to visit or a burning desire
to go to the target place will strengthen the psychic link.
• Initially picture yourself walking or cycling fast, chasing leaves or
feathers blowing in the wind, riding a carousel, paddling a kayak on a
fast-flowing river, counting aloud while walking down a seemingly
endless steep flight of steps outdoors, or running to the top of a tall
building instead of taking the elevator.
• Increase the speed of the movement in your mind so it becomes a blur.
As you do so, chant the chosen destination or person’s name faster and
faster in your mind.
• When you can chant no faster, be instantly there in a whoosh of wind.
• Look around for distinguishing features in the place you are viewing
at that day and time, perhaps a crowd if there is a festival, temporary
exhibition, or market, or a landmark with unexpected scaffolding
around it.
• If you are visiting a person note where the person is and what they are
doing and wearing. Gently touch them on the shoulder or whisper a
message.
• When you are ready, visualize yourself returning to the place where
you initiated the mind travel, again in a whoosh of wind and then
stillness and silence.
• Afterward, call the person you visited and, in the course of the
conversation, ask where they currently are and what they are doing. If
they are sympathetic to your psychic work, ask what they were
wearing at the time of your mind visit and about anything unusual you
saw.
• You could also find a web camera feed of the chosen place or read
 about any special occasions that might have explained a crowd that
you unexpectedly saw.
• Don’t be despondent if the first few times you connect with only one
or two features. This power can take weeks or months to perfect.

Remote Viewing with People in an Unknown Location

The next stage is to ask a friend, colleague, or relative who is visiting a
location you do not know well, which could just be a few miles away or on
the other side of the world, to be your target at a pre-arranged time.
• Ask them to stand near an unusual feature of the place at the chosen
time (remember time zone differences).
• Suggest that your subject take a photo of the spot and the unusual
feature at the prearranged time and note any special sounds or
fragrances.
• Stop whatever you are doing for five minutes before the appointed
time and sit quietly, perhaps doing some gentle breathing or
relaxation.
• Looking at a blank wall, focus on the person and imagine the scene
like a movie projected on the wall. Note what they are wearing and
allow the context around them to expand from the center outward on
all sides, noting other people present and any sounds or fragrances.
• Trust what you feel as well as see, however unlikely. Write down the
details and precise time you connected.
• Compare the picture you are sent. Even if it is not precise, there may
be features that are accurate, such as a huge pure white seagull sitting
on an urban wall.
• Remember that this is not a test; you are learning a new psychic skill
that will last a lifetime or more. If you decide remote viewing is not
for you, work with lucid dreaming or the twenty triggers for astral
travel in chapter 3; those may be more natural entry points for you
 into astral exploration.

PREPARING YOURSELF FOR OUT-OF-BODY TRAVEL

You may now be ready to experience stepping out of your physical body
and moving freely within your spirit form. This is probably the ultimate
psychic experience, and it is well worth spending time on preparations.
Some of these may also be helpful in stimulating remote viewing and lucid
dreaming.

VISUALIZATION AND EIDETIC IMAGING

This is a powerful way to prepare yourself for and experiment with using
the spirit body for astral traveling.
• Choose a brightly colored painting or poster in your home with which
you are familiar.
• Sit where you can comfortably look at it.
• Select one of the relaxation or breathing methods listed below while
facing the picture and allowing the images to flow into your mind.
• When you are relaxed, breathe naturally and stare at the picture for
three minutes, blinking when necessary, imagining the details entering
your inner vision like colored rays.
• Then take a piece of white copy paper, stare at the blank paper for
about a minute, close your eyes, and project (push) the picture from
your mind onto the paper, so you can see it.
• Open your eyes, and on the paper, scribble or sketch details in the
appropriate places—for example, a red flower with an orange center
and two petals missing, in the left corner.
• Check the results, and if you did not do well, try with the same picture
again or project it on to a blank light-colored wall.
• Progress to even more complicated pictures until the image appears as
if it were on the paper quite spontaneously.
VISUALIZATION: MOVING WITHIN A PICTURE
• Now try some spirit travel. When you are ready, look once more at the
original picture.
• Repeat the process of memorizing it, and then close your eyes.
• Breathing very slowly in and out, project yourself into the visualized
picture so you are the same size as any other figures in it.
• Enjoy the scene from the new perspective and continue inhaling and
exhaling until the picture is a full-sized scene and you are immersed
within the picture.
• Explore the location or landscape, noting sounds and fragrances,
before reversing the process, exhaling slowly using out breaths to
separate from the picture. When you feel separate, open your eyes.
• Write down everything you felt and saw.
• When you are confident, use a picture with a prominent doorway and
walk through it by the same method to wherever you want to be or
see. We will practice using doorways and gateways further in later
chapters throughout this book.

PSYCHIC PROTECTION
Nothing can harm your astral body or your mind while you are traveling,
experiencing lucid dreaming, or remote viewing. However, there are lower-
level spirits who, as in life, might try to intimidate you or lead you astray. If
you always affirm before beginning that you will only encounter beings of
light and beautiful realms, that affirmation acts as a shield around your aura,
which is part of your spirit body.
You should only ever undertake astral travel and indeed any psychic
work in a positive frame of mind and not when you are exhausted, angry, or
resentful, however justifiable.
Before beginning any astral travel, cast light around yourself by
anointing your four higher inner energy chakra centers, which are part of
your astral as well as physical body:
 • Use a diluted lavender or rose oil or your favorite fragrance and touch
the center of your hairline with a single drop to protect your Crown
energy center, which connects with the cosmos, saying, Above me the
light.
• Anoint in the same way the center of your brow, from which psychic
energies emerge and enter, saying, Within me the radiance.
• Next, touch next the energy center at the base of your throat, saying,
That I may receive.
• Finally, touch your inner wrist points, right and then left, for your
loving Heart energy center, saying, Love and light in my heart.

This protects both the physical and the astral bodies.

FINDING YOUR SPIRIT GUIDE

Your astral spirit guide will protect you during travel, lead you to where you
wish to be or whom you wish to be with, and bring you safely home. Your
astral guide is one who has known you in many lifetimes, perhaps as your
mentor.
Seasonal change points are especially powerful for all astral work. For
the initial connection, reflective surfaces offer glimpses of this protective
being. Here are several options.
• Use crystal spheres or pyramids, especially clear quartz or amethyst,
with inclusions. A face or figure will form from the inner cracks if the
crystal is held up to the sun or full moonlight. You can also work with
doorways within crystals as astral entry points where the figure of
your guide will be waiting (see chapter 9).
• Ripple a stick in clear, still water at sunrise or sunset to see or sense a
face appearing in the water. Add a drop or two of a dark oil if working
indoors.
• At sunset, use a mirror lit by candles in a horseshoe shape in front of
the mirror. Stare into the mirror until you need to close your eyes.
 Close them slowly, open them fast, blink, blow out the candles. In the
afterglow in the mirror you may identify your spirit guide
momentarily behind you.
• Set an incense stick in a flat holder on either side of a white candle, so
the sticks are at a sixty-degree angle. Frankincense, myrrh,
sandalwood, and other ceremonial fragrances link with other
dimensions and are also very protective. Light each stick in turn from
the candle and return the incense to its holder, so the smoke from each
coils above the candle flame. With half-closed eyes, gaze into the
moving area around the candle flame and the smoke and allow a
moving image to build up either around the flame and smoke or in
your mind’s vision. If you are finding this difficult, close your eyes
and let the picture start forming against the dark screen of your mind.
Then open your eyes suddenly and gaze at the candle flame/smoke.

You may see only a face or have an impression of a figure.

Whatever method you choose, say you are glad to meet your astral guide
and that you wish to learn more about them. In return, you may hear words
in your mind, in either your own voice or one that is clearer, deeper, or just
different.
You may glimpse a setting through the crystal, light, or smoke: a garden,
a temple or monastery, an old stone circle, a forest, or a cave that may tell
you a little about your guide. You can visit this world astrally as you
become more experienced.
If you want to know more, pick up a green pen and white paper, ask
questions, and allow your guardian to answer by gently guiding your hand
with words and images.

MANTRAS, CHANTING, AND ASTRAL TRAVEL

Mantras, a sacred form of affirmation, are a valuable way of inducing deep
relaxation to let go of the everyday world and enter into a trance without
totally falling asleep, especially if breathing or relaxation exercises are not
for you.
Mantras induce conscious out-of-body travel by creating a state of
complete relaxation while allowing the astral traveler to remain fully aware
of what’s happening.
You can make your own mantra by repeating with rhyme or resonance,
mentally or aloud, words or a sentence related to the astral journey you
seek.
Continue to recite your mantra in your mind during astral travel to keep
the purpose of your travel on track.
True mantras that originate in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions contain
sacred words or phrases that have accumulated additional power through
the centuries. They include om mani padme hum repeated over and over, or
the Sanskrit Gāyatrī mantra spoken or sung 108 times without stopping, om
bhur bhuva suvahah (aumm bhoor bhoo-va su-va-ha) / tat-savitur
vareñyaṃ (tat sa-vee-toor var-ayn-yam) / bhargo devasya dhimahi (bar-go
day-vas-yah dhee-ma-hee) / dhīyo yonah prachodayāt (dhee-yo yo-nah pra-
cho-dye-yat).
Alternatively, download a recording, for example by Deva Premal
singing the Gāyatrī and other mantras, or Buddhist or Gregorian chants to
trigger astral travel (more on music in the next chapter).

BREATHING TECHNIQUES
Breathing slowly and regularly also aids the state of deep relaxation. Some
practitioners use this in combination with or before reciting mantras.
• Breathe deeply from your abdomen. Put a hand just below your navel
to check, as in modern society we tend to breathe far too shallowly
and fast.
• Visualize the breath of life as golden or pure light circulating through
your whole body. With each breath your inner spiritual body becomes
more golden and lighter, expanding and slowly detaching, ready to
either step out of the body or ascend like a mist from the crown.
• Find a rhythm that is right for you, and as you work, it will become
automatic.
• Eastern methods practice mainly nasal breathing, but breathing out
through the mouth slowly can be useful when reciting a short mantra
 or word on the out breath to aid the release of the spirit body. While
focusing on a mantra, breathe slowly, deeply, and regularly.

A SIMPLE BREATHING EXERCISE

• Close your eyes, or lower your eyelids and gaze two or three feet
ahead or at a focal point—for example, a lighted candle in a safe
enclosed glass container—to center yourself.
• Choose a hand position that is comfortable—for example, hands
resting on your thighs with the palms facing up or down.
• Breathe in through your nose, counting in your mind one and two and
three and four.
• Hold the breath, again counting in your mind one and two.
• Breathe out through your nose or mouth, counting in your mind one
and two and three and four.
• Finally, pause, counting in your mind one and two, before repeating
the cycle.
• Repeat the cycle up to ten times, if you wish, slowing the count even
more as you progress.

Another popular method in some traditions is breathing in for seven,

holding for one, breathing out for seven, and resting for one.

COUNTING UP OR DOWN
This method works best if you inhale and exhale through the nose.
• Count from ten to one or one to ten initially for three cycles.
• Concentrate on breathing deeply from the abdomen, keeping the
shoulders still and circulating the breath around the body for three
cycles or more if you wish.
• Slow the breath gradually.
 • If you lose track or become distracted by irrelevant thoughts, you can
return to ten or one to begin again.

You are now ready to try some of the exit points of the spirit body from
the physical described in chapter 3 if you wish to astrally leave your body
in the state between waking and sleeping.
OceanofPDF.com
 3
twenty strategies for planned astral
travel

In the previous chapters I have described necessary preparations for a

planned out-of-body experience so that you are relaxed at the point of sleep
but remain aware and are able to control and direct your astral travel.
Having defined your target for astral travel, you need to create an exit
strategy whereby the astral body separates from the resting, relaxed
physical body. Visualizing is often recommended to reach a point where
there is a portal or transition leading into the astral world, through which
the astral body can float, step out, or hurtle from your physical body and
begin the astral journey.
However, it is even more effective if the visualized experience used for
this exit is previously physically experienced, so that sights, sounds, and
sensations are imprinted in a memory that the astral self shares. Above all,
the feelings and emotions of actually experiencing the trigger are a
powerful impetus in astral work.
The twenty suggested scenarios in this chapter are the fuel and the
stimulation to break through a semi-trance and enter the astral world, where
your spirit body can cross the room, the world, or the universe, saying, Hey,
wake up, sleepyhead, and let’s adventure. Remember how much fun it felt
flying when we were skydiving?

TWENTY SUGGESTED EXIT POINTS

This chapter will describe twenty different ways for your spirit body to go
walkabout, fueled by recreating those actual sensations and returning safely
to your physical body.
Try any of these twenty entry points to astral experience in your waking
life, all of which will have an inbuilt exit or trigger point—for example, the
moment the plane’s wheels finally lift from the tarmac and you are flying.
That would be the point in your visualization of the plane trip prior to astral
travel that is creating the flashpoint moment in your mind after the
relaxation, affirmations, and so on in visualization. In this way you are
kickstarting your astral body to take over that steering wheel of your soul
self and let the physical body rest.
Choose an exit strategy that fits closely with your planned astral travel—
for example, if you are planning an underwater astral adventure, floating in
a darkened saltwater tank, sometimes called a “floatarium.” In visualizing
the tank and the floating sensation prior to astral travel, you can add details
so that one side of the tank opens into the ocean.

CONSCIOUS ASTRAL TRAVEL

Decide on your exit strategy from the physical world, state an affirmation or
mantra regarding where you wish to travel to, and visualize your exit
scenario based on the recalled sensations of the earlier physical experience,
injecting as much emotion as you can: sights, touch, sounds, and so on.
When you are at the climax of the recalled experience and your body is
sleepy, your mind becomes excited with anticipation, like the moment you
release a dart toward a dartboard or the starting gun sounds for a race. Your
consciousness uses those visualized feelings as the stepping stone or
springboard into the waiting astral world, and the physical body and world
temporarily step back.

SOME GOOD ADVICE

• Do not use astral projection, planned lucid dreaming, or remote
viewing more than three times a week, as it is very tiring.
• Astral travel should always be for a specific purpose or to visit a
chosen location. If you can match a similar exit strategy as suggested
—for example, an actual plane journey if you intend to fly across the
world in your astral experience—that makes the transition easier.
• If you have a heart complaint, epilepsy, or a debilitating illness, while
these conditions will not be present in your astral form, choose gentler
exit and reentry methods, such as a doorway or walking toward a
point of light.
• In the evening have a warm bath with chamomile, rose, or lavender
when you are sleepy but not exhausted or preoccupied. If necessary,
clear your mind of irrelevant interrupting inner chatter using extra
centering breathing or relaxation so your mind is empty of thoughts
about anything except for the planned astral trip.
• Generally, an astral experience will end spontaneously, leaving you
wishing for more, or you will be disturbed by an external noise
(sounds can also trigger astral experiences). However, if you wish to
return before it ends naturally, at any time follow your silver cord and
let it effortlessly guide you back from your astral body to your
physical body.

TWENTY DIFFERENT STIMULI FOR PLANNED OUT-OF-

BODY TRAVEL
• Experiment with the exit strategies that fit with your lifestyle, and you
will find one or two that especially resonate.
• Initially, for many practitioners, gentle, slower exits make for an
easier transition where you feel fully in control.
• If you might be in danger if you fall asleep during the actual
experience—for example, in a hot tub—ask a trusted companion to sit
silently with you to make sure you are safe.
• Ask your astral guide to be with you during the visualized experience
and the subsequent travel.
• If you wish, cast archangel light around yourself as you face the four
directions, starting in the north, reciting the names of the four
archangels: Uriel in the north, Raphael in the east, Michael in the
south, and Gabriel in the west. End by touching your brow and heart
with your nonwriting hand, saying, Uriel, Raphael, Michael, and
Gabriel, protect me as I journey.

1. Doorways
Many stories begin with doorways into other worlds, such as C. S. Lewis’s
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
• Begin in actuality by walking through doorways without a door,
flower-covered arches in gardens, entrances with open doors, or gates
(golden gates often feature in near-death experiences).
• Walk between two trees, framed in sunlight. Traditionally, oaks were
natural portals to the otherworld to the Celtic druids.
• Alternatively, choose an actual door that goes nowhere, such as a
wardrobe door or the false spirit door in the base of Egyptian
pyramids, through which spirits pass.
• With practice you may spontaneously view other worlds through your
 special door.
• Doorways may also appear in lucid dreams.

TRIGGER: Visualize walking through your special door and be instantly

in an entirely different place.

2. A Plane at Take-Off and Landing

This has also proven remarkably successful in overcoming a fear of flying.
You can, if adventurous, try skydiving or paragliding.
The increasing and decreasing impetus of taking off and landing on a
vacation or business trip simulate the experience of personal astral flight.
Computer-generated simulations also create space rocket scenarios.
TRIGGER: Make your trigger in visualization the moment of lift-
off/landing as in actuality there will be a surge of speed or the brakes being
applied and vibrations that match the astral vibrations as you travel.

3. Moving Walkways
Walk on the moving walkways between terminals or far-apart gates at the
airport and keep walking at a regular pace until you reach the end.
Return in the other direction, and continue this until you lose all
awareness of your surroundings.
TRIGGER: In your visualization, keep walking in your mind until you
realize you are no longer in the terminal building on the moving walkway
but walking at the same increased speed in a new location. At any point,
you can step off.

4. Elevators
In many modern cities you have your choice of high-rise buildings. The
more floors in the building and the faster the elevator, the more vivid the
imprint in your consciousness. Elevators on the outside of buildings, if they
are made of glass, are especially effective if you can ride up and down
uninterrupted.
Watch the film Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, based on the book
by Roald Dahl, where the elevator bursts through the roof and flies. Pure
astral projection.
TRIGGER: Recreate the sensation in your pre-astral visualization, but
have your elevator arriving on a top unmarked floor open to the skies, from
where you can fly or float anywhere.

5. Carousels
Find a Victorian-style carousel with horses and tinny music at a fairground
or festival and ride around and around, absorbing the sensation of flying.
TRIGGER: If you get off in a different place in your actual ride, you can
use that sensation in your visualization to find yourself in a different
location of your choice in your astral body. Play fairground music softly
through headphones during your pre-astral visualization that switches off
after a short preset time.

6. Clouds
Back to the plane journey, especially if it is a long-haul flight.
In a window seat, gaze out at the banks of clouds, especially as they
tinge with sunrise and sunset, and then observe how everything is obscured
in mist, only to clear again.
Allow your eyes to close but open them again and allow yourself to drift
in and out of wakefulness. This in itself may trigger a spontaneous out-of-
body experience.
Alternatively, in Celtic druid style, lie outdoors and watch fast-floating
white clouds passing overhead and forming pictures, and then merge with
them. You may see castles in the clouds and pathways to them.
TRIGGER: Visualize yourself outside the plane as the light floods in
through the suddenly opened blinds, or walking across the clouds or as part
of the cloud picture tapestry being carried on a gentle breeze to wherever is
your chosen destination. Follow the path to the castle in the clouds.

7. Mist
Mists obscuring and suddenly clearing have been described from Celtic
times as hiding and revealing other worlds. Some believe mist still hides the
magical isle of Avalon, King Arthur’s gateway in southwest England.
Walk through mist in familiar territory and notice how even known
landmarks are obscured or look different. Turn around and allow yourself to
be immersed and lost (use your smartphone to find the way if you are
worried).
TRIGGER: In your visualization, walk through the mist toward a point of
brightness, and you will be in your chosen astral place.

8. Roller Coasters and Fast Fairground Rides

Some of the most powerful means to induce astral projection are fast theme
park and fairground rides, such as roller coasters, but this method of entry
to astral worlds should be used only if you are healthy and strong and enjoy
speed and potential danger. Head to a theme park or fairgrounds and give
yourself up to the fears, the speed, and the thrills.
Josephine was twenty-two when she described her feelings when she
momentarily died during an operation in France. “Everything went too fast
for me. I worked at a fun fair when we lived in the United States, taking
rides in a desperate attempt to create the feeling of flying.”
TRIGGER: Visualize the ride getting faster and the vibrations getting
stronger until your car flies off the end of the ride through the air and you
wind up unhurt because you are in your astral body but are momentarily
shocked. Picture your car having hurtled as far as you wish to the other
side of the world or into a new dimension, like being on a springboard.

9. Caves
While many entry points to other worlds involve floating upward, others
offer entry by descending steep steps worn in stone and walking into a cave
with different passages opening out, offering a choice of routes.
Jacques described his experience in India when he was pronounced dead
after falling headfirst on concrete. He was placed in a room constructed of
marble and left there three days. On the third day, a nurse went in and saw a
slight movement and found that Jacques was alive. He recalls walking
along a rough-hewn tunnel with walls that looked as if the rocks were made
of copper and gold lit by torches. He came to a round cave chamber, and
seated on a marble throne was a man in a white robe with long, flowing
white hair and a beard. His hand gently pushed Jacques back to life.
Caves can be complex to work with if you are new to astral projection
but are ideal for more advanced travel to other mystical and what we often
call mythical realms. They can also be reached via a huge hole in the base
of a tree, usually on one of the fey festivals like May Eve or Halloween; sit
against the trunk with eyes closed and visualize following the opening
down to a subterranean world of myth and beloved fairy tales.
TRIGGER: Visualize descending to your cave and choosing your pathway
once you reach the base, the one filled with light that will lead to a
subterranean world, or follow the same way out that will have changed to a
new destination. Alternatively, descend the steps within the tree to
interconnected worlds beneath forest roots, where it is believed the earth
nature beings dwell.

10. Candles
The flickering flame of candles has always been central to astral
experiences, and it is a physical stimulus that can expand through
visualization into a doorway of light.
Dusk is a good time for candle exploration, as is the early morning when
it is still dark and you are totally relaxed, in that half-state between sleep
and waking. It is a very slow, contemplative method, and I describe it in
detail in chapter 5 as an entry point to more advanced astral work.
TRIGGER: For now, meditate on a pathway of candles leading into a
mirror, and visualize following the pathway of light to a golden doorway.
Alternatively, set a single candle high up to ascend in your mind toward the
light, imagining the physical candle flame expanding to fill the
consciousness behind closed eyes, later visualized as the entry to other
worlds.

11. Water
Float on your back with a life jacket in a swimming pool, especially a
saltwater one, or visit a floatarium or hot tub. This will help if you are
naturally uncertain around water.
If you are more proficient in the water, dive, with extreme care, from a
high board or rock into the ocean or a swimming pool.
Immerse yourself in the water, especially if it is overhung by trees,
creating a sense of weightlessness to separate temporarily the inner and
outer bodies.
TRIGGER: Visualize floating out of your physical body into another
watery realm, maybe underwater or Atlantis.

12. Tunnel
Many near-death and near-birth experiences involve traveling through a
tunnel, often at great speed with a rushing wind, to a point of light that
opens to a beautiful place where loved ones or guides may be waiting.
Tunnels form natural entry points if you do not want to either ascend or
descend.
There are often long tunnels along canals and rivers, road tunnels under
mountains, pedestrian tunnels under busy roads, and subways rushing from
the darkness to the light of the station, at first appearing as a dot of light and
creating a whoosh of wind.
You could also walk in total darkness in a narrow hall or passageway or
on a straight, long garden path with only a pinpoint of a small solar lamp at
the other end, focusing only on the light. Each time you reach the light,
move it a little farther away, until you are ready to close your eyes and can
still see the light.
TRIGGER: Incorporate into the visualization rushing toward the light and
the brightness becoming larger until at last you reach your astral
destination, enclosed in brilliant light.

13. Swing Method

Find a deserted playground with swings, preferably overhung with trees.
Swing higher and faster so the surroundings blur. Repeat the experience
until you can recreate it in your mind.
Be absorbed entirely by the rhythm of the swing, working with a friend
who is not going to insist you slow down. Swings are ideal for past-life
travel and even more effective if you are able to combine swings with a
carousel.
TRIGGER: Picture yourself letting go of the swing at its highest, being
caught by strong, safe hands, and finding yourself in your desired
destination, a little dizzy.
14. Waves/Waterfalls/Rapids
Turbulent water is another active astral exit for the healthy and intrepid.
Ride a speedboat on a choppy sea, climb behind a waterfall, or try
whitewater rafting and become immersed in the whirling sensation. Tourist
spots may have open cable cars or chairlifts over whirlpools, or speedboats
to ride the rapids. Personal watercraft can also create the swirling and
immersion sense of the water.
TRIGGER: When doing this visualization, use your headphones and play
rushing water sounds or crashing seas as a background for a short time
and allow yourself to swirl around in the waters. You cannot drown.

15. Calling Down the Moon

The full moon is a powerful time for initiating astral travel. The full moon
passing through your own zodiac sign is particularly potent. This is one you
need not visualize but experience in a safe open place. Stand and twirl in
one spot until you feel dizzy. Face the moon and you will see it rushing
toward you, a physiological reaction, but nevertheless offering you a point
of exit from your physical body. Steady yourself and sit to enjoy the
experience.
TRIGGER: You have the option of visualizing the experience, but actually
experiencing it is preferable.

16. Mirrors
Walking into mirrors is one of the oldest ways of leaving the body. This is a
direct method you can attempt for separating the physical and astral bodies,
but you may find visualization helpful at first.
Look in a mirror that shows your full body and, as if studying a picture
as described in chapter 2, memorize all the details of your body.
Join hands palm to palm through the mirror surface, close your eyes, and
maintain hand contact.
Keep your eyes closed and, still visualizing yourself in detail, focus on
pressing against the mirror and melting your conscious awareness into your
alter ego and your alter ego looking back at you until you release hand
contact and the image is just an image again.
 TRIGGER: Gazing into the mirror, visualize your mirror self having
totally separate movement and existence while you relax on your own side
of the mirror and see your desired astral setting appearing behind your
astral self. Watch your astral self as if you are watching a movie.

17. Climbing a Rope

This is based on the shamanic tradition of ascending the world tree or
ascending through the smoke hole in a tepee, but it is much easier to
simulate using a rope or ladder. If you are physically fit, climb a rope in a
gym or ascend a rock face. If not, cross a rope bridge and let it sway, or
hold a rope on a children’s playground to experience its roughness against
your skin.
TRIGGER: Visualize climbing a rope whose top you cannot see, one hand
over the other. Continue climbing in your mind until you can let go where
the rope ends in the sky, and then you will find you are floating or flying.

18. Traveling a Long Distance

Travel on a train or bus or as a passenger in a car on an unchanging straight
road such as a freeway, a road through the desert or the outback, fighting
sleep, so that at the point of dropping off, you jerk into wakefulness.
This is one of the few visualizations that works when you are tired.
TRIGGER: Sit with closed eyes, visualizing one of those wakeful moments,
floating or flying away from the monotonous journey while the physical
body dozes off.

19. Using a Hammock or a Rocking Chair

Slowly rock until you are lulled into semi-sleep. This works especially well
when you are tired.
Practice this regularly in everyday life until you achieve a sense of
weightlessness and feel yourself responding to the sleepy rhythm. When
this occurs, immediately stop rocking to return to wakefulness.
TRIGGER: In your visualization, you can set your hammock or rocking
chair anywhere: on a Midwest porch, in a nursery rocking a baby to sleep,
or in a hammock on a beach between swaying palm trees. When you find
yourself falling deeper into sleep in your visualization as you picture
yourself rocking rhythmically, make a sudden huge rocking movement in
your mind and find yourself propelled high above the chair or hammock,
looking down on them.

20. Working with Your Shadow

This method is beloved by children, who are natural astral travelers.
Pauline told me that as a child, she would dance in front of her mother
while they were walking along together, and her mother never knew how
Pauline, even while holding her hand, could move her shadow away and
make it dance.
Find a light-colored path on a slight incline and walk toward the
morning or early evening sun when shadows are at their clearest and
longest.
Turn suddenly so the sun is behind you, and in front of you greet your
shadow, which is attached to your feet as you walk or stand.
This is a physiological manifestation of the spirit self, part of you but
able to step outside and merge with the sunlight without visualization.
Wave, dance, flow, lift one leg and then the other, jump with both feet so
your shadow can momentarily fly, and then turn to the shadow, first one
side then the other, twirl around, and peek at it behind you.
Enjoy the freedom from the physical body and yet the security of the
earth at your feet that anchors the shadow.
Now move so your shadow is in front of you, raise your hand to project
a positive thought to the shadow, and watch as the shadow instantaneously
tosses it back.
TRIGGER: At the point when you jump, you momentarily let go of the
earth and your astral body is free. Practice extending this jump through
visualization so it can propel you wherever you want. With practice, this is
an excellent way of releasing your spirit self.

Energy work you do with your aura and chakras and manipulating your
astral body energy, described later in the book, will help you to get in touch
more readily with your spirit self, as will Reiki healing on yourself and
others, crystal healing, yoga, and other energy therapies. In the next chapter
we will put the whole experience together so you can experience out-of-
body travel and work with ways of returning from astral experiences
complete with the memories.
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 4
putting it all together

In time, astral travel and its different stages become much more instant, and
as with any skill, the more you practice, the more automatic the process
becomes.
Touching your solar plexus is an effective way of fast-tracking astral
flight, and the following exercise offers a technique for instant travel within
the immediate environment that you can apply to other situations when you
want to be there immediately. A result of working fast is that in time you
will think your destination and be there instantly, even in more advanced
travel to other dimensions.
 Practice the following to kickstart the fast-track astral process:
• Sit on a swivel office-type chair that turns 360 degrees in the center of
a room.
• Use a basic relaxation or breathing method, and then put your hands
on your solar plexus. Feel your energy light body expanding,
becoming lighter and eager to explore.
• Swivel the chair in a complete circle nine times so you are moving
quite fast, saying continuously, I am traveling to , naming one of
the corners of the room. Focus only on that corner and see yourself
instantly in that corner of the room while your physical body is still on
the swivel chair. You can put a chair in each corner if you wish.
• You may sense vibrating within your inner body and a whoosh of
wind, and instantly you are in the chosen corner.
• View your physical body in the chair from the angle of the corner
your astral body is occupying as it faces toward the center.
• Continue traveling around all four corners in turn without pause,
noting the new perspective from each, and then say, I am returning to
my physical body. You may again feel the wind and the vibrations and
yourself instantly back in your body in the chair, feeling slightly
disoriented.

TRAVELING INSTANTLY BEYOND THE ROOM

• When you feel ready, from the fourth corner say, I am on the other
side of the door, and find yourself there without any awareness of
opening the door or even walking toward it.
• There may be a melting sensation when you reach the door, and you
may feel the vibrations and the rush of air as you pass through.
• Usually you find yourself suddenly on the other side of even a closed
door. When this feels natural and you want to leave the building,
 progress by saying, I am on the roof looking over the houses [or
whatever view you have]. Now I am at .
• This instant manifestation will happen as long as you do not pause to
question if this is possible.
• Your astral body may feel light or silvery rather than golden, and if
you put your astral hand on a hard surface, you can pass your hand
right through it.
• If this seems not to be happening, do not give up. Picture yourself
walking through an open door, climbing through a large open window,
or reaching the roof on a ladder and, when you are ready, launching
like a bird, flying, floating, running fast, and eventually just being
there.
• Results vary among astral projectors. Some report walking astrally at
normal pace, flying at great speed, or walking through mist to the new
chosen destination, sometimes in the shape of a healthier and younger
body double or in their light body.

RETURNING TO YOUR PHYSICAL BODY

• When you are ready to return, count yourself back from ten to one
with closed eyes, and very slowly open your eyes.

In time you will develop your own unique way to reenter your physical
body. The more you practice, the smoother it will be until eventually you
will think of your body and be instantly back in it.

OVERCOMING ASTRAL HICCUPS AND BLOCKS

If you find the idea of leaving your physical body hard or scary, use
candlelight to slowly ascend diagonally out of your body using a stairway
of light, which can be less frightening than climbing a ladder. In time you
will realize that you are no longer relying on a gradual stairway but when
you think of your destination, you are instantly passing through the
doorway of light high up.
 • Light a candle or use a shaded lamp and place it in a corner on a high
shelf or cupboard, or use a single wall light as your focus.
• Work in darkness apart from the single source of light. Later you will
learn to do this focusing looking up at the stars or planets.
• Lie on your bed or a couch, propped up on a pile of cushions, for a
few moments in the darkness.
• Picture a stairway of light leading up to the candle. Give the stairway
a rail if you are nervous of heights.
• Count yourself up from your body, inhaling the light and exhaling
darkness, one in breath for each golden step on the stairway of light,
which can be as gradual as you wish, as you move diagonally upward.
You may sense a rush of air and vibrations inside you. The diagonal
ascent is far less dramatic than floating directly up, but this extra stage
can ease any doubts.
• Allow the light to enclose you and the source of light to become a
doorway of gold through which you effortlessly step onto the roof.
• If you at first sense slight resistance, create a curtain of light through
which you can more easily pass.
• Sit on the roof, enjoying the view of the lights below and the stars
above, but don’t try to travel unless you are ready.
• Retrace the golden steps to the bed or cushions, seeing the outlines of
the features of the room becoming clearer.
• Gradually you will rely less on the stairway until you no longer need
this interim stage.

FLOATING
Once you have let go of the stairway, the idea of floating above your body
can be a stumbling block to astral travel if fear of letting go pulls you back
into your physical body at a crucial moment.
Floating involves letting go of the physical body in a state of total
weightlessness and timelessness, and once attained, out-of-body sensations
will flow.
Relaxation, meditation, and mindfulness—focusing only on the moment
—are good ways of reaching this state. I mentioned triggers to floating in
the previous chapter, but it is well worth spending time perfecting this state
of floating at will. You can float as far as you want, and floating is a good
entry point to dimensions where you can talk to deceased relatives or your
spirit guides.
• A small indoor water feature in the background stimulates the initial
release to the floating state. Close your eyes and flow with the water.
• Outdoors, find a small stream or gentle waterfall. Shred leaves or
petals into the water downstream until you are ready to close your
eyes.
• Take a friend to keep you safe when you are astrally traveling.
• Lean against a water tree, such as a willow, and allow the sounds to
carry you gently as you are floating.

FLYING
Flying is the ultimate astral experience, but it can be another obstacle if
your logic is working against you. It is the final doorway to astral worlds
and states. Flying can vary from the sensation of flying at speed to instantly
teleporting to the desired destination. In astral flying you usually feel the
rush of air like a wind tunnel and a whoosh, and the flying sensation may
kick in once you have floated free of your body.
The more you incorporate out-of-body flight, the more immediate and
powerful your astral adventures become.
If flight is not happening naturally and you want to progress from
floating, immerse yourself in the flying sensation.
• Frequently walk through aviaries, bird sanctuaries, butterfly gardens,
and birds of prey flying experiences where you can, under
supervision, fly the birds and feel their feathers and wings.
• Choose a bird species with which you resonate, whether a huge crane
 or pelican or a feisty blackbird, and find out all you can about its
mythology throughout the ages. This will be your symbol of flight; a
bird you can see regularly will imprint the flying sensation in your
consciousness.

TRY THE FOLLOWING STAGES, WORKING FROM

PHYSICAL STIMULI INWARD

1. Vision/Visualization
• Sit quietly, observing without analysis your chosen bird, perhaps
perched on a tree and especially as it takes flight. You can also
download images and make it your screensaver on your smartphone or
computer.
• Memorize the bird’s details so you can see the bird with outspread
wings with your eyes closed.

2. Sound/Clairaudience or Psychic Hearing

• Does your bird have a distinctive call or sound? Does this vary?
Download the call and other similar birdsongs, perhaps set to
background music.
• Work with actual sounds as often as possible so that you can hear
them in your mind at any time.
• Now put these stages together and sit in silence outdoors, picturing
and hearing the creature even when it is not present.

3. Touch
• Use feathers you find or buy from an ecofriendly source and, touching
them with your index fingers, absorb the essence of your bird species.
Bird sanctuaries often sell discarded feathers.
• Imagine the feathers enveloping you and add the other senses.
 • Now all you have to do is to let your spirit merge with the bird
energies.
• The easiest way to merge with your bird’s flight is to sit and very
slowly and rhythmically sway into your chosen bird’s energy field. If
it is a quiet, gentle creature, move slowly, and if it is tiny, visualize it
as just larger than yourself, enclosing you within it so you see through
its eyes.
• Allow a personal bird call to come that will always evoke astral flight
when spoken in your mind. It can be a few words or a more complex
recitation, such as Hawk, fly high, through mountains to the sky, that
my spirit soars as yours.
• Over and over recite the words as you sway slowly and mesmerically,
and through half-closed eyes see your creature totally enveloping you
and your two auras mixing and merging.
• As you fly in your mind with and as your bird, see the world beneath
as you soar and land and soar again.
• Then return to the earth and, breathing slowly, separate from your bird
with thanks as it flies away.

WHAT YOU MAY EXPERIENCE DURING ASTRAL

PROJECTION
Here are a few examples of sensations you may encounter during your
astral journeys.

Vibrations
When I talk about vibrations, they are not physiological sensations but inner
vibrations. Once you are in control of the astral experience, vibrations can
be very gentle if expected and prepared for. They may be accompanied or
replaced by a buzzing sound or sensation. If unexpected, they can be
unsettling.
• Feeling vibrations is a good indication you are about to leave your
 physical body and a sign that your psychic powers are evolving. Think
of vibrations like a car engine revving; they occur as the energy
centers come to life to fuel the astral travel.
• You may also experience a surge of energy in your upper body as the
energies pass through your upper energy centers.
• Massage chairs of the kind found in nail salons and airports are
excellent for tuning in to these vibrations, as are electric foot
massagers, and may occasionally trigger an instant out-of-body
experience.

Falling or Sinking
Falling or sinking sometimes occurs during the separation process of the
physical and astral bodies. It is best described as Alice tumbling down the
rabbit hole or as riding on a water slide.
The key, as with floating, is letting go. Falling can be a very gentle
process, like autumn leaves drifting from the trees, or sinking into a deep
mattress when you are very tired once you stop resisting.

MORE ABOUT THE SILVER CORD

You may worry that somehow you will become detached from your body
and float eternally in the ether. I have already described the silver cord, the
source of energy flowing between the physical and astral bodies. Even if
you cannot see it, the silver cord cannot be broken because it is made of
pure life force, your life force, and it links body, consciousness, and soul.
Astral travel expert Robert Bruce describes the cord as a convergence of
energy strands connected to all the main chakra energy centers and some of
the more significant minor ones. It may be that when our bodies die, the
cord attaches to another life form that is to be incarnated.
For we are the energy, and astral travel confirms our spiritual self’s
limitless potential. In the next chapter, we explore more advanced astral
projection techniques, including shamanism and traveling astrally with our
guide to explore the Akasha, our personal records.
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 5
more advanced astral projection
techniques

Once you are confident floating and flying in your astral body across the
earth plane, unrestricted by time, distance, or gravity, you may wish to
explore other realms beyond this world. The astral plane extends downward
to lost lands beneath the waves and upward to other galaxies and lands
between.
Once we raise our spiritual vibrations, we activate within our astral body
our higher or soul self, the more evolved part of our astral body, which
forms the core of the self that travels through many lifetimes.
For some people, this next stage of moving beyond the earth plane
occurs totally spontaneously, but there are techniques to speed and
strengthen travel beyond the earth plane. This and the following two
chapters focus on ways your enhanced astral awareness can explore the
afterlife, the world of guides and angels, and past and future worlds.

SOUNDS
Sound is one of the strongest triggers for naturally occurring out-of-body
experiences, and being enveloped by harmonious sound will carry the
traveler to other dimensions. Throughout the ages and in almost every
religion, chanting, singing, and rhythm have offered a pathway to raise
consciousness and enter mystical trance states. The music of the spheres
was the term used by the Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras
to express the harmony of the different levels of cosmic existence.

MUSIC
Music boxes, playing a familiar tune such as Brahms’s Lullaby, are
excellent triggers for drifting out of the physical body and being drawn on
the repetitive harmony to progressively higher realms. By the time the
music ceases, you will be traveling.
Experiment with different excerpts of classical music, for example
Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” “Jupiter, the
Bringer of Jollity” from Gustav Holst’s Planets suite, Edvard Grieg’s
“Morning Mood” from Peer Gynt, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of
the Sugar Plum Fairy” from The Nutcracker, and selections from George
Frideric Handel’s Water Music. The beginnings of Ludwig van Beethoven’s
Fifth Symphony (the sound of fate knocking at the door) or Tchaikovsky’s
1812 Overture are also good stimuli.
You can gradually increase the length of the pieces. Antonín Dvořák’s
New World Symphony is very sustaining, as are any of Tchaikovsky’s ballets
or Léo Delibes’s Coppélia.

TATTVA CARDS
By far the most effective method for more advanced out-of-body work
involves using the Vedantic Tattva cards, which were introduced in the
Western world by the Theosophists and the magical Hermetic Order of the
Golden Dawn at the end of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth
century. This version focuses on the main five elements and has been
adapted to create out-of-body sensations and visions of other dimensions. It
is not at all complicated if you follow the stages, as each is a progressive
doorway to enter. As long as you keep to the order listed, you can stop at
any doorway and still enjoy an astral cosmic experience.

Using Tattva Cards as a Focus

These consist of five basic shapes that correspond to the four elements
(Earth, Air, Fire, and Water) plus the fifth element, Ether or Akasha,
considered in magick to be the state or spiritual level created by the
combination of the other four elements that allows magick and, in this case,
advanced astral travel to take place.

Making Your Out-of-Body Stairway

Create the geometric shapes from colored cardstock or draw them on white
cardstock squares and color them. You can color the backgrounds as
suggested below, but the symbols also work well with white backgrounds.
Each shape should be about 6 inches (15 cm) tall.
Using fluorescent colors can make them even more powerful.
The Sanskrit names are often used, but adapt the system to what works
for you.
First make Prithvi (Earth), which is a yellow square. (Note that while
these images may be reproduced here in blue, please use the suggested
palette when you create them yourself.) The Earth symbol can be set on
purple to give a three-dimensional effect. Not only is it good for travel
across the earth, but it is also the doorway to taking your astral form to the
subterranean worlds of the nature beings and mythological creatures.
 Next create Apas (Water), a crescent lying on its back, in silver,
sometimes on a black background. That is melted ice and an entry point to
underwater realms and cities drowned beneath the waves, actual and
mythological. You may feel the sensation of being momentarily immersed
in cool water.
Then comes Tejas (Fire), which is pictured as a red triangle, sometimes
on a green background. As you pass into Fire from Water, you may
experience momentary heat and be aware of steam being produced. You
may enter misty worlds. In the shamanic tradition this can be linked to the
fires of the ancestors in the sky, akin to the aurora borealis, where you may
connect with your deceased relatives and ancestors and past worlds.
 This gives rise to Vayu (Air), a blue circle, sometimes on a red
background, where the angels and spirit guides dwell, akin to theories of
heaven, which also offer access to star beings and other galaxies. Through
this door you will find the temple or, if you are very spiritually evolved, the
previous gateway holding your personal Akashic records.
Finally, this diffuses into the Ether or Spirit, called Akasha, represented
as a black or indigo oval, the cosmic egg, sometimes set on a yellow
background. This is the realm of astral healing and healers and future
worlds where higher spiritual beings such as archangels, saints, and
ascended masters may be contacted. Here may be generated peak
experiences when time stands still and there is a momentary feeling of
ecstasy.
How to Use the Symbols
Follow the directions below to use the symbols.
• Attach the shapes to a cord or string with Prithvi at the top, then Apas,
Tejas, Vayu, and Akasha at the bottom. Hang this from the ceiling.
• You can, by varying the size, superimpose the shapes one on top of
the other on a single white card, so that you walk through each to the
next, making Prithvi smallest of all and then making each symbol in
order to encompass the preceding symbol until the final and largest
symbol, Akasha, is reached. You move through each in turn, like
interconnecting doorways, to reach Akasha.

Etheric Travel
Now all you have to do is to decide where you will travel using your cards.
• Burn rose or frankincense incense, and work in pink or green
candlelight.
• Place the candles where you cannot burn yourself if you fall asleep.
Nightlights, enclosed containers, or candles in wall brackets are safest.
• Lie with your head propped on cushions or a headrest so you can
comfortably raise your glance from the bottom card to the top without
straining your neck. You may, however, find it more natural to sit.
 • Focus first on Prithvi and then close your eyes so you can see the
glowing square in your mind’s vision. Enter this world or, if you wish
to continue on to a different realm, focus on the next card. Pass
through any of the other doorways, becoming progressively higher, or
incrementally move on to reach Akasha.
• Do not visit more than one world. When you reach the top, you have
the freedom to connect with the other realm entrances through which
you have passed.
• Once you have the glowing Akasha in your mind, you can pass
through the final doorway through which only the inner or highest
spirit part of yourself is sufficiently insubstantial to enter.
• You will see your guide waiting at Akasha or whichever doorway you
make your destination. Allow them to guide you, holding your hand if
you wish, as you may be flying quite fast through your chosen realm.
• Remember that nothing can hurt you, for you are protected by your
guardian, whom some believe is the higher essence of ourselves.
• When you wish to return, your guardian will know and will guide you
back to the lowest yellow doorway (Prithvi), and you will be aware of
a slight jolt as you return to the material world.
• Thank your guide and ask if they have a special message for you.
• When you are ready, open your eyes to the candlelight.

ASTRAL TRAVEL THROUGH SHAMANISM

If this method seems too complicated or does not resonate with you,
shamanism is far more active in a magical entry point to the lower and
upper realms accessed by shamans, the magical priests and healers of
indigenous cultures from Siberia to Africa.
Astral projection among shamans and healers is achieved in trance by
ascent to the upper worlds on the back of a jaguar, rising on the smoke
through the smoke hole in the top of a tepee, or by flight on the back of a
bird. The smoke effect can be replicated by burning incense sticks. Most
common is by ascending the mythological world tree, considered the axis of
the world with the pole star at the top. The colors in the upper realms are
softer than on earth.
Shamans also visit the lower realms, accessed in trance through holes,
down tunnels, by riding spirit horses across plains, coursing along rivers on
spirit canoes, or diving deep into oceans.
These subterranean worlds bear no resemblance to the accounts of
orthodox or classical of religions’ dark, hopeless realms or hell, but a
wondrous world where healing through finding the missing parts of the soul
or acquiring wisdom can be experienced through communicating with
talking animals or the master or mistress of the herds or fishes, who
controls fertility and abundance. Astral encounters in the lower worlds often
become an astral adventure, aided by helpful spirit animals or mythological
or archetypal figures, in which our quest can answer many questions and
overcome fears. These lands contain what psychologists call the collective
unconscious of humanity in all times and ages, with which we can
reconnect.
Shamans in communities in areas across the world regularly visit these
otherworldly realms to intervene on behalf of their tribes with the Mistress
of Reindeer or Master of the Hunt or Sedna the Sea Mother to release
shoals of fish or seals (see chapter 6).
Shamanic practices are recorded in Paleolithic cave paintings—for
example, the dancing shaman pictured in the Trois Frères Caves in Ariège,
France, dating back to about 14,000 BCE. One of the chief shamanic
symbols is that of the bird; a bridge or ladder between dimensions is also
depicted.

Shamanic Chanting
The easiest stimulus for leaving the earth plane or material world is
chanting. Shamanic chanting is simply a slightly different method.
• Sit or lie where you are comfortably supported, or let your body softly
sway in time of the chant.
• See golden light emanating from the throat and begin voicing the
lowest note you can comfortably make and then the highest without
 any undue strain. This is your natural range. You can experiment with
sounds and chants that emanate spontaneously. To leave the earth
plane you need to increase the intensity of your words and then let
them fall into silence as a springboard to the heavens or deep into the
earth.
• Allow words and sounds to form faster and faster until they are
entirely spontaneous, and then create a regular rhythm of words that
can be repeated.
• When you have built up the intensity so you are on the move, let the
sounds go gradually quieter and slower until they fade away.
• Fly free with the birds, swim in the deep blue ocean, and travel down
tunnels to explore lands of talking animals.
• In the lower realms you may find a plant or tree spirit or animal or
wise woman who will offer healing. (See chapter 7 for more on
healing.)

Stepping or Dancing Out of the Body

If you’d like to incorporate movement, try the techniques below.
• Sway backward and forward as you listen to the music to create the
initial vibration.
• Dance yourself free, visualizing stepping out of your body as if you
were a hermit crab leaving a shell.
• Alternatively, visualize yourself pulling or wriggling free of your
physical body with your hands, as you would shed a tight wetsuit, or
roll over in your mind’s eye and leave your body behind.
• As you dance or move, see your feet leaving the ground and
continuing to move or dance as you rise into the sky or dive into the
ocean. At this point your physical body will spontaneously stop
moving and sit or lie motionless until you are ready to return from
your journey with new knowledge and the truant soul.
SOUL TRAVEL
As you progress, increasingly spontaneous out-of-body experiences and
planned astral travel will bring you closer to your spiritual essence, called
your higher self. Once you align with your higher self through astral
exploration, you reach a more spiritual state of enlightenment.
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 6
exploring other dimensions

The nineteenth-century novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles, written by Thomas

Hardy and based in the West Country of England, demonstrates that what
we think of as esoteric theories has a place in folk traditions around the
world:

“I don’t know about ghosts,” [Tess] was saying; “but I do know that
our souls can be made to go outside our bodies when we are alive.”
…
“What—really now? And is it so, maidy?” [the dairyman] said.
 “A very easy way to feel ’em go,” continued Tess, “is to lie on the
grass at night and look straight up at some big bright star; and, by
fixing your mind upon it, you will soon find that you are hundreds
and hundreds o’ miles away from your body, which you don’t seem
to want at all.”

Once you are free from the earth, exploring the stars astrally is often
regarded as the most exciting and purest form of astral travel (astra being
Latin for “star”). If you have studied the stars or are especially interested in
your own zodiac constellation, which may only be visible for part of the
year in your location, you may already have a destination in mind.

STAR PEOPLE
Perhaps you feel instinctively that you are a star soul and do not belong in
this world. You may have an inexplicable longing to go home, especially
when you look up at a starry sky. If so, you can focus on traveling to where
home is in the stars, and your radar will take you there. It may be that star
souls have particularly sensitive astral bodies that are easily activated, and
stellar travel seems to bring a feeling of connecting with roots.

Star Children
Richard Boylan, a psychologist and anthropologist of star children and star
seed adults, calls these super-children “new kids on the block.”
It may be that one child in a family is totally different and wise beyond
their years. For example, in Berkshire, England, a child named James spoke
for years about traveling nightly to his “other home” on another planet
when he could not sleep, as he was an insomniac. The people on this planet
stayed awake at night and slept by day. In this other realm he lived in a very
ordinary house where the homes were red like clay, except the walls were
completely flat with no bumps. It was always light there.

Star Flight
Spontaneous star flight can be scary but fulfilling. As Debi from central
France described it: “I would have the most wonderful flying dreams,
including one in particular where I went straight up, out through a roof, up
through the sky, and into space. I had a brief look at the Earth from above,
got a bit scared, and came straight back down again.”

Extraterrestrials and Astral Travel

Some theorize that encounters with extraterrestrials involve spiritual
connections between beings from different dimensions on the astral plane.
These advanced beings allegedly astrally traverse into our world, engaging
in mind-to-mind communication or drawing individuals to them. Both
children and adults, regardless of prior beliefs, may experience such
encounters. Margaret recounted lying in bed at age nine or ten, feeling her
body in place while her mind traveled. She described being lifted, floating
to a spaceship, entering a large dark interior, and returning shaken.

Working with the Starry Sky

When you visit starry places, you are not seeing hard rock or molten gases
but the essential energies of the celestial body, interpreted by your own
suddenly expanded astral vision. What is more, it seems presumptuous to
assume we are the only living beings in the universe. We currently lack the
knowledge of the energies necessary to teleport or travel at unimaginable
speeds across that universe or multiverses, but in time understanding will
replace science fiction.
Evolved astral travel may sufficiently raise our vibrations so we are able
to connect with galactic beings in the same way we do angels, spirit guides,
and ancestors.

STAR TRAVEL IN PRACTICE

By focusing on or visualizing a particular star, constellation, or planet with
which you feel affinity, gently breathing in its light and pushing away on
the exhaled breath like a sigh, you may be able to travel to it in your spirit
body.
To prepare yourself, visit observatories and watch the stars overhead, or
go on star tours where you can view the sky through a large telescope with
an expert. Smart tablets are excellent for showing you which stars are
overhead.
To embark on your astral journey, follow these steps:
• On a clear night, stand in an open space where there is no light
pollution.
• Turn to the four directions clockwise, beginning with the north,
extending your index finger of your writing hand and arm outward or
using a crystal wand.
• Then point down to the earth and finally up toward the chosen focal
star or constellation.
• As you do so, ask your astral guardian to take you to the stars and
return safely.
• You may find it easiest to lie on a camp bed, lounge chair, or blanket
so that you can look directly up.
• Mark a visualized pathway passing other stars by which you will
travel, and as you gently inhale and exhale, picture yourself climbing
a tree of stars.
• When you reach the top, float or fly slowly in your mind’s vision to
your chosen star or constellation.
• Focus on a doorway of light within the star, passing through a
shimmering curtain.
• Step gently on to the surface of the star or chosen planet and allow the
scene to unfold. You may find yourself floating slightly above the
surface.
• If you believe you are a star soul, you may find star beings waiting for
you and have a sense of belonging.
• If not, your astral guardian will take you to meet the guardian of the
star and wise ones who will share their insights.
• Star people in their own dimension have been described as radiating
brilliant light, and thus it is hard to make out their features. However,
they may resemble tall, beautiful, stately blond Nordics, as
extraterrestrials have consistently been depicted.
 • Gradually, the experience will fade. Relax into the gentle floating
sensation and offer thanks to your star guardian.
• You may experience a rushing wind sensation or fading light as you
return to your body. Once you are safely home, your astral guardian
may also merge into the darkness.
• As you return to Earth, you may hear with your inner voice wisdom
from the star beings or your astral guardian. Sit or lie quietly for a
while, gazing at the stars, and afterward, make a record of these
experiences.

THE OTHERWORLD OF MYTH

Less often experienced because feared or dismissed to fairy tales, the
underworld holds much wisdom and healing potential. In modern times,
Carl Jung, the psychiatrist and philosopher, believed in the rich world of the
collective unconscious, the well of universal wisdom of all people in all
times and places that may be accessed in dreams, visions, and astral travel
into the depths.

The Underworld Realms

Here are a few guidelines for accessing this world.
• Gaze deep into darkened water, which can represent a dark hole into
the depths of the sea, perhaps illuminating a bowl of ink-stained water
with a single candle. Alternatively, when the full moon casts a silver
pathway across the ocean or branches overhanging a river or pool
create an entrance to a subterranean world, follow the path in your
mind to the subterranean realms. Ripple the water with a stick, and
you will see that your astral guardian is with you.
• Gaze into a thick bush or hedge, what ancient hedge witches used to
call the division between two worlds, the everyday and spirit/magical.
• Alternatively, practice climbing down flights of stairs, descending in
an elevator in a tall building to a dark basement, or descending a
 ladder or open cage into a disused mineshaft at a mining museum.
• Read fairy tales and myths about enchanted forests, which have been
passed down through generations in many cultures, and so travel in
your astral form to lands first known by early life on earth, given new
life by retelling the ancient stories and poems through the generations.
The imaginary realms are a memory bank, a psychic World Wide Web
that you can access once you tune in, and, in doing so, access and
overcome the shadowy fears and buried desires and undeveloped gifts
within yourself.
• Don’t be surprised if you have a spontaneous out-of-body experience
in which you float or fly through the underworld while exploring these
triggers. In Egypt, I was reluctantly persuaded to climb down what
seemed to be a very unsteady and never-ending rope ladder to the dark
base of the Mother Pyramid. When I reached the bottom, I
experienced total euphoria and felt myself floating and flying and able
to see in the dark, though only the very old guide realized what was
happening.

Subterranean Experiences through Myth

Some UFO abductees locate the places to which they were taken by
extraterrestrials as under the ground or beneath the water, where there is
brilliant light shining up from the depths of the water.
If you travel astrally to the lower realms, astral action is often in the
form of an adventure, the hero (you) rescuing the trapped soul or
overcoming the monster, aided by helpful animals or mythological or
archetypal figures. Here you may encounter the trickster, sometimes a
coyote or raven. Indeed, the finest shamans are tricksters who confront
others with alternative views and denied hypocrisy. The animal helpers and
your astral guide offer to the astral explorer the necessary qualities to
successfully complete the journey, and these strengths and half-forgotten
talents may be brought back to the material world.
Plan a recorded script in advance in which you emerge triumphant—not
fantasy, but a direction sheet for the astral traveler in unfamiliar realms last
seen in childhood, though you can base this on a favorite fairy tale or myth.
Play this as you relax deeply in semidarkness, and follow its pathways until
you return refreshed.

Astrally Traveling through Entering the Darkness

If you want to leave the experience open, knowing that your astral guardian
will not let any harm befall you, create a quiet dark place with a shaded
lamp or three tiny flashlights, since shamans work primarily at night by the
light of a single lantern or fire. One by one switch them off and embrace the
silence and darkness.
This is akin to the shamanic Celtic bull dreams where druids wrapped
themselves in a white bull skin on the night of the midwinter solstice inside
a burial mound facing the coming dawn. When the new dawn broke, the
mound was opened, the bull skin removed, and the initiate experienced a
surge of light, a sense of flying, and great prophetic wisdom.

Entering the Darkness

To enter the darkness, follow these guidelines:
• Wait until you are sleepy.
• Light a single myrrh or sage incense stick in a safe place where you
cannot knock it over.
• Focus on any external sounds you can hear, whether urban or country,
in your mind’s ear, turning down the volume so that they fade.
Visualize a thick mist muffling them.
• Move into the stillness and the darkness. As you travel through the
deep, dark places, you may meet the Old Grandmother of Winter, who
offers you her hand through the darkness.
• Your guardian will take you back on the smoke or up through the dark
water at any time, despite your likely reluctance to leave.

MEETING ANCESTORS AND BELOVED RELATIVES

ASTRALLY
Once you can travel to other dimensions, you can connect with beloved
relatives who have died.
Some people with a dying relative will see a tunnel of light opening and
may need to encourage them to go to the relatives waiting in the light at the
other end. However, if the loved one died in pain or without resolving
matters with the living, the deceased and those left behind on earth may
find it hard to find closure without a final goodbye. Though experiences
with mediums and in dreams can be healing, visiting relatives in the
afterlife in your astral body can bring great peace, even in sorrow.

ASTRAL REASSURANCE
As we saw with earthly astral travel, emotion is a strong pull for awakening
the astral body.
Mick’s father had died four days earlier. He had not let go of life easily
and so Mick was troubled. Mick said, “Four days after my father died, I
found myself floating above the local church and floated into the church. I
had not been there since I was a small boy. As I looked down the aisle, a
panel slid open behind the organ and my dad stepped out in the clothes he
usually wore for his job as truck driver and mechanic. Dad told me he was
fine and I wasn’t to worry. Then Dad went inside the panel again, and it slid
shut. It was the church where my parents got married. Perhaps my father’s
spirit returned to the place where he had experienced one of the happiest
days of his life, and that was why he met me there. I recall floating home
over the rooftops of the houses where I lived as a boy, feeling at peace.”
The astral journey where father and son met was in a sacred location.
Places of sacred power, such as churches, especially those built on the
sites of old temples, ancient monuments, and energy ley lines, act as a
powerful trigger for astral connection. Times that revive joint memories,
such as an anniversary of the death, can also increase the connection.

MAKING A MEMORY BOX DEDICATED TO THE

DECEASED PERSON
Here are a few tips for making a memory box.
• In the days before the funeral, collect mementoes in a small wooden
 box with a lid, such as a brooch given for a milestone birthday, a
photograph, a medal from a sporting triumph, or a poem they wrote or
were sent. Ask friends and relatives to bring to the wake a small
memory of the deceased or to write a few lines about the deceased
person, recalling a shared joke or experience, for the box. Afterward,
keep the box on a table with photos of you with them and a vase or pot
of their favorite flowers.
• Many ghost experiences may in fact be astral projection when we
suddenly or deliberately recall the deceased, during relaxation as well
as lucid dreams, and we join in the astral realm. The contact can be
momentary, the sense of a presence, or the fleeting touch of a hand.
• When you are alone and quiet, at twilight, inhale the flowers or a
fragrant herb they loved.
• Take an item from the memory box without looking.
• Close your eyes and hold the item between your cupped hands,
activating the chakra energy points where your hands link with the
loving heart.
• Stroke the item rhythmically, as if you are peeling off layers, and
picture the hands of the deceased person enclosing yours.
• Gradually let the hands and item blend with your eyes still closed,
recalling the voice of the person. Ask to be shown the realm where
your loved one now is.
• You may find yourself and your loved one, with hands still joined,
holding the astral form of the memento and floating through clouds or
mists, and see golden gates, a beautiful garden, white temples, or the
ocean.
• You may, however, see a replica of the house, town, or country where
your relative grew up or was happiest.
• In astral form your relative will appear younger and stronger and not
 have any of the disabilities of their later earthly days.
• You will see heaven through their eyes and perhaps meet other
relatives.

Are These Experiences More Than Imagination?

If you are lucky, the experience will offer some proof.
Janna chose a war medal from the memory box of her father, George,
and felt a gentle, warm, and persistent breeze. She sensed she was holding
her father’s hand through mists to a beautiful rose garden. Here the flowers
were more brightly colored and fragrant than earthly ones. George showed
her one beautiful golden rose he was growing and said that it was unusual
to see it blooming so early, but that time was different in heaven. A keen
horticulturist in life, George explained he had his own garden in the afterlife
and advised others who did not know about plants.
The following day Janna was tidying George’s overgrown garden to
ready for the house sale when she noticed just one golden rose, like the one
in the afterlife, budding through the brambles. Janna had never traveled
astrally before and was a very logical person, but she realized it had been
her father’s birthday, and in his later years she had taken him to a botanical
garden on that day. He had been very frustrated before his death because he
was too sick to look after his garden.
A place where you were both happy is another strong trigger for astral
connection.

USING REPETITION TO OBTAIN VISIONS OF HIGHER

REALMS
A client named Vivian told me: “I am eighty-two years old and not greatly
looking forward to the Victorian heaven, pearly gates, harps playing, and
the rest. I was ironing in my living room and suddenly I seemed to be on a
mountaintop, like one I visited once in Austria, looking out over every
lovely place I have ever seen and surrounded by and recognizing all the
people I have ever loved, not in bodily form but their essence or personality.
I was not conscious myself of having a body. I heard a voice as clear as a
human voice say ‘This is heaven.’ I do not know how long I was absent
from the body, but I came back in the act of putting a garment onto the
clotheshorse.”
For Vivian, this experience took away her fear of dying and reassured
her that there was more than this life.
You can also use this method to connect with angels and spirit guides as
described later in the book.
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 7
past and future lives and healing
through astral travel

Since the astral body is not subject to restrictions of time, once you are
confident traveling to other dimensions, it is a short step to exploring past
worlds and the potential of futures as yet unmade.

MAKING THE TRANSITION TO PAST WORLDS

THROUGH STORYTELLING
One of the most ancient means of transition is storytelling, and if you are an
old soul, your astral travels will, over months or even years, unfold the
story of your past worlds.
As you explore, you are going to tell yourself the unfolding story and, if
you wish, record it to unravel the clues.
You may initially enter a past world imprinted on the ether to which you
have been instinctively attracted from childhood, or of which you have
recently become aware, that holds the key to what is occurring in your
present life.
Your astral guide may take you to a crossroads and gently propel you
toward an old world you had not expected. Trust and, afterward, you will
understand why.

Relaxation
Past-world exploration through storytelling is gentle. You may have a sense
of floating slightly above the ground and mists clearing as you pass through
different scenarios. The key to past-life astral success is letting it happen.
• Settle on a reclining chair, bed, or sofa with pillows.
• Draw the curtains if it is daylight.
• Light a small lamp and use an oil such as lavender, rosemary, rose, or
sage in a diffuser. Any background noises will gradually merge with
sounds in the experience.
• Picture yourself in a garden with your background fragrance filling
your senses and a flight of steps. Slowly count back from thirteen to
one as you descend.
• Walk through a doorway, a curtain of golden or rainbow light, mist, or
across a bridge into bright light.
• Follow a butterfly or animal along pathways leading through a forest,
a tunnel whose walls sparkle with lights or crystals, along a river to a
mooring place. You will become aware of your astral guardian waiting
as you step into the astral world of the past.
• Say, I am five years old. Someone calls because you are too young to
 be out alone and will take you home.
• The location may be clear from the start as you look around, or it may
be one you have seen in dreams.
• In the home, focus on an object. Widen the view around it or look out
of a window. Pinpoint unusual features, furnishings, and so on.
• Is anyone else present, and if so, what are they doing or saying?
• Find your sleeping place and count forward slowly five more years.
• Are you in the same place with the same people? Look for clues about
the new place and additional people. Do you recognize any of them
from the present lifetime?
• Keep moving forward, counting in five-year stages, but if you come
to a significant event—for example, a pregnancy, a wedding, or going
to war—you can move forward more slowly, a single year or a month
at a time.
• If at some point you cannot see anything after moving forward, you
may have died. You will only see your death if it holds the key to
overcoming a phobia in the present or past worlds—for example,
drowning, which may explain a terror of water in the present world.
Because you are in your astral body, it will be like watching a movie.
• When you have seen enough or the life has ended, you will be aware
of your astral guardian showing you the steps. This time count up
from one to twelve to the everyday world. On thirteen say, I am back
in my body. Everything is as it was before.
• Sit quietly in the lamplight. Identify any people who featured in this
world, loving or hostile, and make connections with any past and
present situations.
• In time, you may find a common thread running through your
storyline.
USING FOSSILS TO UNCOVER THE PAST
Using fossils is an effective way to let your unconscious wisdom explore a
particular period of time. These steps can guide you:
• Hold a fossil, such as a dinosaur bone, or an organic gem, such as
amber or jet, in the hand with which you do not write. The stone,
being millions of years old, has accumulated past-world energies
through countless millennia.
• Place it against your third eye, the psychic center in the middle of
your brow, and you can travel almost instantly through the years to
when the stone was buried or washed by now dried-up inland seas,
like being in a wind tunnel that suddenly opens into calm and light.
You can use Tattva cards to guide you, walking through the uppermost
Akasha doorway.
• Greet your astral guide, who will be waiting to take you to the place
where you can observe or participate safely.
• You may identify someone who resembles you, perhaps yourself in an
earlier life or an ancestor with whom you feel kinship.
• Watch the scene unfold until you become aware of the stone again,
and your guide will take you back to your resting physical form.

CHANGING THE SCENARIO

If a traumatic event is identified in a past life, before closing the experience,
walk out of the dungeon, parachute from the burning plane, or leave the
abusive partner behind. This will heal the experience in the present life and
prevent repeating a destructive pattern with the same soul who made you
unhappy in the past life.
However, because the past world exists on the astral plane in memory, it
is possible, as in a lucid dream, to change patterns of the past by creating a
new ending to the life, so the traumatic event is replaced by a positive
situation. This will overwrite the earlier experience.
While on the astral plane in your pure energy form, you can marry the
reliable guy, escape before the witchcraft hunters arrive to drag you away,
or board the ship that would have made your fortune instead of being tied
by duty. This will free you to consider other options in your present world.
Immediately after you are fully in this world again, say to yourself, I
change the pattern from this moment on. If you were acting bravely by
defeating an adversary, say, I take that strength with me from this
experience.

ASTRAL PROGRESSION
Future worlds are different from past-life ones, because they exist as
potential and therefore are even mistier realms. It is possible to tap in to a
hypothetical future world in which you are reborn or your descendants who
carry your genes are living.
It is better to focus a lifetime or two ahead rather than a futuristic sci-fi
scenario. Leonardo da Vinci, a Renaissance visionary, did draw startlingly
accurate flying machines centuries before flight was achieved, but for most
of us it is the people and the relationships that predominate in future
visions. This future world will be indistinct and dreamlike.
You may see the present family home occupied by new generations, a
business you have started flourishing, future generations living in other
countries, or the outcome of a course you have contemplated but have not
yet embarked on.
If you believe in reincarnation, in theory you can link into your future
potential persona. You may become a famous pianist a lifetime or two
ahead if you are struggling to practice now and feel like giving up.

How to Move Forward in Time

A simple and highly effective technique uses running water, such as a
waterfall, fountain, or fast-running shower.
• Morning is the best time for future-world viewing. Find a spot where
the first sunlight falls, and sit or stand so that the running water fills
your vision and ears.
• Begin to count forward aloud until you reach one hundred. As you do
so, focus on the cascading water, seeing through it like a curtain.
 • Before long, your eyes should blur or mist, and you will see colors
and lights. Draw these into a huge bubble, and project yourself closer
and closer to the bubble until you are inside it.
• Close your eyes, and hear only the water.

You will be an observer in your astral form, and anyone who perceived
you in that future world would view you as a ghost.

Can You Change the Future?

By exploring possible future scenarios you can understand more clearly the
possible consequences of present action. If you are contemplating throwing
in the towel, you may see in the future the happy results of staying the
course and a descendant looking at a photo album of your life, which
proved fulfilling after all.

ASTRAL HEALING
Although the astral body is a perfected form of the physical body, poor
lifestyle choices can be reflected in the astral body. The aura energy field
and chakra energy centers that are part of the astral body can become
blocked or overactive.
Astral healing can overcome weaknesses that are left from past worlds.
For example, Grace, who suffered from constant sore throats, recalled being
hanged in the late 1500s during the witch persecutions. More usually a
throat weakness is a symptom that you were not allowed to freely express
yourself, because you were living under an oppressive regime.
This freeing of the blocked energies through astral healing results in
becoming able to speak more assertively and thus change present lifestyle
for the better.

Spontaneous Astral Healing

Healing can be absorbed through the energies in the higher astral realms to
cleanse, rebalance, and reenergize the physical form.
Donna from central Sweden described how she suffered from mobility
difficulties as a child and spent hours sitting in a chair on the veranda of
their remote red wooden house in the forest. “From about the age of three, I
had the amazing sensations of running fast and could feel my legs brushing
against foliage. During these experiences, which lasted up to ten minutes
but seemed much longer, I would be able to go out of the garden and
through the pine woods and roam all over the nearby Lakeland area. When I
became a teenager, the family obtained a car, and I saw in vivid detail the
places I had described in my childhood on my journeys. I was aware of
actual movement and of wind. When my mother called out to me, there
would be an inrush of air and a bumping sensation, as if someone had
knocked into my chair. My mother called these ‘sleeps with my eyes open.’
After an experience I found that for several hours my mobility would
improve.”

ENCOUNTERING HEALING GUIDES

If you are unwell or unhappy, your astral guide will, as your astral
vibrations evolve, take you to higher planes that are progressively misty,
where you can meet guides who were healers from a variety of traditions
and were once human. Alternatively, a spirit physician may come to you
during lucid dreaming, bringing healing and suggesting remedies.

Being Healed of Fears and Lack of Confidence

Even in earlier stages of astral travel, freedom from the body and the ability
to soar can bring total confidence to daily dilemmas. This is akin to the
restoration of soul loss practiced by shamans who retrieve lost and
undeveloped parts of people.
The more you free your astral self to expand your horizons, the more
you gain confidence in the daily earthly world.
Karl was teased as an adolescent because his weight made him do
poorly at sports. On one occasion he withdrew from a football game and
started to feel sleepy, as if dropping into a trance. Suddenly he found
himself way above his own physical body and above the others. Observing
the players as he remained there, floating thirty feet above the ground, he
sensed a dominance over his earthbound companions. I am up here. You are
down there. Suddenly, one of his friends shouted his name and he leapt back
into his body. After the experience he said he became more confident in
dealing with teasing, and as a by-product he lost a lot of weight.

Healing through the Astral Body

The ancient Greeks practiced astral healing through a process known as
dream incubation, creating healing lucid dreams in which the patient
received healing in sleep and was visited by a healing deity, who would
give instructions about healing remedies. Aesculapius was a healer who
lived during the eleventh century BCE and was later considered a god of
healing. Aesculapian temples in the classical world, sited at sacred wells
and springs, were famous for dream incubation.

The first shrine dedicated to Aesculapius was built in Athens in the fifth
century BCE by Sophocles. Other shrines followed in rapid succession, and
over three hundred active Aesculapian healing temples existed throughout
Greece and the Roman Empire in the second century CE.
Evening prayers or chants were held during the hour of the sacred
lamps, and seekers would ask Aesculapius to bring them healing dreams.
When Aesculapius appeared to the dreamers, he would tell them the
medicine they should use and any treatment that should be followed.
Sometimes his daughters, Hygieia and Panacea, also associated with health
and healing, would appear. On occasion the god would perform psychic
surgery.

Experience Powerful Healing Energies

If you have an ailment that is resistant to treatment, or if you are in despair
and no one understands or you cannot find the right cure, visiting a Temple
of Aesculapius during planned astral travel will tune you in to the pure
healing energies of the higher planes. This is effective whether you use
lucid dreaming or project yourself to one of the temples that are imprinted
on the astral plane by asking your astral guide to show the way.
• Before the experience, visit an old temple, a marble gazebo, a wooden
or glass pergola found in formal or botanical gardens, or a similar
structure (such as at the Getty Center near Los Angeles), or adapt a
garden gazebo.
• Sit or, if in a private setting, lie on a blanket or faux fur rug (to
simulate the animal skins used in the original dream temples), if
possible near gently flowing water or a water feature, or play flowing
water music through headphones.
• Work at twilight, the hour of the sacred lamps, as you travel to one of
the old temples open to the water.
• Wait in half sleep until you become aware of a healing guide touching
your hand, filling it with light and coolness or warmth as the two palm
chakras merge into pure energy and light and pass (some believe
through the silver cord) into your resting physical body.
• You may be told the necessary remedy, and you will be carried on the
sound of the water back to your physical body resting in the temple.
• If possible, stay all night, and you may travel further in your dreams.
• As you absorb the healing energies, your body will become more
formless and take on the shape of the rainbow aura ellipse surrounding
your physical body.
• Colors within your astral body may during healing take on rainbow
hues or become an even richer shade of gold or brilliant silver and
pulsate as the pure life force flows into it. Breathe and let it happen.

Absent Energy Healing for Others

Ask that healing may be sent via your astral self to a close friend or family
member for the greatest good and for the purest intent if it is acceptable to
them. This is far deeper than physical healing because your astral self is
communicating with theirs and will flow into the physical body via their
spirit form.
• In your astral form, at a time you know the intended recipient will be
sleeping and so receptive, travel to their home or hospital ward by
focusing on a photo of them.
• If at first this is hard, enlarge the photo and send the astral energy via
your writing hand by touching their heart, brow, and receptive hand on
the photo. In time, you will be able to travel astrally to their bedside.
• If you have astrally traveled to their bedside, place your writing hand
on first your own heart and then theirs, and then on your brow and
then theirs.
• Next, picture your astral self holding their receptive hand with your
writing hand to transmit love and healing, and you will sense your
energies merging as a joint aura around the two hands, the hearts, and
the brows.
• You may see this as rays of light.
• When you sense the slowing of the energies, touch your heart and
theirs for the final time and let the connection fade.
• As you are coming back to consciousness at home, place your hands
close to fruit or flowers to endow the same astral flow and send it to
the recipient of the astral healing.

In the following chapter, we will explore the highest realms.

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 8
reaching the highest realms in astral
travel

Out-of-body experiences, lucid dreaming, and past-life recall become more

instant and clearer once we connect with the highest spiritual realms.
What is more, while spirit guides and guardian angels connect with us
within this world, in our astral bodies, as we raise our own vibrations, we
can experience and share their worlds.
By operating through our own higher or soul self, we activate the more
evolved part of our astral body to communicate through our astral selves
with angels or higher light beings, star beings, and wise teachers.

HIGHER ASTRAL POWER THROUGH ENERGIZING THE

CHAKRAS
Chakra is Sanskrit for “wheel.” Picture the chakras, the inner powerhouse
of your astral body, as whirling multicolored lotus petals around a pulsating
astral gem of the main chakra color.

• Sit in a comfortable position with eyes half-closed, perhaps with a

background of buzzing insects, birdsong, or even the muted roar of
traffic.
• Focus first in your mind on the area around your perineum or the top
of your thighs as your Root chakra opens and whirls around. Visualize
a luminous red ruby in the center.
• Focus on the Root chakra and create in your mind its spirit animals:
the roar of the bull, the hiss of the serpent, and the surging power of
the fiery dragon stirring within you.
• Concentrate next on the mighty snake goddess, Kundalini the
Empowerer, as she uncoils from around the base of your spine.
• Visualize the two spiraling columns, the left lunar and right solar
channels of energy, as silver and gold liquid snakes, spiraling upward,
coiling rhythmically round the sushumna central energy column.
• From the Root chakra, move next to the Sacral chakra, in the center of
the lower abdomen. As the petals whirl around an amber gem, the
glowing orange sphere fills you with warmth and a desire to reach out
and a dolphin, its spirit creature, leaps through shoals of golden fish
over a crescent moon, scattering sparks of silver moon water.
• Next see the Solar Plexus chakra, situated above the navel, opening
and whirling yellow around the rich topaz core, fueled from below by
orange light, filling you with power, confidence, and focus, as its
power icons, the salamander, elemental fire lizard, and the golden
phoenix blaze gloriously.
• Move up to the Heart chakra in the center of the chest. Its petals open
and whirl around a flawless emerald, energized like the lower chakras
by the triple columns that crisscross and meet in the center of each
chakra. Feel the fountain of love and awareness cascading as pink and
green light, like a flock of turtle doves, symbols of harmony, ascend
toward the growing light.
• Move upward as the Throat chakra around the Adam’s apple opens, its
swirling petals revealing a rich blue sapphire as blue butterflies carry
the light ever upward.
• In the center of the Brow chakra, the third eye, see the two spiraling
columns merging with the central one, pulsating indigo and violet
around the huge deep purple amethyst, as the ascended serpent power
is transformed into a magnificent rearing hooded cobra, which is the
special protector of ancient pharaohs and the destroyer of all harm.
• Finally, the column emerges from the Crown chakra as a white
dazzling diamond, whose radiance mingles with cascading white and
gold from above as the eagle of pure gold, the supreme chakra icon,
touches the sun through skies filled with rainbow birds of paradise.
• Now your body becomes a rainbow cascading from above and below
until the external body frame melts and you are ready to ascend to the
 higher levels of the astral planes.

THE SEVEN REALMS

While the chakras can serve as a traditional way of picturing the astral
realms, the concept of seven realms provides a framework for exploring the
progressive levels of the cosmos. If this concept of seven realms does not
seem helpful, visualize moving progressively up from the lower to higher
realms, using the seven ascending chakra colors.

A Journey around the Universe

Read the following sections through several times so you can imprint them
on your astral memory as a template you can allow to unfold.
Have a few dry runs visualizing the ascent to different worlds until you
are no longer imagining it but present in the chosen world.
Ask your astral guide to be with you. At each level you will meet other
guides to teach and heal you.
At any point you wish to return, thank your guides and slowly count
back from twenty to zero. By zero you will be fully in the everyday world.
• Each time you make the journey you will experience something new.
Note whom you meet and what you learned in these wanderings in
your journal.
• Ask your astral guide to take you to your chosen realm on different
journeys, starting with the first with which you are partially familiar.
• Explore each realm before moving on to the next one, even if you are
spiritually experienced.
• When you have visited all, you can choose which you most need for a
particular journey.

Walking through the Worlds

Once a week or every other week may be sufficient for exploring these
realms.
When you pass through a realm on your way to a higher one you may
experience colors, lights, and moving through a tunnel with light wind.
Use one of the methods of psychic protection shared earlier in this book
(see here), or surround yourself with a circle of light, and ask your guides
for protection.

THE SEVEN PLANES AND THE COLORED RAYS

Some philosophical systems link specific colors of rays of radiance with the
seven planes. These are different from the colors associated with the chakra
system. The rays are colors through which you may identify each plane as a
swirling mist that suddenly clears. Each plane will be suffused with light of
its color. However, you may see a golden light for each realm or chakra.
Following the colors, I have listed the fragrances associated with each
plane, which you can burn as incense sticks, or use the flowers or any form
of the fragrance.
There are numerous ways of describing the seven planes and no real
agreement—the information below is a combination of established systems
that has worked well for me over many years of writing.

The Etheric Plane

RAY: Violet
FRAGRANCE: Lilac or strawberry
As the mists clear your astral guide will be waiting here, as will your spirit
physician and a life-skills teacher, whom you may have not yet encountered
but who can encourage undeveloped talents and may be connected with
your actual or desired career.
This plane, the closest to the material world and one you have partially
explored in your early astral flight, is what people experience when they
talk of out-of-body travel.
Here is where you talk mind-to-mind to faraway friends and relatives
and visit their homes. Astrally traveling, you can cross the world to places
you always wanted to visit.
Do not rush beyond this realm, for as you spend more time here you will
note beautiful gardens, forests, and buildings and marvel at perfect flowers,
trees, and species of birds, butterflies, and other animals.
 You have the option to return to the everyday world or go on.

The Astral or Mystical Plane

RAY: Rose
FRAGRANCE: Carnation or myrrh
This is the most magical of lands and one you may wish to return to many
times. Astral is the all-encompassing term I have used generically
throughout the book for all astral realms and experiences. Here it
specifically refers to the realms of magick and mystery recorded in art and
folk tale long before the written word. Therefore, you may wish to call it the
Mystical plane.
This is the underworld realm visited by shamans to obtain healing for
individuals, where lost or discarded parts of the self can be restored. The
fey folk and the nature spirits may take their time to approach you. Be
patient.
Here also are the chiefs of the wise animals whose wisdom Native North
Americans value so much. If you are quiet and wait to be approached, they
will be welcoming, and their knowledge is to be treasured.
Walk further, for there are mythical creatures, magical birds, unicorns,
phoenixes, and all those species we have wiped out on earth.
Be guided by your astral guardian, especially if you see caves or huts in
the forest. Here may reside the ancient mothers of the herds. In deep watery
caverns, the sea mothers who control the shoals of fish may dwell.
In what seems like a giant fairy story, you may encounter the wise
woman, the adventurer, the trickster, the great ruler, the healer, the hero or
heroine, the dreamer, and the talking animal, who represent your own
instinctive wisdom. As you talk to these characters and watch scenes
unfold, you will realize they represent aspects and qualities within yourself.
This is a good plane to visit through lucid dreams.
You can now go back or onward.

The Mental or Rainbow Plane

RAY: Orange
FRAGRANCE: Lily or mint
The Mental or Rainbow plane is akin to our idea of heaven, where your
deceased family and ancestors live.
The wisest ancestors may have attained higher planes and act as family
guides. Those who lived destructively linger in a shadowy world until they
resolve their karma; this is an area your guide will steer you away from.
It is said that the deceased fashion from their thoughts the lives they
wish to have in the afterlife, right down to reproducing their homes. The
ancient Egyptians called this realm the Blessed Field of Reeds, which was
situated in the Milky Way; the Celts called it the Isles of the Blest; and
Spiritualists call it Summerland or the Summerlands.
This is a realm you may visit and see during lucid dreaming if a relative
has a message. More dramatically, people enter this realm temporarily
during a near-death experience; access has been described as traveling
through a tunnel toward a point of light.
You may hear beautiful music. Colors will be brighter than earthly
colors, and all your senses are heightened.
You may see your relatives young and fit, along with their homes or
workplaces. If you are lucky, your beloved deceased grandmother or
grandfather will appear by your side and hug you.
An ancestor who resembles you may appear and show you their world,
perhaps more than a hundred years earlier, for time has no meaning here.
Finally, you may encounter your spiritual ancestor, who will take you to
ancient Egypt, the world of the Vikings, or an ancient temple so you
understand why you are fascinated by a particular place and time in history
that you once shared with them.
Gradually this realm will fade, and you may feel sleepy. Let it go, and
your spirit guide will take you back to the everyday world.

The Buddhic Plane

RAY: Yellow

FRAGRANCE: Rose or thyme

The realms become progressively mistier and less substantial, and now you
will be seeing the Buddhic plane through colored light.
 Waiting will be your guardian angel or higher light guide. You will feel
the softness of their wings and hear the clear voice you have heard so many
times in your mind. This is the realm of guardian and helper angels, and you
may encounter one who is close to you right now because of your life
situation.
There will be temples, altars, shrines, an overwhelming sense of
fragrance quite unlike earthly fragrances, music more beautiful than the
most wonderful choir on earth, and a sense of lightness such that you feel
you could easily float away.
Huge marble libraries are filled with knowledge, some of it lost to
humanity, from the advanced civilizations of Atlantis and Lemuria, which,
according to myth, disappeared under the sea.
Through the mist will come spirit guides who have never lived or wise
mortals who have devoted themselves after life to guiding humans on earth.
Among them will be teachers who will share with you healing or
spiritual knowledge, often in subsequent lucid dreams, and who may offer
you healing and healing remedies. Their faces will be filled with light.
This plane may be the home of your astral guide.
But for now, a wise teacher will take you into one of the marble
buildings, perhaps to look into a book of lost wisdom.
The experience will be dreamlike, and as you reach out to read a page,
the mists will close around it. But afterward you will understand missing
connections in your conventional knowledge and may come back with
impetus to develop a new spiritual or healing talent. Your personal records
wait in the next realm, the Akashic records.
As if you were an exhausted child, your astral spirit guide will take you
back to the place on earth from where you began this exploration. Your
guardian angel may move to the fore of your life.

Atmic Plane
RAY: Green
FRAGRANCES: Lavender or mimosa
On the Atmic plane, silver light may shine through the green mists, and you
will be aware of wonderful golden beings, archangels, ascended masters
who have chosen to teach and protect humanity (such as Gautama Buddha
and Guanyin), pillars of light that swirl rather than walk or float, and star
beings. This is a realm of pure energy.
You will view this plane from a great distance, perhaps on a hilltop.
Around you will dance light beams and rainbows.
Ahead of you on the golden plane is one single dazzling building made
of pure light, so huge that even from far away you cannot see the top of its
pillars.
Your spirit guide will ask if you would like to see the Akashic records
housed within. These halls hold all human experience, past, present, and
future. If you agree, you will become aware of another presence, which you
may see as a column of silver and who is one of your highest guides or
teachers or one of the Guardians of the Records.
This light being will enfold you in brilliance and warmth, and, through
what seems like a doorway in this light, you will find yourself looking at a
dazzling book, your personal record, opened to the page with the most to
reveal now.
Here you can read of your past lives and future opportunities. You will
not know the day of your earthly death, for such matters are affected by
many factors.
The light will fade, and you will feel as though you are waking from a
long sleep, so take your time.
Much of the information you will not instantly recall; however, more
details are etched in your memory and can be retrieved in sleep or quiet
times.
Do not visit this plane more than once every few months.

Anupādaka Plane
RAY: Blue/indigo
FRAGRANCES: Sandalwood or sage
This is a remarkably still plane where all you may see is an unadorned altar
or shrine of pure gold and radiance around it. This will be so bright that
even though you are at a great distance and even through the blue or indigo
ray, you can glimpse it for only a second without hurting your eyes.
 Your astral guide will be just behind you, telling you that you cannot
stay and must turn away.
Before you turn, look toward the altar and see your personal view of
divinity. You may recognize it from religious paintings or mythology, or it
may be less defined. At this moment you will feel the divine spark within
your soul kindle and know you need not fear anything.
Then the scene will be lost in blue or indigo mist, so dense you have to
hold your guide’s hand to find the way back.
Don’t repeat this more than perhaps two or three times a year. Each time
the glimpse of divinity will be clearer and more meaningful.

Adi Plane
RAYS: Red and gold
FRAGRANCES: Frankincense and lotus
One day, just before you leave the Anupādaka plane, your astral guide or
guardian angel may step back and a huge radiant being of light may pass
their starlike fingers in front of your eyes.
That is the threshold to the Adi plane, and it cannot be approached
directly. Just for a second you will glimpse a huge star-studded veil, through
which shines radiance you can perceive through half-closed eyes.
You may become momentarily aware of huge six-winged beings, the
seraphim on your side of the veil, whose heads disappear into the clouds,
though you are what seems like miles away.
You may hear a huge crescendo of celestial voices, feel great warmth,
and become aware that you, too, are bathed in light.
Then there will be total silence and peace, and your astral guide will
lead you back in silence through the mists of the Anupādaka plane.
You will not experience this every time, nor should you seek it, but it
may occur occasionally during your lifetime. Some believe that at the point
of death we glimpse the glory of the seventh plane and so can walk with joy
into the eternal.

LABYRINTHS
Labyrinths are another way to connect with the higher realms. Walking a
labyrinth (as opposed to a maze, which involves logic) allows the feet to
follow the inward and often intricate path that always leads to the center.
Here you can sit and experience your travel to the higher realms.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cassandra Eason is an international author and broadcaster on all aspects of
crystals, folklore, Celtic wisdom, Wicca, sacred sites, earth energies,
divinations, and natural magic. Cassandra has published more than a
hundred books during her forty years as an author, many of which have
been translated into numerous languages, including Japanese, Russian,
Hebrew, Portuguese, German, Dutch, and Spanish. Among her bestsellers
are The Complete Crystal Handbook, Complete Guide to Magic and Ritual,
The Psychic Power of Children, A Spell a Day, and the 1001 series,
including 1001 Crystals, 1001 Dreams, 1001 Tarot Spreads, and 1001
Spells. Her numerous books in the Little Bit Of series include A Little Bit of
Auras, A Little Bit of Crystals, A Little Bit of Wicca, A Little Bit of Runes,
and A Little Bit of Tarot.
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