This is in Japan by the way, a friend of mine claims that his girlfriend's father, who has never been to his house told him exactly where everything was in his room , by astral projection. He was so convincing and I know this guy, this guy is very down to earth, does not really believe in anything supernatural, but really thats just amazing to actually convince him of that, how does it work, did anyone try it? is it true that you can actually come out of your body or is this just a smart trick over the mind... maybe he guessed what would be probably in my friend's room and just got lucky... ?
I can only quote my own experience. Once, some years ago when I was living in London, I had been out 'on the town' all night. It was a glorious summer morning, and finding my self in St.James' park, I lay down on the grass and fell asleep. I then 'woke up' and walked along the entire legnth of the Mall, through Trafalgar Square, up Charing Cross Road - all seemingly perfectly normal. Everything looked exactly as it always does. Then suddenly,I found myself actually waking up back in the park! It was very strange. Either it was an extremely lucid dream - in fact, the most lucid I ever had, or else somehow my consciousness had been projected out of the body, and I'd taken what would have been my route home (at least some of the way). everything looked, as I say, exactly as it always does, and there was no sense at all that it wasn't just ordinary reality. Incidentally, I had not been taking drugs of any kind prior to this. I've also heard from my ex-wife that once when she was undergoing surgery, under general anasthetic, she was floating above her body and watching the whole thing. So - I think some kind of projection of the consciousness out of the body is possible - but I've never learned a technique to be able to do it at will. Interestingly, I have read that the C.I.A. employ people with this ability - 'remote viewing' is the term they use. Certainly there is a huge amount of literature on this subject - I have come across techniques in books on Magick, occultism and so on. I've never really tried them in any big way - but the claim made by some occultists is that it is possible to project the astral body, and once projected, it can either travel in this world, or go to the 'Astral Plane', and view other levels of reality. In the thread I posted about Theon, Sweet Mother says that not only herself, but Madame Theon had this ability. She said that Mm. Theon was extremely gifted in this department, and could not only project a subtle body, but could actually project 12 subtle bodies sequentially, composed of finer and finer stuff.
Hare Krishna ! "I can only quote my own experience. Once, some years ago when I was living in London, I had been out 'on the town' all night. It was a glorious summer morning, and finding my self in St.James' park, I lay down on the grass and fell asleep. I then 'woke up' and walked along the entire legnth of the Mall, through Trafalgar Square, up Charing Cross Road - all seemingly perfectly normal. Everything looked exactly as it always does. Then suddenly,I found myself actually waking up back in the park! It was very strange. Either it was an extremely lucid dream - in fact, the most lucid I ever had, or else somehow my consciousness had been projected out of the body, and I'd taken what would have been my route home (at least some of the way). everything looked, as I say, exactly as it always does, and there was no sense at all that it wasn't just ordinary reality. Incidentally, I had not been taking drugs of any kind prior to this. I've also heard from my ex-wife that once when she was undergoing surgery, under general anasthetic, she was floating above her body and watching the whole thing. So - I think some kind of projection of the consciousness out of the body is possible - but I've never learned a technique to be able to do it at will. "........BBB Dear Bill and Jedi, Astral projection is as true as anything else. I believe your experiences. When soul with astral body leaves the material body these experiences occur. However, forcible attempt to experience this may be dangerous because this is also a part of long sadhana. Great Yogis can easily detach their astral body from their material body. The astral body can even be seen by others and we hear that one man existed at two places at the same time. I do not know much about it but they say that ektoplasm emitted from the material body can take the shape of human form. Soul and astral body are two different things. It is a very complex subject. One may enrich knowledge by reading the books, "Life After Death" by Swami Abhedananda (Sri Ramakrishna's disciple) and "The Land of Mist" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Love, Kumar.
Wow, amazing BB, I wish something like that would happen to me, It would be pretty cool to see yourself out of your body/or atleast see things - while sleeping..i guess, atleast it would reinforce the idea that maybe there is something more to life than this carcass I carry around all day, trying to please it.
If you don't mind explaining but how exactly did those events occur, can you elaborate... ofcourse if these are private matters , then thats okay .
Myself I agree with those who say that to seek to pursue such things is a distraction from the path. Overall, I gained very little from that experience. It came out of the blue, and had little after effect. I've not experienced anything similar since, and this was 25 odd years ago. Mystical experience of a Divine presence is more the thing to aim for - and as the yogis say, if one can raise one's consciousness to a high enough level, all these other things may come of themselves.
Another perhaps related phenomenon which is interesting is bi-location. Ie, appearing in the physical body in two places simultaneously. This feat or power or grace, depending how you view it, was attributed to both Neem Karoli Baba, and to Padre, now Saint Pio, to quote two relatively recent examples. I guess that if it's true, then we definitely need to look into our concepts of physics - and our view on the body - what it is and what are it's abilities and capacities that lie unused in the ordinary person.
Like Bill, it was a long time ago for me and I don't place much value in it. It was when I was listening to music, and very intensely absorbed in it and one moment I was dancing in the dim night and the music was pounding my ears, next thing I knew I felt myself floating close to the ceiling looking down with amusement on the scene below - the body was still dancing, the music loud as ever, had faded and everything was slower. It lasted a few minutes, maybe even justa few seconds, when the song ended and I was back as me.
