spiritualconcepts.org:astralpagerecommended reading and other stuff
READ EXCERPT I recommend this book to anyone needs a clear and uncluttered resource for learning techniques for lucid dreaming and astral projection. This book, which is one of the newest and most up-to-date out there, will give the advice and guidance you need when you begin to explore the astral plane and the experience of astral projection. Robert Bruce does a great job of explaining the lucid dream phenomenon and the limitless possibilities therein. This is my favorite book to recommend because Bruce provides the information and his experiences in a way that is neutral, but he includes the necessary warnings and also helps readers with the common problems associated with astral projection.
This book is a good read if you are interested in the lucid dream experiences of people that are REALLY into this kind of stuff, and have found ways to share it with others. This book offers several tools of how to become more conscious of the dream state, and therefore- more conscious in general. I picked this up at a funky little bookstore somewhere in Seattle last year, and have found it a useful reference since then. I mostly am inspired by the genuine lucid dream stories that are sprinkled throughout this book.
Article of Unknown Source :
Throughout human history, records have been kept of unexplained mental events. In early writings, particularly from the Egyptians, Tibetans and Greeks, we learn about the belief that the soul was able to fly and existed as a double of the physical body. The experience of seeing one's double has recently been called autoscopy or autoscopic hallucination by the scientific community. However, the phenomenon has been known throughout history and across many cultures.
From these early spiritual teachings evolved the doctrines of various occult groups such as the Rosicrucians, the Golden Dawn, the Theosophists, and the Cabalists. Some of the leading figures of the early Cabalistic groups known as the Rose-Cross (Rosicrucians, founded in 1888) were Eliphas Levi and the Marquis Stanislas de Guaita, who "loosened the girders of the soul" through magical and alchemical works.
In Theosophical teachings, an Out-of-Body-Experience or OBE was interpreted as a projection of the astral (or spirit) body from the physical. In 1875, Madame Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society in New York. She was later joined by Bessant and Leadbeater, and together they studied Eastern religious teachings and incorporated them into Theosophical doctrine. According to Theosophist thought, a person is not just the product of the physical body, but a complex creation consisting of multiple bodies, each one more subtle than the one preceding it.
There are thought to be seven great planes of existence with seven corresponding or complimentary bodies. One of these, the astral body, is thought to be able to travel on the astral plane, and to be connected to the physical body by a silver cord. Simple spontaneous Out-of-Body-Experiences differ from astral projection in that Out-of-Body-Experiences are very pragmatic and occur in this dimension of consensus reality. I believe that Out-of-Body-Experiences and remote viewing share some characteristics. Remote viewing is basically the scientific training of innate abilities, and therefore we all have the power to remote view to varying degrees.
Many cultures, such as the Mexican Indians and Siberian Shamans, have used sacred ceremonies and consciousness-altering plants in rituals. Several writers have described the use of "sacred mushrooms" in Central and South America. Mental state-altering plants may cause a separation between the mind and the body resulting in the ability to travel outside of the body. Descriptions of these ceremonies have been well documented.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, explorers found that the Turanian and Mongolian cultures of Siberia practiced a form of shamanism. Through the practice of dancing, meditation, fasting and the use of medicinal plants, the shaman could enter an altered state of consciousness. In this altered state he could "see" what was happening in different places. The shaman could travel and perceive events not ordinarily received by the five senses. According to shamanic literature, the shaman could travel both to earthly places and to the world of the dead.
According to pagan tradition, witches rubbed their bodies with herbal extracts of aconite, belladonna and hemlock, and were able to experience mental flight. The ability to leave the body at will was part of a witch's repertoire of skills.
Out-of-Body-Experiences, remote viewing and near-death experiences (NDEs) have frequently been termed hallucinations, imagination or fantasy, and they often do include visual images found during experimental studies of drug intoxication. There are, however, differences between drug-induced hallucinations and the images seen during spontaneous Out-of-Body-Experiences. For example, experiencers have commented that perceptual objects in the Out-of-Body-Experience are organized and coherent, rather than the fragmented, isolated images seen during drug ingestion.
A belief in mental travel has been multi-cultural for centuries. Dean Sheils took data for sixty different cultures from anthropological research files and found that fifty-four of them made some mention of such a state. Forty-five percent of these claimed that most people could attain an Out-of-Body-Experience state and could travel outside the body under certain conditions. Another forty-three percent claimed that only a few select people could achieve an Out-of-Body-Experience. The remainder of the cultures sampled merely mentioned that the belief existed within their particular culture. Sheils concluded that across various cultures some form of belief in mental travel is very common.
Customs and traditions vary greatly between cultures. However, it seems that despite these differences, there is a shared belief in an ability that may be labeled differently but appears to be the same thing -- an ability to travel with the mind.
From the 17th century, we have records of a Christian nun, Sister Mary, who became known as the "Blue Nun of Agreda". Between 1620 and 1631, she was apparently able to travel mentally from her convent in Spain to Central America. There she preached and taught the Jumano Indians. Nobody saw her leave the convent and her superiors labeled her confessions of her travels "hysterical tales." However, her story was corroborated. Father Alonso de Benairdes was given the official task of converting the Indians and was mystified to find that someone had been there before him. In a letter to the Pope and Phillip IV of Spain in 1622, he told how a mysterious "lady in blue" had visited the Indians before him. She had distributed crosses, rosaries and a chalice with which they celebrated Mass.
When Father Alonso returned to Spain in 1630, he heard about Sister Mary's extraordinary claims. He was able to question her in detail and discovered that she was able to tell him many things about the Indians that could only come from living with them. She knew details of the Indian's folklore, their customs, and about their villages.
Father Alonzo received signed statements from Sister Mary's superiors to verify that she had not left the convent, and was astonished when the church elders recognized the chalice the Indians had been using as having come from their own convent. It was estimated that the "Blue Nun" had made over five thousand visits to the Indians and that she had visited different tribes living thousands of miles apart.
A famous case of verified bilocation (of being seen in two places at the same time) comes to us from the eleventh century. On September 21, 1774, a monk named Alphonsus Liguori was at his monastery in Arienze, Italy. While he was preparing for Mass and putting on his vestments, he fell into a deep sleep. He stayed in the coma for two days and when he awoke, he claimed that he had just returned from the Pope's bedside in Rome and that the Pope had just died! In those days Arienze was a four-day journey from Rome, and this was well before the age of modern communication.
Liguori's colleagues attributed his claims to a dream. Eventually, news of the Pope's death reached them, however. They then learned that attendants at the Pope's bedside had seen and talked to Liguori, and he had led them in prayers for the dying Pope.
One of the most mystifying men ever was the Count St. Germain. The Count began making fabulous claims in eighteenth century Europe where he was dismissed as an eccentric. Horace Walpole and Voltaire both wrote about the Count. Voltaire described St. Germain as the man "who never dies and knows everything." Count St. Germain claimed to have discovered the Elixir of Life and the Philosopher's Stone, that he could enlarge diamonds, make gold from lead and silk from flax. It is claimed that three of his students were the occultists St. Martin, Mesmer, and Cagliostro. Count St. Germain described experiences similar to OBEs: "for quite a long time I rolled through space. I saw globes revolve around me and earths gravitate at my feet".
It is incredible that with such historical and ethnic documentation of this extraordinary phenomenon, so little is recognized by twentieth century science.
Astral Projection and Lucid Dream Sites
- fantastic collection of dreams, lucid dreams and AP experiences of all kinds from all over the world. Definitely worth checking out- whether you're into AP or not
