The WORKBOOK Published in 1990 by SterlingPublishingCo., Inc. 387 ParkAvenueSouth NewYork,NewYork10016

Copyright © J. H. Brennan1989

All RightsReserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,electronic,mechanical,photocopying, recording or otherwise,without the prior permission of SterlingPublishingCo., Inc.

ISBN0-8069-7306-4

Firstpublished in the U.K. in 1989 by TheAquarianPress Thiseditionpublished by arrangementwith the ThorsonsPublishingGroup,Wellingborough,England Thiseditionavailable in the UnitedStates,Canada and the PhilippineIslandsonly.

Printed in the U.S.A.

Library of CongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Brennan, J. H. Theastralprojectionworkbook : how to achieveout-of-body experiences / J. H. Brennan. p. cm. ISBN0-8069-7306-4 1. Astralprojection. 2. Astralprojection—Problems,exercises, etc. I. Title. BF1389.A7B74 1989 133.9—dc2O 89-29668 CI?

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Contents

Introduction The Two Types ofProjection 7

PARTONE:ETHERICPROJECTION

1. TheLivingGhosts 11 2. WhatHappensWhenYouLeaveYourBody 17 3. The SilverCord 23 4. Dangers of Projection 29 5. WhatHelpsYouLeaveYourBody 37 6. How to Make a Witch’sCradle 45 7. ScientificProjection 50 8. Preparing to Project 56 9. TheBody of Light 62

PARTTWO:ASTRALPLANEPROJECTION

1. Descriptions of an Otherworid 69 2. A Model of the AstralPlane 74 3. Imaginationand its Influence 79 4. IntroducingYourAstralBody 84 5. LucidDreams 90 6. AstralDoorways 98 7. TheAstral I Ching 106 8. Working the QabalisticTree 113 9. GuidedTours 120

PARTTHREE:PROJECTION IN PRACTICE

1. Techniques of Projection 127 2. TheUltimateProjection 134

Appendix:QuestionsandAnswers 139 Index 157 Introduction

‘AstralProjection’ is one of thosetermswhich,thoughwidelyused in esoteric circles,actuallymeansdifferentthings to differentpeople. To some it suggests steppingout of yourphysicalbody to makeyourway in theworldlike a ghost, passingthroughwallsanddoorswhileyouare(generally)invisible to thosestill locked into solidflesh. To others, it is the projection of consciousness into anotherworldaltogether, the fabledAstralPlane,where the normallaws of physics no longer apply and all sorts of interestingweirdness may be experienced. Althoughcarrying the same label and far too often confused in occult literature,thesetwoexperiences are quitedistinct. I havemanagedboth — the latter far moreoftenthan the former — andtheyseem to me actually to involve differentmechanisms.Certainlythe techniquesused to stimulatethemarequite different. In thisworkbook, I wifidealwithbothforms of astralprojection. But to avoid the old confusion, I propose to call the former(whereyouwander the familiar world like a ghost)ethericprojection or projection of the phantom. The latter experience(where you enter a totallydifferentworld) I wifi call AstralPlane projection. You should be aware that skill in one form of projection is no guarantee of expertise in the other.There are ethericprojectors to whomthe AstralPlane is as mysteriousandalien as the far side of the moon.Andthere are AstralPlane projectorsutterlyunable to separate the phantom in the physicalworld. One benefit of this is thatyouneedonlypractisethetype of projectionthatinterests you - there is no pressure on you to do both. Thefirstsection of theAstralProjectionWorkbookdealswith the projection of the phantom. It wifiintroduceyou to the concept of subtlebodies,showyou howthesebodiesseparate on death (andpartlyseparateduringsleep) then teachyou howtheymay be consciouslyseparated by almostanyonewithout going to the trouble of dyingfirst. ThesecondsectiondealswithAstralPlaneprojection. It discusses the Astral Planeitself, its natureandlocation,thenshowshowyoumayenter it by means of varioustechniques,includingthespeciallyconstructedastraldoorwayswhich were the subject of the veryfirstbook I everpublished.

7 TheAstralProjectionWorkbook

Finally,havingtried to clear up some of the confusionthatexistsconcerning the two types of projection, I feel obliged to add to it by mentioningthat an ethericprojectioncansometimesinadvertentlycauseyou to slipontotheAstral . By the timeyouhavefinishedthisworkbook, youwillhopefullyknow why.

8 PartOne ETHERICPROJECTION

9 1.

TheLivingGhosts

In 1845, a LivonianlanguageexpertnamedMademoiselleEmilieSagee was sacked from yet anotherteaching post. No one questioned her abilities, or it was thatshe herstudents. whocouldoften qualifications skill; just upset . . see two of her. The secondMlleSageemight be standingnear the firstbeside theblackboard, or eatingthe sameschooldinner.Sometimesthe secondfigure would sit quietly in a corner,watching the first at work.Sometimes it would leaveher to get on withthelessonwhile it strolledthroughtheschoolgrounds. Thiswas all toomuchforthedirectors of theSchoolforYoungLadiesnearRiga. In the face of parentalcomplaints,theysuggestedMileSagéeshouldpackher as 18 otherSchoolBoardshad donebeforethem. bags. . . already MileSagéemighthavehadbetterluckteaching in Africa,where the Azande

Tribebelievethateveryone has twosouls, one of which - the mbisimo - leaves the bodyduringsleep. Or in Burma,where the second is likened to a butterfly. Or among the Bacairis of SouthAmerica,whotalk(like the Azartde) of a shadowwhichtravelsout of thebodywhenwefallasleep. In fact,whenyou get rightdown to research, it is quitesurprising to find Mile Sagée’stalent caused any consternation at all. A survey has shown that no fewer than 57 cultureshold a firmbelief in some sort of secondbody - and the list does not pretend to be definitive. One of my earliestpublishedshortstories was calledHouseHaunting and describedhow a youngcouplediscoveredthehome of theirdreamsonly to find it was on the market at a suspiciouslylowprice.Whentheyquizzedthe estate agent, he reluctantlyadmittedthereasonwasbecause the housewashaunted, but added,‘Don’tworry,Madam - you’re the ghost.’ Thestorydrew on a factualcase; andonethat is particularlyinstructive. The woman (on whom the fictionalwifewasbased) hadbeenobsessedabout her dreamhouse for manyyears,creatingandrecreating it in hermind,imagining herselfwalkingthrough its corridorsandrooms.When,withherhusbandand the haplessestateagent, she discovered the houseactuallyexisted, she was able to describe the interior to the estateagentbeforeentering. Her description wasaccurate in everydetailexceptone: shespokeabout a greendoorwhichdid notactuallyexist.Theagentwas,however,able to confirmthatsuch a doorhad existed, buthadbeenbricked up a fewyearsearlier.

11 TheAstralProjectionWorkbook

As a noviceauthor, I withheldseveral of the morebizarredetailsfrom my fictionalaccount. I was convinced they woulddestroy the credibility of the story. In thosedays I wasnotawarehowwidespreadthissort of phenomenon actuallywas. Back in 1886, threefoundingfathers of the Society for PsychicalResearch, Gurney, Myers and Podmore,published a comprehensive tome entitled Phantasms of the Livingwhichdetailed350 cases. In 1951,SylvanMuldoonand HerewardCarringtonaddedanother 100 in theirPhenomena of AstralProjec tion.Threeyearslater,HornellHartwasexamining288cases in theJournal of the American Society for PsychicalResearch.Anotherpsychicalresearcher, Robert Crockall,entered the lists in 1961 and between then and 1978 published no fewerthanninebooks of casehistories. ThescientistCeliaGreenappealed for information on the subject in the late 1960s, and had 360 repliesfrompeople with personalexperience. John Poynton added 122 more in 1978. And doubtless by the time this book is published, even morematerial wifi have becomeavailable. Typical of the sort of caseinvestigated is an incidentwhichoccurred in 1863 when an AmericanmanufacturernamedWilmot was on board the City of Limerickwhenthe ship hit a mid-Atlanticstorm.Duringthe night, he dreamed his wifevisited him in her nightdress and kissedhim. Although he had said nothing of the dream, his cabin-mateteasedhimthe followingmorningabout his midnightvisitfrom a lady.When he arrivedhome in Bridgeport,Connecti cut, his wife at onceaskedhim if he hadreceived a visitfromher in the night. Shehad, she said,beenworried by reports of shipwrecksanddecided to try to find out if he was safe. Consequently she visualizedherselfflying over the ocean,findingthe shipandgoing to hiscabin. A man in theupperberthlooked straight at her, but she wentahead and kissed her husbandanyway.(Steve Richardsmakes the intriguingsuggestion, in his Traveller’sGuide to the Astral Plane, thatshehadplanned to do morethankisshim, butwasrestrained by the presence of an audience.)Whenpressed, she was able accurately to describe the ship, the cabinand the manwhohadshared it with Mr Wilmot. Although this is the sort of evidentialcase-studywhichfinds its way into the textbooks, it is very clear that a great many people have out-of-body experiences of a less spectacular type — the sort of thing they might find personallyimpressive, but whichwould have nothing in it to convince an outsider. Severalyearsago, forexample, I was in bedpreparingforsleepwhen I found myselfstanding at a crossroadsabout half a mile from my home. I glanced around in someconfusion,thenreturned to mybodywith a substantialjerk. I amquitesatisfiedtheexperiencewasneither a dreamnor a hallucination, but it is, of course,quiteuseless as evidence. In this instance, minor as it was, I had at least the advantage of some theoreticalknowledge of ethericprojection.Othersare notalways so lucky. On oneoccasion I wasvisited by an 18-year-oldwomanratherdesperatelyseeking advice on the treatment of epilepsy. Her ‘symptoms’ werethose of sponta neousethericprojection.Theepilepsydiagnosishadbeendeliveredby a doctor

12 The LivingGhosts

whenshewaseightyears old andshehadbeenreceivingregulardrugtherapy eversince. What is happeninghere?Whyshould a woman’sbroodingcause an image of herself to appear in the cabin of a ship at sea, or in the house shewasthinking about? How could Mlle Sagee appear in two places at once? What is the mbisimo of the Azande, the butterfly of Burma, the andadurashadow of the SouthAmericanBacairi?And is the wholethingsome sort of pathology, the manifestation of epilepticbrainpatterns as my visitor’sdoctorbelieved? For answers, we have to ventureinto the dauntingrealms of occultanatomy. Whatever the culturalstatisticsquotedearlier,Westernthought, by and large,assumesyouhaveonlyonebody - theonethat is holdingthisbook at this moment.Evenreligiousdoctrines of soulandspirittend to conjure up formless abstractions far morereadilythanconcretepictures. In AncientEgypt,however, it was a commonconceitthathumanityhadthree .Thesewereknown as the ba, the ka andthe ib. The ba was thebird-soul, the ib was the heart, but the ka, interestingly, was known as the double. Egyptiansbelieved it to be a mirrorimage of thephysicalbody,butcomposed of finermatter. The ka, under a variety of differentnames,would be recognized instantly by yoga initiates of India, Tibet and China. Many yoga systems actuallypostulate a wholeseries of subtlebodies, onewithintheother,like a set of Russiandolls. This notion,carried into Europe and America by Madame Blavatsky and her Theosophists, has taken firm root in Westernesoteric thought. Howmanybodiesyouactuallyhavedepends to someextent on theparticular sub-system you are studying, but mostauthoritiesinclude an etheric(some timescalledastral or desirebody), a mental and a spiritual. Each has its own characteristics,functionandsphere of operation.Each is composed of progress ivelyfinermaterial. In this section, the onlybody we will be dealingwith is the etheric,although we wifi be returningbriefly to the otherswhen we reachSectionTwo of the workbookdealingwith the AstralPlane. While it is true to say that science in generaldoes not recognize the ,som&scientistscertainly do - and a few of the moreopen-minded (or perhapsmerelyeccentric)havetried to findoutmoreabout it. In the 1920s, for example, a macabreseries of experimentswascarriedout by Dr DuncanMcDougall of Haverhill,Mass., whodecided to weighthose of his patients who were in the process of dyingfromtuberculosis. To do so, he

them — bed and all — on a balancedscale andwaited. As placed delicately . . . deathoccurred, he discovered, in four out of six cases, a weight loss varying between two and two-and-a-halfounces. The conclusiondrawn was that somethingvacated the body on death and that whileobviouslyinvisible and intangible, it was at leastsufficientlysolid to havemeasurableweight. Dr McDougall’sapproach had an elegantsimplicity, but I am not aware of manyscientists whohaveattempted to duplicate his experiments — possibly due to the difficulty of finding a reliablesupply of terminalpatients.Therewas, however, one couplewhocame to somewhatsimilarconclusions,albeit by a

13 The AstralProjectionvvunwuuic.

differentroute — the DutchphysicistsDrsMaltaandZaalbergVanZelst.

Working out of the Hague, the VanZeistsinvented — again in the 1920s — a verycuriousinstrumentcalled a dynamistograph. Thisapparatus,whichhad a pointer on a lettereddial at the top, was, so its inventorsclaimed, able to make directcontact with the spiritworld. Left in a room by itself (and observed through a smallwindow) the machinewould be manipulated by spiritswho spelled out lengthymessages. I am not entirelyclearhow the Drs Van Zelst usedthisdevice to measuretheethericbody, buttheysubsequentlyclaimed to havediscovered it wascapable of expanding by about1/40,000,000 of its own volume and contracting by some1/6,250,000. It was composed of ‘extremely small and widelyseparated’atoms, had a density176.5timeslighterthan air andweighed, on average, 69.5 gr, or two-and-a-quarterounces. The dynamistographsounds so like one of those ‘futuristic’ radio sets featured in the old Flash Gordonmovies that it is difficult to take it seriously. Andwhile Dr McDougall’sworkwasinteresting,perhapsevenimportant, his methodology was distinctlybizarre. Only a decade or so later, however, anotherAmericanscientist, Dr HaroldSaxtonBurr,anatomyprofessor at Yale, embarked on a series of experimentsaltogethermoreconvincing. Burr was interested in the electricalpotential of livingthings, an area of research even more unpopular in the 1930s than it is today. He set up measuringequipment which would be considered crude now, but was nonethelessable to detectelectricalfieldphenomenaassociatedwithtreesand otherplants,manyanimals,includinghumanity, andevenslimemoulds.Such fields are not static. A voltmeterattached to a tree will, for example,indicate fluctuations in response to light,moisture,storms,sunspotsandmoonphases. Over a period of years,Burrcame to believe in theexistence of a life-fieldwhich, in the words of Dr LyallWatson,‘holds the shape of an organism just as a moulddetermines the shape of a pie or pudding.’ In his BlueprintforImmortality,Burrremarks,‘Whenwe meet a friendwehave not seen for six months,there is not one molecule in his face whichwasthere when we last saw him. But thanks to his controllinglife-field, the new moleculeshavefallen into the old, familiarpattern and we can recognize his face.’ Dr Burr’stheorieswerelargelyignored by the scientificestablishment throughout much of his working life, even though they went a long way towardsexplaining one of the mostpersistentmysteries of cellularbiology. Simplystated, the mystery is how certain cells in yourbody‘knew’ how to grow into a kidney,whileothersgrew into a brain.Pancreatictissuegrafted ontoyournosewifineverresult in the growth of a newpancreas on yourface. Spongessievedthroughsilk to separatetheirconstituentcellswillnevertheless reform as they were before. More impressive still, the cells of two different

sponges may be sieved and mixedtogetherwithoutdisrupting the process - theywillre-form as separateindividuals. It has longbeenevidentthatsomesort of organizingprinciple is involved in livingmatter and scientistshavedevotedsubstantialtime and effort in a vain attempt to isolatechemical or othertriggers of the process. In the absence of anythingbetter, DrBurr’slife-fieldcertainlyseems to fit thebill.And if it has so

14 The LivingGhosts

far beengreetedwithlittlescientificenthusiasm,there is still someempirical evidence for a ‘mouldwhichholds the shape of the organism.’

Certainlizards are capable of shedding and regrowingtheirtails. Others - notably the little salamander - can regrowwholelimbs. (In one unpleasant experiment, a youngsalamander was persuaded to replace all of its legs six times in a three-monthperiod.) In 1958, an orthopaedicsurgeonnamedRobert Beckertried to find outwhy a salamandercould do thiswhen a frog, a similar sort of amphibian,couldnot.Carefulmeasurementsenabledhim to determine that the ends of bothanimals’limbswerechargedwith a negativecurrent of

0.000002amps — an almostundetectableflow.Beckerthenwent on to amputate the right forelimb of both frog and salamander. When the operation was complete, he discoveredtherewas still a tinyelectricalflow in the stump, but the polarityhadreversed. As the frog’s woundshealed,forming scar tissue, the positivepolarity graduallyreverted to the originalnegativeflow. The salamandershowed an entirelydifferentpattern.Theelectricalpotential of thelimbfirstdropped,then rose to threetimes its normallevel,turningnegative in the process. Thishigh negativecharge was maintained until a whole new limb was regenerated, inside a fewweeks. As a surgeon,Beckerwas less concernedwithpureresearchthanpractical application - he hadembarked on his experiments in the hope of finding out whyfracturedbonessometimesrefused to knit.Consequently he developed a tinybatterywhichproduced a currentmimickingthat of thesalamander.When implanted in thestump of a frogamputee, it regeneratedtheentirelimbexactly as the salamander had done. In 1972, the first mammal (a laboratory rat)~ succeeded in the partialregeneration of a limb using a similardevice. Since then,Beckerhas shownthat the rightsort of appliedcurrentcanactuallyclose holes in the heart,regeneratenervetissueandinhibitinfection.Thousands of patientsworld-wide have had the benefit of batteryimplants to aid bone healing in difficultfractures.Thousandsmore,including my wife,haveused electricalstimulation to inhibitchronicpain. Whileorthodoxscience stifi seemsreluctant to discuss the theory,practical experiencehasveryclearlyestablished an electricalaspect to the humanbody. Technology has advanced so far since the time that Dr Burr first tried to measure a life-fieldthat an investment of lessthan£100wifibuyyouequipment sufficientlysensitive to detectfluctuations in theelectricalpotential of theskin. I haveonesuchdevicewhich is no largerthan a ballpointpen. Occultists have a specialinterest in the work of Burr and Becker, for the notion of a life-fieldwhichholds the shape of an organism runs very close to somevery old ideasabout a secondbody. The use of the worddouble to describe the phantom is deceptive, for it suggestssomethingpatterned on the physicalbody. But manyoccultists - and particularlyQabalists - have long believed just the opposite. They have thought of the phantom as the foundation of the physical, the pre-existentpattern into which it grows. Esotericdoctrine is quiteclear on this point, for it holds that in the case of an amputation, for example, the ethericbodyremainswhole,which is the reason

15 TheAstralProjectionWorkbook

whysomeamputeesfeelpain or itching in theirmissinglimbs. Thereseems to me very little differencebetweenBurr’slife-field and the occultnotion of an ethericbody,except,perhaps, in oneimportantrespect. Dr Burrsuggeststhefield is an integralpart of a livingcreature, a phenomenon of livingmatter,possiblyeventhefactorwhich,ultimately,differentiatesbetween thatwhich is animateandthatwhich is not. Occultists,*however,believethat the life-field may — in the case of humanbeings at least — be temporarily separatedfrom the physicalbodywithoutcausingharm to either. And in the process, thelife-fieldmaybecomethevehicle of consciousnessandperception.

*Or someoccultists. Dr DouglasBakerbelieves the ethericbody can neverseparate from the physicalbodyduring life and considers an evenmoresubtlebody, the true astral, is involved in what I call ethericprojection.

16 2.

WhatHappensWhenYouLeave YourBody

Althoughmembers of the HermeticOrder of the GoldenDawn (an institution founded in 1887)weretaught a method of ethericprojection,theyweresworn to secrecyabout the technique.Consequently, as late as the middle1920s, the psychicresearcherDrHerewardCarringtonwasunable to findanyinformation at all on the subjectbeyondsomeexperimentalworkcarriedout in France.The Frenchexperimenter was a M. CharlesLancelin who was interested in the effects of ‘animalmagnetism’ a sadlyconfusedsubjectnowlargelydismissed notonly by science, but by occultists as well. The history of animalmagnetism dates back to the famousFranzAnton Mesmer,whobelieved a subtlefluidemergedbothfrommetallicmagnetsand thehumanbody;andcould be used to cure a variety of ifinesses. He developed a technique of ‘magnetizing’patients so thatthey fell into a convulsivetrance, fromwhichtheyoftenemergedfree of formerailments. As a healer,Mesmer was conspicuouslysuccessful and for some timeveryfashionable. But when the FrenchAcademy of Sciences was moved to investigate his claims, the committeediscoverednothingthat ‘couldnot be explained by imagination.’ Butwhatreallyputpaid to animalmagnetismwasnotthefranticefforts of the Establishment, but the entirelysympatheticwork of a Mesmeradmirerwho wastrying to follow his example. TheMarquis de Puysegurtried to magnetize a shepherdboyandfound the ladfell into the type of passivetrance we nowcallhypnotic.Thisdevelopment so confounded the historians of science that it is stifi quite common to find Mesmerreferred to as the father of hypnosis, even though his techniques produced a totallydifferentkind of trance. M. Lancelin, it seems,wasnotconfusedand‘magnetized’subjectsexactly as Mesmerhaddone. In theirmagnetizedstate, he wasable to extract, so to speak, the ethericbodyfromthephysicalbodyand set up a number of ingenioustests to showwhenthishadbeenachieved. He believed a certaintype of tempera ment was necessary for success but his discussion of sanguine,lymphatic, andbilious seems even of nervous, subjects outmoded, quaint,today. . . as, course, does the use of ‘magnetism’itself. Dr CarringtonsummarizedLancelin’swork in a bookcalledModernPsychical Phenomena and laterexpanded on the subject in his HigherPsychicalDevelop

17 The AstralProjectionWorkbook

ment. He admitted he foundthematerial in bothbooks‘mostinadequate’, but it representedeverything he could unearth at the time. Better days were, however, justaround the corner. In November1927, Dr Carringtonreceived a letterfrom an individualnamed SylvanMuldoon,whoclaimed to haveforgottenmoreaboutethericprojection thanLancelin ever knew. He enlarged on a number of pointsLancelin had made and tookissuewithhim on severalothers.Everything he saidwas, he claimed,drawnfrompersonalexperience.Muldoonwas 25 years old in 1927. He hadhad his firstout-of-bodyprojection at the age of 12. Carringtonwasimpressed. He visitedMuldoonand,despitefindinghim so seriously ill thathis conditionwasconsideredterminal,conductedexperiments to test his claims, then encouraged him to write a book on his experiences. Muldoon did, from his sickbed; and The Projection of the (which creditsCarrington as co-author)became a classicwhich is now in its fifth reprint,andhelpingtrain a thirdgeneration of projectors.Despitetheuse of the termastral in thetitle, Dr Carringtonmakesclear in his introduction to thebook thatMuldoon is dealingwithwhat I havetermedethericprojection.

‘I shouldlike to draw the reader’sattentionparticularly to the factthat no wild or preposterousclaims are anywheremade in this book,’ he wrote, ‘as to what has been accomplishedduring these “astraltrips”. Mr

Muldoondoesnotclaim to havevisitedanydistantplanets - andreturned to tell us in detailtheirmodes of life; he does not claim to haveexplored any vast and beautiful“spiritworlds”; he does not pretend to have penetrated the past or the future; to have re-lived any of his past “incarnations”; to have read any “AkashicRecords”; to havetravelled backalong the stream of timeandreviewed the history of mankind or the geologiceras of our earth. He assertsmerelythat he has beenenabled to leave his physicalbody at will and travelabout in the present, in his immediatevicinity, in somevehicle or other,whilefullyconscious.’

Muldoonhimselfremarked in a letter, ‘I havenever had a consciousout-of- bodyexperiencewhen I was nothere on the earthplane, just as much as I am rightnow. I wouldn’tknowwhere to look for the higherplanes!~* Despite Dr Carrington’sdifficulties only a year or two before, Sylvan Muldoon was not the only one to claim a detailedknowledge of etheric projection. The OccultReview of 1920 had published two articles on the subject by an engineernamedOliverFox.Theirtitleswere ThePinealDoorwayandBeyond the PinealDoor. The pinealgland is a smallbodysituatedwithin the brainsome distancebehindthat spot on the foreheadwhereHindus put the castemark. Occultistsbelieve it is the remnant of the fabulousThird Eye and the seat of psychicalabilities.Scientists are not so sure about the psychicalabilities,

*Later in this workbook, you will be told where to look for the higherplanes if you want to convert an ethericprojectioninto an astralplaneprojection.

18 When LeaveYour ______WhatHappens You Body

althoughthere is someevidencethatthe glandremainslightsensitiveandmay be an evolutionaryremnant. It secretes a substancecalledserotonin,which is associatedwithgrowthand, just possibly, withvisionaryexperience. For Mr Fox, it was the exitpointthroughwhich his secondbodyvacated his first. Around 1902, while Fox was a technicalstudent, he had a spontaneous experience of leavinghis physicalbody.Ratherlike myownfirstprojection, he foundhimselfstandingoutside his home. The experience wasvivid andreal, buttherewerecertainminorchanges in hisenvironmentthatpersuadedhimhe wasdreaming. Therealization didnotcausehim to wake up. On the contrary, the ‘dream’becamemorevividand he wasfilled by a sensation of well-being. He was so taken by thisthat he decided to experiment in an effort to bringsuch dreamsunderconsciouscontrol. His earlyattempts to do so triggeredpain in the pinealarea. Withtimeandpractice, he managed to achievetheresults he soughtandwas eventuallyable to leavehisbody at will.Hisexperiencesthereafterseem to have been a mixture of ethericandastralplaneprojections. Carringtonhimselfhad discovered yet anothersource of information by the time he came to edit Muldoon’smanuscript. This was the publication, in France, of a bookcalled Le Fantôme des Vivants(looselytranslated as The Living Phantom) by M. HectorDurville. Like Lancelin,Durvile was interested in projectionsresultingfrom‘magnetic’trancesanddescribed a fascinatingseries of experimentswhichincludedattempts to photographthe ethericbody.What was happening to thesepeople and to the manyothers in morerecentyears whohaveclaimed to be able to separatethemselves,more or less at will,from theirphysicalbodies?Thefirst-handaccountscandiffersusbstantially,leading to a realdegree of confusionamongthosewhoapproach the literature for the firsttime. Look at thesetwodescriptions:

‘I dozed off to aboutten o’clock. and forseveralhours. sleep thirty . . slept At length I realized I was slowlyawakening, yet I could not seem to drift backintoslumber norfurtherarouse.

I becamemoreconscious of the fact that I was ‘Gradually . . . lying somewhere. and I seemed to knowthat I was a . . shortly recliningupon bed I tried to move to find that I was as if ...... only powerless . . . adhered to that on which I rested. If conscious at the of an . . beginning exteriorization, one feelsfairlyglueddown, stuckfast, in an immovable position. ‘Eventuallythefeeling of adhesionrelaxed, butwasreplaced by another

sensation - that of entire - I equallyunpleasant floating. . . My rigidbody

thought it was myphysical, but it was myastral - commencedvibrating at a great rate of speed in an up and downdirection and I could feel a tremendouspressurebeingexerted in theback of myhead in the medulla oblongataregion.Thispressurewasveryimpressiveandcame in regular spurts, the force of whichseemed to pulsate my entirebody...

19 TheAstralProjectionWorkbook

‘Whenable to see, I wasmorethanastonished! Nowordscouldpossibly explain my wonderment. I was floating! I was floating in the very air, a fewfeetabovethebed. still with rigidlyhorizontal, . . Slowly, zigzagging the strongpressure in the back of my head, I was movedtowards the ceiling, all the whilehorizontalandpowerless... ‘Involuntarily, at about six feet above the bed, as if the movementhad been conducted by an invisible force present in the very air, I was uprightedfrom the horizontalposition to the perpendicular and placed standinguponthe floor of the room.There I stoodfor whatseemed to me abouttwominutes, stillpowerless to move of myownaccord, andstaring straightahead. ‘The~n the controllingforcerelaxed. I felt free, noticingonly the tension in the back of my head. I took a step,when the pressureincreased for an interval, and threw my body out at an acuteangle. I managed to turn round. ‘Thereweretwo of me! I wasbeginning to believemyselfinsane.There wasanother“me”lyingquietlyupon the bed! It wasdifficult to convince myselfthatthis wasreal, butconsciousnesswould not allow me to doubt what I saw.’

ThiswasSylvanMuldoon’sfirstethericprojection at the age of 12 in a room at the camp of the MississippiValleySpiritualists’Association in Clinton,Iowa, where his mother had taken him in an attempt to satisfy her curiosityabout spiritualistclaims.Bizarrethough it is, the account is at leaststraightforward enough. Butcontrast it with the following,which is OliverFox’sdescription of how he achieved an out-of-bodycondition:

‘I had to force the of the It was myselfthrough doorway pinealgland.. . done,while in thetrancecondition,simply by concentrating on the pineal glandandwilling to ascendthrough it. ‘Thesensationwas as follows: my incorporeal selfrushed to a point in the pinealgland andhurleditselfagainst the imaginarytrap-door,while the goldenlightincreased in brilliance so that it seemed the wholeroom burstintoflame.

‘If the impetus was insufficient to take me through, then the sensation becamereversed; my incorporeal self subsidedandbecameagaincoinci dentwith my physicalbody,while the astrallightdieddown to normal. ‘Often two or three attempts were requiredbefore I couldgenerate sufficientwifi-power to carry me through. It felt as though I wererushing to insanity and death; but once the little door had clickedbehind me, I enjoyed a mentalclarity far surpassingthat of earth-life.And the fearwas the thenwas as as out of bed. gone. . . Leaving body easy getting

Having left the body, however, Fox’s experiencesconvinced him he was dreaming:

20 WhatHappensWhen You LeaveYourBody

A hundredtimeswould I passthe mostglaringincongruitiesandthen at lastsomeinconsistencywouldtellmethat I wasdreaming;andalwaysthe the I havedescribed. increase in vividness knowledgebrought change . . (An

and a sense of well-being - JHB)

‘I found that I was then able to do little tricks at will — levitate, pass solid mouldmatterintonewforms etc. throughseemingly walls, .

There is so little in commonbetween these accounts that you might be forgiven for imaginingthey are describingtwo differentexperiences. Butthey are not. Muldoon’saccount, the first of the two, describes a classicaletheric projection,untainted, as Dr Carringtonwas to pointout, withvisions of spirit worlds or anythingelse. Butthere is an interestingclue in Fox’saccountwhenyoucome to thatphrase ‘mouldmatter into newforms.’This, as you will discover in SectionTwo, is characteristic of an astralplaneprojection. Fox, it seems, was one of those individualswhoseethericprojections.blended into astralplaneprojections to theconfusion of his followersand, I suspect,himself.Thebreed is by no means rare. RobertMonroe, the Americanbusinessman who discovered he had a talent for slipping in andout of hisbody,soonbegan to slipbetweenworlds as well. A number of subjectswithwhom I haveexperimentedusinghypnosis as the projectiontrigger,havetended to do much the samething. Thisleads to substantialdifficulties in understanding the phenomenon; and even in developingreliabletechniques.Before you attemptyourownetheric (or, for thatmatter,astralplane)projections it is as well to have a clearunderstanding of how the confusionarises.And I think I know.

To talk aboutprojecting a secondbody(etheric, astral or anythingelse) is almostcertainly in error.When a projectionoccurs,whatleaves the physical is not a singlesubtlebody, but a collection of them.Thinkback to thatRussian dolls analogy. When you take the first doll from the outer case, you auto maticallytake the wholeseries of innerdollsalongwith it. As youwifidiscover in SectionTwo of the workbook,astralplaneprojection also involves a subtlebody. Not, I believe, the etheric, but something even more tenuous than an energy field, a body which occultists think of as composed of ‘mindstuff’ - the trueastralbody.When all yourvariousbodies

coincide - as is the case throughout most of your waking day - they hold togethertenaciously and spontaneousprojection rarely occurs. Once you separate the subtlebodiesfromthephysical,however,there is a breakdown in the tenacity of the system.This is a long-windedway of sayingthatwhenyou projectthe ethericbody(with its coincidentastral,mentalandspiritualbodies) there is at least a possibility, andperhapseven a tendency, for the innermost bodies - i.e. the astral/mental/spiritualcomplex - to projectspontaneously. Thus, from a straightforwardethencprojection such as SylvanMuldoon invariablyexperienced, youmayfindyourselfslippinginto theAstralWorld as hasbeen the experience of Fox,Monroeandothers. The positioncouldactually be evenmorecomplicatedthanthat. There is a case to be made for the possibilitythatyourastral,mentalandspiritualbodies

21 TheAstralProjectionWorkbook

are alreadyseparated and activewithintheirowninnerworlds.According to this theory, what really projects is not a body at all, but your focus of consciousness. My own experimentshave left me in considerablesympathy withthisidea. If youfind it difficult to follow at thisstage,don’tlose too much sleep - it shouldbecomemuchcleareronceyouhaveworkedyourwaythrough the secondsection of thisbook. For now, it is of little importancewhichtheory is correct, since neither is involved in thepracticalities of projection.Butbeforegettingdown to those, it is as wellforyou to knowwhatyouaregettingintowhenyou do leaveyourbody.

22 3.

TheSilverCord

Yourprojectedethericbodyfeels very like the old familiarcorpse you carry round each day. ‘I thought it was my physical, but it was my astral,’wrote SylvanMuldoon in the account I havealreadyquoted.Andagain: ‘I believed naturallythatthiswas my physicalbody, as I hadalwaysknown it, butthat it had mysteriouslybegun to defy gravity. It was too unnatural for me to too real to understand, yet deny. . Thisease of confusionbetweenphysicalandetheric is furtheremphasized by an earlypersonalexperience of myownwhich I haverecountedelsewhere, but nonethelessbearsrepeatinghere. I awoke in the nightwith a need to urinate. I climbed out of bed, wallkedacross the roomandfound the bedroomdoor not onlyclosed, but locked. I could not understandthis, but neithercould I open the door. It wasonlyafter a fewmomentsthat I realized myhandwasactually sinkinginto the handle. I returned to the bed and discovered my (physical)body still lyingthere beside my wife. I climbed back, realignedmyself, and sank back into coincidencewiththephysical,thenheadedforthebathroomagain.Onceagain I reachedthe door; andonceagain I found I hadleftmyphysicalbodybehind. I returned to thebed; in fact I had to return to thebedseveralmoretimesbefore I couldpersuade my physicalbody to comewithme andopen the door. Although the incident was trivial, it was also highlyinstructive. The first thing that strikes me, lookingback, is that I had left the bed, crossed the bedroom, andstood at the doorfor severalmomentsbefore it occurred to me that I was not in my normalphysicalbody.This is an importantpoint.Giventhatwe are discussing a field of electricalenergy (or at most a lump of matterweighing 2~ ozs) you wouldcertainly be entitled to imagine it mustfeel different. Yet it does not. Subjectively, you can scarcely tell the difference. I felt I had my normalweight. I seemedsubject to gravity. I feltthechifi in the air andwasstill aware of the pressure in mybladder.

Myphysicalenvironment - thebedroomwalls, thefurnishings, the door - all lookedperfectlysolidandnormal,although as I discoveredwiththehandle(and later,when I passedcompletelythrough a closeddoor) I couldnottouchthem in the normalway, nor could I feel them. The effect was rather like walking through a life-sizehologram. Buttherewasoneexception to the generalrule: I

23 The AstralProjectionWorkbook

couldfeelthecarpetbeneathmyfeet.Thereasonfor all thismay be thewaythe human mind works. It seems safe to assume that if you spend a lifetime operating in a physicalbody, you developdeeplyingrainedhabitsassociated with it; includinghabits of perception. Mostpsychologists are convinced thatwhatyou see is conditioned by what you expect to see. For example, one interestingexperiment has indicatedthat our ability to judge the length of lines is influenced by socialfactors. If enough of yourcompanionsinsist the shorter line is longer, that is the way you will come to see it. The act of walkingincludes a multitude of subtlesensations,amongthem yourperception of balance, the feel of the terrainbeneathyourfeet, the length of each and so into a continualfeedbackwhich step. . . on, combining enables you to get on with your stroll while discussing the weather. Most of the feedback is quiteunconscious.Indeed the act of walkinghardlyimpinges at all untilyou get painsignalsassociatedwithtiredmuscles or a stone in the shoe. Walking over rough,unfamiliarterrain, I might have had to pay attention. Walking across the floor of the bedroom in which I had slept for years, everythingwent on automatic. I expectedthefeel of thecarpetbeneathmyfeet; andeven in myethericbody, that is exactlywhat I got. In otherwords, the feel of the carpet was, within the framework of the incident I described, a hallucination.

If this soundsunlikely, it is as well to rememberthat CarlJung, a practising psychiatrist and one of the foundingfathers of modernpsychology,insisted hallucinations are far morewidespreadthanpeopleimagine. The problem is, we tendonly to doubtourperceptions if they arebizarre.Thus, if youwalkinto a room and find it occupied by a little greenman in a flyingsaucer, you will probablyfeel at least a twinge of doubt.Buttheashtraylyingonthetablenext to

him could equally well be a hallucination - and one that would never be challengedunlessyouactuallytried to touch it. If the sensation of the carpetbeneath my feet was no more than a habit

response, the desire to urinatewas in a differentcategory.Thisdesire — which I

continued to experiencewhile in myethericbody - is known to be a response to a purelyphysicaltriggermechanism:pressure on the bladder. Since we have alreadynoted the ethericbodyforms a pattern for the physicalratherthan a reflection of it, we can assumeexpansion of the physicalbladder does not change its ethericcounterpart. We can also assume that since the desire to urinate is (hopefully) an intermittentphenomenon, it would not create the same conditionedresponse as walking on a familiarcarpet. In these cir cumstances, we are left with a mystery. How did I (and other projectors, incidentally)experiencefull-bladderpressure in a bodylacking a fullbladder? Themostlikelyanswer, of course,wasthat I wascontinuing to experiencethe pressure felt by my physicalbody - somethingthatrequires a communications linkbetweenthe two. I haveneverbeenpersonallyaware of such a link in any ethericprojection, but Mr Muldoon has. He saw it as a sort of cord or cable:

‘My two identicalbodieswerejoined by an elastic-likecable, one end of

24 The SilverCord

which was fastened to the medullaoblongataregion of the astralcounter part,whiletheothercentredbetweentheeyes of thephysicalcounterpart. Thiscableextendedacross the space of probably six feetwhichseparated us.,

Muldoon’s‘cable’ is one of the mostinterestingaspects of ethericprojection. It is mentioned in the records of manyotherprojectors, yet some, like myself, havemanaged to leave the bodywithoutevernoticing it. Andwhere it does appear, it breaks a lot of rules. The cableseems to be the samething as the ‘silvercord’mentioned in the Biblewhich,according to thesescriptures,snaps ondeath. Butfailingdeath,nothingseems to bother it much. If ArthurGibson’s experience was anything to go by, it will obliginglystretch all the way from Ireland to the Indiansub-continent.Andeventhisdoesnotdefinetheextent of its elasticity, forsomeprojectorshavereportedtrips offtheplanetduringwhich the cordthinned a little, but did not break. Nor does it tangle. This may not appearparticularlysurprising,since the cord, like the remainder of the etheric body,passesthroughphysicalobjects. But evenwhen two or moresubjects projectsimultaneously,thereneverseems to be anyproblemwiththesetrailing cords. I suspect that usefulthough it may be in somerespects, the analogy of an infinitelyelasticcable is notentirelyaccurate.What is perceived as a cordseems to be no more than the subjectiveimpression of a definite link — and an impression,moreover,that is not alwayspresent. If this is correct, it is thelink that is important, notwhetherthere is a literalcord.Theexistence of such a link seemsalmostbeyondargument and means that certainphysicalsensations (such as my now-famous fullbladder) can be transmitted to the ethericbody, whichexperiencesthem — more or less — as its own. This linkage is the reason why occultists have long cautionedagainst any interferencewith the physicalbody of a subjectwho is in the projectedstate. Even a lighttouch is sufficient to alert the phantomwhichinstinctivelyjerks back to its physical shell from whateverdistance it is separated. I have experienced this phenomenon - which is sometimesaccompanied by a subjectiveclangingsound, like metalstrikingmetal — and can assure you it is something to be avoided.Although it has neverseemed to do me any great harm,esotericliterature is full of warnings that it can triggerserioushealth conditions up to and includingstrokes and heart attacks. Certainly it is extremelyunpleasant. Communicationbetweenphysicalandphantom is a two-wayprocess.That is to say, traumasuffered in the ethericbody can be transmittedback to the physicaldouble.Several years ago, MarvelComicspublished an engaging fantasy in which Dr Strange(‘Master of the MysticArts’) was attacked by the phantom of a rivalwizardwhile in thecourse of an ethericprojection.Someone at Marvelmusthaveundertakenin-depthresearch, for Dr Strange’sphantom

to his a cablesuch as Muldoondescribes. which wasjoined physicalbodyby . . his rival was attempting to cut with an astralknife.While this sort of thing is great fun, it bearslittleresemblance to real life. But the principlebehind the

25 TheAstralProjectionWorkbook

attack onDr Strange’sphantom is soundenough:harmtheethericandyouwill harmthe physical.Unlessyoufindyourself in verypeculiarcircumstances, the worstphysicaldiscomfortyou are likely to suffer is a headache, but there is a possibility of picking up a few bruises, the origins of which are not entirely obvious.

The existence of a link permits the phantom to control the physicalbody - after a fashion — at a distance.Duringoneseries of projections, I wouldtypically findmyselffloating no morethan a foot or so above my physicalbodywhich I could move (with some difficulty) and throughwhich I could speak. The sensationwasverypeculiar, like manipulating a marionettewithstrings. The link, or cord, maintains a light pull on the phantomthroughout the projection;and as SylvanMuldoonnoted,approachingtooclose to thephysical causesthepull to increase.Once a criticalpointhasbeenpassed,whichvaries a littlefromsubject to subject, but is usually no morethan a fewfeet, the action of thecorddrawsthephantomsuddenlybackintothephysical.Thiseffectmakes it very difficult to examine your physical body from close range while exteriorized. If nothing else, the discoveryprovidessomemuch-neededreassurance for inexperiencedprojectors,whosemostcommonquestion is, ‘Whathappens if I can’t get back into my (physical)body?’Almosteveryaccountinsists, with

Muldoon, that the problem is not gettingback in, but managing to stay out - especially if youapproach too closely to the physical. A relatedeffectgives an equallyreassuringanswer to ‘Whathappens if I travel so far in myethericbodythat I getlostandcan’tfindmywayback?’ If you are aware of the cable, youcanreelyourself in like a fish; or follow it alonglike Ariadne’sthread in the Minotaur’slabyrinth. If you are not, thenthere is stifi little cause for concern, for etherictrips are self-limiting.Onceyourphysical bodybecomesuncomfortable, or hungry, as it is bound to do eventually, the sensation of ‘pull’ growsprogressivelystrongeruntil it is irresistible. If you cannotwait,RobertMonroeadvisessimplythinkingaboutsomebodypartand attempting to move it (e.g. wiggling the big toe.)This, he says, is sufficient to bringyouback to the physicalinstantaneously. If you remainoutside your physicalbody for any length of time, several interestingdifferencesbetween the experience and your normal mode of physicaloperationbecomenoticeable. The mostdramatic is, of course, the ability to pass throughsolidobjects. Robert Monroe, the Americanbusinessman who later became a highly experiencedprojector, tells how this particular ability gave him an early indicationthatwhatwashappening to himwas not somesort of ifiness. Monroe had a very hard time with his first projection. Long before it occurred, he began to experiencepainfulcramps and rigidity of the upper abdomen. This was followed, over a period of weeks, by bouts of temporary paralysisduringwhich his entirebodywouldseem to shakeviolently, likeone in thegrip of malaria.(Thesensationwassubjective — no shaking of thephysical bodyactuallyoccurred.) ‘Withinthefollowing sixweeks,’Monroewrote, ‘thesamepeculiarcondition

26 The SilverCord manifesteditselfninetimes. It occurred at differentperiodsandlocales,andthe onlycommonfactor was that it beganjust after I hadlain down for a rest or sleep.Whenever it took place, I foughtmyself to a sittingposition and the faded “shaking” away. . Like the doctor of my youngvisitor,Monroeconsidered the possibility of epilepsy,butdismissed it onthegroundsthatepilepticshad no memory of their seizureswhile his ownrecollection of the experiencewasclear. He suspected a brain disorder,possibly a tumor, and soughtmedicaladvice. His doctor suggested he wassimplyworkingtoo hardandshouldlose a littleweight. Monroe’s‘symptoms’continued to recurand, as happens in suchcases, his initial fear dieddownuntileventually he came to find the experiencealmost boring.Whenthe ‘vibrations’, as he calledthem,struck, he wouldsimplywait patiently for them to pass. On one occasion as he did so, his armwas draped over the side of thebed, his fingersjustbrushing the rug.

‘Idly, I tried to movemyfingersandfound I couldscratchtherug.Without thinking or realizingthat I couldmove my fingersduring the vibration, I pushed with the tips of my fingersagainst the rug. After a moment’s resistance, my fingersseemed to penetrate the rug and touch the floor underneath. With mild curiosity, I pushed my handdownfurther. My fingerswentthrough the floorandthere was the roughuppersurface of the of the roombelow I was wide awake and the ceiling . . . surely sensationwas stifi there.Howcould I be awake in all otherrespects and still “dream” that my armwasstuckdownthrough the floor?’

But arms stuckthroughfloors or, as in my own case, handssinking into doorknobs are not the onlypeculiarities of the projectedstate. There is, for example, a slightlydifferentqualityaboutthe light,whichseemscuriouslyflat. AlthoughOliver Fox spoke of a golden glow, this seems to have been an intrusionfrom the AstralPlaneand is not somethinggenerallyexperienced by ethericprojectors.Many, in fact, report no peculiaritiesabout the light at all — which is not surprising since the difference is not so pronounced as to be particularlynoticeable. What is verynoticeableonce it starts to manifest is the way the ethericbody gets about. Muldoonchronicled three ‘movementspeeds’, each of which coincideswith my ownexperience. The first is the old familiarwalkingpace. When I movedfrom mybed to the door, I did so exactly as I wouldhave in the physicalbody.Andlater, I strolledacrossotherroomsandwalkeddownstairs in exactly the sameway. The second,whichMuldoondescribes as ‘intermediatespeed’, is substan tially faster and is associated with a phenomenon that has no physical counterpart - at least for ordinarymortals.Thisspeed is roughlyequivalent to travelling ontheback of a fasthorse, or driving in a car. Thephenomenonwith which it is associated is levitation. Levitation has alreadybeenmentioned,although not by name, in one of Muldoon’squotedaccounts.Youmayrecallthat,duringhis firstprojection, he

27 TheAstralProjectionWorkbook

foundhimselffloatingabovehisphysicalbody in a state of paralysisbeforesome process set himupright. I havehadthe samesensation of floating a foot or two above my physical body in minorprojectionexperiences, but more to the presentpoint, I noticed that whenclimbing or descendingstairs during an exteriorization, my feet were actually some inches above the treads. This is relevant to Muldoon’sintermediatespeed of travel in the etheric, for my own experiencestronglysuggests this mode of movementinvolveslevitation. You rushalong at a verysatisfyingratewithyourfeetsomedistance offtheground.Even morebizarrereports of projectorswhohavetravelledintospaceindicatesthat levitation in the ethericbodymay be pushed to extremes. The thirdspeedlisted by Muldoon is not really a speed at all, but a sort of instantaneoustravelwhichhas no physicalcounterpart at all, outside of science fiction. It is easy enough to describe. You think yourselftowards your destinationand,whenyou get the knack, you are instantlythere. There is no sensation of movement.Muldoonbelieved the mindcould not copewiththe speedsinvolvedandmomentarilyblackedout, but I doubtthis to be the case. It seems to me thatneitherspeed nor motion is actuallyinvolved here, but rather a differentprinciple of transportationwhichallowsinstant aneoustransferfromonelocation to another.Certainlythere is no sensation of elapsedtimeanddistancedoes not seem to be anyobject. So long as youavoidslippinginto an astralplaneprojection, the information you have alreadyabsorbedshouldpermit you to functionwith a reasonable degree of confidencewhenyoufindyourselfout of the body. But at this stage of the workbook,havingcovered such oddities as walkingthroughwalls, levitation and instantaneoustravel, two questionsobviously arise: is it for real. and is it safe? . . Bothdeservehonestanswersbeforeembarking on a study of the techniques which will allow you to duplicate the feats of Fox, Muldoon,Monroe and others.

28 4.

Dangers of Projection

RobertAllenMonroestudiedcommerce,engineering,journalismanddrama at OhioStateUniversity. In 1937, he wentintobroadcasting as a writer/director. He moved to NewYork,where he made his livingwritingfeaturesandscreen plays beforebreaking into network radio with a long-runningdramatized documentary. At the end of World War II, he formed his own production company and embarked on a highlysuccessfulbusinesscareer. In 1958, he experienced his firstethericprojection. In 1986,SouvenirPress in Britainpublished FarJourneys, his secondbook on the subject. It openedwiththesewords:

‘If there is a firstandobviouspoint to be made, I canreportthat I am still alive physically after 25 years of exploringpersonally the out-of-body experience. A littletime-worn, but stillmore or lessoperational. ‘Therewereseveralmomentswhen!wasnot so sure.However,some of the bestmedicalauthoritieshaveassured me that the physicalproblems I have encountered have been simply cause and effect of living in the culture/civilization of mid-twentiethcenturyAmerica.Sometakeanother position. I am stillalive as a result of suchOBEactivity.Takeyourpick. ‘So it would seem that one can practice“going out of the body” regularly and survive. Also, after having been testedperiodically by I can stillmake the statementthat I am sane. experts, reasonably .

Althoughlightlyput, this is a point of considerableimportance.Giving up the ghost is so firmly associated with death in many cultures that it is only reasonable to ask if temporaryseparations are safe. Monroe has given his answer: he is neitherdeadnormadafterquarter of a century of practice. It is an answerwhichseems to be borne out by others. SylvanMuldoonwas a verysickmanwhen he firstcontacted Dr Carrington. ‘I wish I couldhave feltbetterwhen I waswritingthisbook,’ he wasquoted as saying, ‘for I probablycouldhavedone a better job. As it is, everywordwas writtenwithreluctance.’Somewordswere, in fact,writtenwhile he wastoo ill to get out of bed. During this period,Muldoonprojectedfrequentlywithout managing to kill himself,despite his severelyweakenedcondition.Indeed, he

29 The AstralProjectionWorkbook

formed a theorythathis illnessactuallyaidedhis projectiveabilities. He thought it somehowloosened his ethericbody. If projection is unlikely to kill you, are there anyothersafetyproblems?The question of gettingback in to yourbody has alreadybeencovered(follow the cord or wiggleyour big toe) and seems to causelittle difficulty.Monroeonce foundhimselfgettinginto the wrongbody - the onlytime I haveeverheard of thishappening - butsaysthatthe ‘wigglingthebigtoe’ techniquewillsortthis out as well. Can someone, or something, get into your body while you are away? AlthoughMonroe’sexperience of mistakenlytrying to get intothe wrongbody mustsuggestthis is justpossible, it doesnotappear to be verylikely.‘Overthe past 15 years,workingwithlaboratorysubjectsandprogramparticipants,there havebeen no incidents that couldremotely be construed as “possession” or somethingdestructive or uncontrollable,’ he statescategorically. I can findnothing in the publishedliterature to suggestthat an out-of-body is more than the road and be experience any dangerous crossing . . . may considerably less so. Neither my considerablepersonalexperience with projectorsnormyconsiderablylesspersonalexperiencewithprojectionhasled me to believeotherwise. The worst that seems to happen is the occasional headache,minorpain or stiffness — andMonroeclaimsthese are no morethan the result of unconsciousanxieties andwilldisappearonceyoucome to terms withyournaturalfearsaboutprojection. Someprojectors are convincedeveryonehastheability to leavethebodywith a little training and effort.Muldoon and one or two others go evenfurther, suggesting that projection is a naturalfunctionwhich you alreadyexperience whetheryourealize it or not. According to thistheory,yourethericbodyslips out of coincidencewiththe physicalbodyduringsleep, a processwhichallows you to rechargewithvitalenergy. But if projectionseems to be safe, it is notalwayspleasant.Sometimes it can be veryunpleasantindeed. Thatslightslippage,whichMuldoon says occurs naturallyduring sleep, can cause disorientation,balanceproblems and a sensation of illness if it happenswhileyou are wideawake.(Thesesymptoms are indicative of a number of conditions, but if you suspectethericslippage, firmpressure on the top of the head, at a pointmidwaybetween an imaginary line drawn to link the tips of the ears, willusuallyput it right.) Anotherfamiliarexample of partial spontaneousprojection is the jolt sensationmanypeopleexperience whenfallingasleep,especially if overly tired.Typicallythisarisesafter an exhaustingdaywhenyou lie downdesperate for sleep, butcannotstopyourmindgoingoverthe events of the day. In these circumstances,beginning to drift oftenresults in a violentjoltingsensation whichbrings you wideawakeagain. This sensation, says Dr DouglasBaker, resultsfromthe doubleslippingout of the physical,thenjerkingback in again. In a straw polltaken at his lectures on the subject, he discoveredsome 60 per cent of his audienceshadexperiencedthe sensation.Since I findmyselfamong them, I can attest it is something I wouldprefer to avoid.

Firstindication of a fullprojection is oftenparalysis of the entirebody — what

30 Dangers of Projection

Muldoontermscatalepsy or the ‘glued-down’feeling. A writercolleague of minetriggered the cataleptic state whileattempting to stimulate a projection andtoldme later it wasone of themostunpleasantandfrighteningexperiences he hadeverhad.Mostpeoplereact to the sensationwithdistate,unease,fear or evenpanic - especially if theyhave not beenwarnedabout the possibility in advance.

The ‘shaking’ or ‘vibration’mentioned by RobertMonroe is by no means uncommoneither; and is againalmostuniversallyexperienced as unpleasant. Part of the problem is lack of control.Whenparalysis or vibrationbegin, it requires an enormouseffort to breakfree of them - and in someinstancesyou are powerless to break free at all and can onlywait for the condition to pass.

Anotherpart is thefactthattheseexperiencesfeellikethesymptoms of illness — and a seriousillness at that.Evenwhenwarned in advanceaboutthepossibility of theiroccurrence, you tend to lie in theirgrip wondering if this is really the start of a projection or if, coincidentally,you are sufferingfrom a heartattack or stroke. It would be unfair to overstressthese negativefactors. My own few pro jectionshavebeentroublefree;andone of thebestprojectors I knowclaimsthat the wholeprocess is only a matter of ‘letting go’, which she doeswithsuch expertisethatshecannowstep in andout of thebody at will,with no catalepsy, vibration, or any other symptomswhatsoever. But it is certain that some projectors do haveproblems.And if forewarningaboutthe symptomsdoesnot makethemanymorepleasant, it mayperhapsprovidesomesmallreassurance until accustomed to them.. or learnhow to avoidthem yougrow . altogether. If the question of safety is relativelyeasy to answer, thequestion of realityhas provenmoredifficult.Certainlythere is somethingpeculiargoing on. Even if I hadnotexperiencedthephenomenonformyself, I wouldstill be quitesatisfied thatprojectors are undergoing an extraordinaryexperience, if onlybecausethe brain’selectricalpatternschangedramaticallyduring a projection. In oneseries of experiments, for example, I wasable to monitor the brainwaves of a subject projectingwith the aid of inducedhypnotictrance. Theread-outfirst showed the alpharhythmtypical of hypnosis, then a sharpjump in intensity at the moment of projection.Thereafter, it wasactuallypossible to ‘track’theprogress of theethericbodyaroundtheroom,sincethebrainwavesvaried in intensity in relation to the subject’sperceived(out-of-body)position. Dr Charles T. Tart has reportedsubstantially more sophisticated tests on RobertMonroeduring the periodSeptember 1965 to August1966, using the facilities of theElectroencephalographicLaboratory of theUniversity ofVirginia Medical School. During these experiments,Monroe’sbrainwaves, heart rate and eye movements were all monitoredduringprojection. The tests typicallyindicatedbrainwavepatternsassociated with dreaming sleep and were usuallyaccompanied by rapid eye movements, also associated with dreaming. His heart rate remainedwithin its normal 65 to 70 beats per minuterange, but duringsome of the sessions, his bloodpressureshowed a sudden drop, a steady low (apparentlyduring the period he was out of the body)followed by a suddenresurgence to normal.

31 The AstralProjectionWorkbook

A littleover a decadelater,Monroeunderwentfurthertests at the hands of Drs StuartTwemlow and FowlerJones at the University of KansasMedical Centre, using left and right occipitalelectoencephalographreadings and a Beckmanpolygraph. (The latter is commonly called a ‘lie-detector’ but is actuallyused to measure a variety of physicalfunctionssuch as galvanicskin reponse,temperaturevariationsandbloodpressurefluctuations.) The EEG tests generallytended to confirmTart’s findings that Monroe projected in a stateverysimilar, if notidentical, to light(dreaming)sleep.There was,however, a ‘dramaticreduction in neuronalenergy in the alphaandtheta

band’ - quite the reverse of my ownfindingswith a hypnotizedsubject.There wasalso,reportedTwemlowandJones,‘someunusualpatterns not character istic of REM(rapideyemovement or dream)sleep or othernormalsleepstages.’ The polygraphproduced even more interestingreadings.Galvanic skin responseshowed an arousalincrease of some150microvoltswhenthe sessions began, but no responsewhatsoeverduringMonroe’sprojections. To confuse the pictureevenfurther, Tartreportedthat an unnamed‘young lady’whoseout-of-bodyexperienceswereaccidental, but frequent,showed a differentbrainwavepattern to Monroe,without,however,indicatingexactly what. Clearly, the monitoring of subjects’bodiesshowsphysiologicalresponses which would be difficult, if not impossible, to fake, coincident with the subjectiveexperience of projection. Butthoseresponses do notform a coherent pattern;andvaryfromsubject to subject. It wouldappearthatprojectioncauses definitephysicalreactions, but thesereactionsdifferdepending on the state you are in to beginwith. Experiments of this type are all very well and doubtlessimportantwithin their own frame of reference, but whateverbrainwavepatterns and GSR manifest, they do no morethan tell us that subjectswhoclaim to project are unlikely to be lyingthroughtheirteeth.Theygive no guaranteethatprojections haveanyobjectivevalidity.Indeed the REMstateStage 1 sleeppatternwhich showed in the Monroeexperimentsmight be taken to indicate he was only dreaming. Certainly, not everyscientistwhoinvestigatedhim was prepared to accept the objectivenature of projection. One paperissued by Drs Twemlow and Glen 0. Gabbardbegins with a ratherunsympatheticanalysis of Monroe’s personalitytraits.According to thegooddoctorstheseincludepotentialareas of conflict in the realms of sexuality,aggression and depression.They go on to relate his out-of-bodytripswith ‘a grandiosefantasy’known as ‘theD~da1us Experience’.Thispsychologicalcondition,namedafterthe Greekwhoflewtoo near the sun, typicallyappears in childhood, but does not alwaysdisappear later. ‘Thefascinationwithout-of-body“travel”seen in Monroe is likely an adult derivative of this D~da1usfantasy,’wroteTwemlow and Gabbard, wholater concluded, ‘Thus, the out-of-bodyexperience in Monroe also serves the function of avoidance of conflict. By transcending the prison of his body, it allowshim to steerclear of suchpotentialconflictareas as sexuality,depression

32 Dangers of Projection

andaggression.’ In short,Monroe’sprojections are presented as an hysterical reaction to an essentiallyneuroticcondition. If Monroehimself is disturbed by this sort of twaddle, he may drawsome consolation from the fact that among others believed to suffer from the D~dalusfantasy were Tolstoy and Sir WinstonChurchill.Furthermore, if D~dalus is the dynamicbehindprojection, the fantasy is uncommonlywide spread. A 1954studentsurveyshowed27.1percent of respondentshadhad an out-of-bodyexperience, the majority of themmorethanonce. CeliaGreen’s study of Oxfordundergraduates in 1968showed an evenhigherfigure (34 per cent).Bothsurveyswereconducted on a small,selectivebase, but in 1975 a far widersamplingwastaken. Thisshowed a 25 per centrate of OOBexperience amongstudents and a 14 per cent rate among the generalpopulation. Even these figures may only be the tip of an iceberg. When, in 1976, a mass circulation North Americanpublicationappealed for information on the subject, 700out of 1,500repliesclaimedout-of-bodyexperiences — a staggering 46.6per cent. Doesthis mean a of us are off ourheads. or is there a real only greatmany . . possibilitythatthe subjectiveexperience of leavingthebody is no lessthanthe literaltruth?Some 94 per cent of thoseinterviewedclaim the experience to be ‘morerealthan a dream’.Whatevidence is therethattheymight be right? Letme startclose to homewithArthurGibson, theprojector,youmayrecall, whomanaged to stretchhis astralcord to India.Arthur’sreport of Bombaywas vivid,detailed, buthardlyevidentialsince he hadlivedandworked in thatcity for manyyears. But among all the familiarsights,Arthurdiscoveredtwo that wereentirelyunexpected. In the old quarter of the citywas a newly-builtwall wherenone had beenbefore; and his favouriterestaurant had beenredeco rated.Arthurcheckedwith a friendstillliving in Bombayandfoundboththese perceptionshadbeencorrect. In a morecontrollableexperiment, I hypnotized Arthur and had him project into the house next door, which he had never physicallyentered. He was able to describe its layout,rooms, decor and furnishingsaccurately, in considerabledetailandwithlittleapparentdifficulty. A similarsort of experimentwas carried out with the help of a teenageshop assistantnamedDeniseAlexanderwhowaspersuaded,againunderhypnosis, to projectfrom a site nearKill, in CountyKildare in the Republic of Ireland to a house in Lisburn,CountyAntrim in NorthernIreland - a distance of some 100 miles.Waiting for her on the mantlepiece of the livingroom in the Lisburn house was a short note, the contents of which was known only to two colleagueswho, having left it there, took no further part in the experiment. (Andwereactually out of the country on holidaywhen it tookplace.)Denise failed to read the note - she saidshe foundthe roomtoo dark - butwasable to report (accurately) that it was block printed on unlined blue paper and containedexactlyfivewords. Boththeseexperimentswereoriginallypublished in myhookAstralDoorways as long ago as 1971. Sincethen, I have had little diff~.ufly in persuading a variety of subjects to reportbackaccurately on scenes,peopleandthingsthey have seen while out of the body. There are only a limited number of

33 TheAstralProjectionWorkbook

explanationsforthisaccuracy if youare prepared to acceptthatfraudplayed no part in the experiments.Telepathy is one.Clairvoyance - a directperception of distantevents — is another.Andactualprojection is a third. It is difficult to seehowtelepathyplayedanypart in ArthurGibson’sBombay trip, since no one else present had ever visited the city or was particularly interested in it. The experiment with DeniseAlexander was specifically structured to avoidthepossibility of telepathy,sincetheonlypeoplewhoknew the contents of the notewere at the time in an unknownlocation. Clairvoyance is a lot moredifficult. I amfairlyhappy(forreasonswhichneed notconcern us here)that it is possibleforsomepeople to obtaininformation at a distancewithoutleaving the body.(And an aspect of the trainingoutlined in Part Two of this workbooktends,coincidentally, to stimulate this faculty.) But the subjectiveexperience of so doing is verydifferentfromprojection. If we insist on clairvoyance as the answer, we have to insist on clairvoyance simultaneouslyandcoincidentallyaccompanied by a vivid,associatedhallucin ation. I finddifficult to swallow. . . something frankly Americanshave a colourfulsaying to theeffectthat ‘if it walkslike a duckand quacks like a duck, chances are it really is a duck.’ I tend to believe the experiments I havecarriedout in thisfieldwalklikeducksandpoint to thefact thattheirsubjectsreallyhaveprojected.Buttherewasone(perhapsimportant) flaw in my method.Withoutexception, the projections I initiatedinvolved hypnosis.Sincehypnosis can easilyproducevividhallucinations, it becomes possible to argue that the phenomenon was one of trance rather than projection.Fortunately the pointerstowardsgenuineprojection do not end with my poorefforts. Tart, for example,required one of his subjects (the same‘younglady’who producedbrainwavepatternsdifferentfromMonroe’s) to read a targetnumber located in a room different from that in which she projected. She did so successfully.Whileunable to readthe targetnumber,Monroehimselfsuccess fully reportedfinding a laboratoryassistant and her husband in the target room. HerewardCarringtonwentonebetter.Possiblyencouraged by the activities of his star subject,SylvanMuldoon,Carringtonwilledhimself to projectinto thepresence of ‘a certainyounglady’whohad a reputation as a psychic.This is the sort of thing most of us (men)would quite like to be able to do, but Carrington’sattemptsproducednone of the consciousprojections of Muldoon andwere a failure. that the in consequentlyjudged . . until, is, lady question reportedwaking to findhimstanding in herroom or sitting on herbed at the time he wasattemptinghis projections. He remainedfor a fewmomentsbefore fadingaway.

Whilethissort of case is interesting, it raisesmorequestionsthan it answers — notably how Carringtoncouldhaveprojected so successfullywithoutbeing aware of it. But unconsciousprojectionmay be far morecommonthanmany scientistsimagine; as are instances of peoplecatching sight of the ghostly bodies of projectors. In January 1957, for example, an Americanwoman, MarthaJohnson,projected from Plains, Illinois in the early hours of the

34 Dangers of Projection

morning in order to visithermotheralmost a thousandmilesaway in northern Minnesota. Shesucceeded in the experimentandfoundhermother at work in the kitchen. Ms Johnsonleanedagainst the dish cupboard and watched. Eventually her mothergrewdisturbed andturned to look at her. Ms Johnson experienced an understandablefeeling of satisfactionandleft. Thefollowingday,Martha’smotherwrote a letterwhichsaid in part:

‘It wouldhavebeenabouttenaftertwo,yourtime. (MsJohnsonprojected a

littleafter 2. a. m. — JHB) I waspressing a blousehere in thekitchen. I looked up and there you were at the cupboard just standingsmiling at me. I started to speak to youandyouweregone. I forgot for a momentwhere I was. I think the dogssawyoutoo. They got so excited.’

Scientists fight very shy of this sort of evidence, which is categorized as ‘anecdotal’, a labelwhichoftenallows it to be convenientlyignored. But if you experienceprojectionandcantellwhat I am doing,while I in turncan seeyour phantombody in my room, I wouldventure to suggestonceagain the whole thingwalks like a duck. Modernpsychicalresearch is plagued by a sort of paranoidscepticismamongthescientificestablishmentwhichattempts to force stronger and strongerevidence,tighter and tightercontrols, far beyondwhat would be accepted in anyotherdiscipline. Something of the sameattitudehasrubbed offontoparanormalinvestigators themselves, who will oftencreate the mosttortuoustheories to explain (or explainaway)phenomena, theexplanation of which is plainlypresented by the phenomenaitself. On my reading of the evidence, there is little doubt that projection of the phantomactuallyoccurs, that you can travelwithin it to distantparts, thatyou canbringbackaccuratenewsandthat,sometimes, you canactually be seen. But for those of youwhowantjust a littlemore,consider the case of StuartBlueHarary. StuartBlueHarary is another of thoseprojectorswhohaveco-operatedwith science in an attempt to find outwhat on earth is going on whentheyexercise theirtalent. In thisinstance, the site of theexperimentswasDukeUniversity of NorthCarolina,perhaps best known as the placewhere Dr J.B. Rhine first established his statisticalESPcard-callingexperiments. Harary’sexperiments were substantially more complex. His pulse, blood pressure,galvanic skinresponse,breathing, eye movements andbrainwaves were all monitored. A targetroomapproximatelyhalf a mileawaywaspacked withthermistors,photomultipliersandvariousdevicesformeasuringelectrical conductivityandmagneticpermeability.WhenHararyprojected, his heartbeat and respirationincreased and bloodpressuredropped.There was a similar decrease in galvanic skinresponse.Somerapid eye movementswerenoted, but he wasnotasleep,sincetheEEGshowed a steadyalpharhythm,associated withrelaxedalertness. Scientistsmonitoring the variousinstruments in the target lab subsequently hadfailed to influence of them. the . one. reportedHarary any . except Among mechanicaldeviceswas a confinedkitten,appropriatelynamedSpirit.Harary

35 The AstralProjectionWorkbook

hadbeeninstructed to soothe it by stroking if he wassuccessful in visiting the lab. Spiritmewed 37 timesduring a controlperiod, butnot at all duringthetwo two-minuteperiodswhenHararyreportedstroking it while he was out of the body. This is a fascinatinginstance of the correctchoice of detectionequipment, for cats havelongbeenbelieved to have the ability to see ghosts. I haveowned severalmyselfwhowerealwaysdoing it.

36 5.

WhatHelpsYouLeaveYourBody

Buthow do you do it? Assuming you are not among the few who have experiencedspontaneous projection, or the fewerstillwhohaveexperienced it morethanonce,how do you roll out of yourbody to walkaroundlike a ghost,passingthroughwalls, visitingyoungladies in theirchambers andgenerallybehaving in a reprehen siblemanner? In 1977, two multiscalequestionnairesdelightfullynamedPOBE and PAL were dispatched to some 700 Americans who had reportedout-of-body experiences.POBEstood for Profile of the Out-of-BodyExperience;PALwas Profile of Adaption to Life, a measure of psychologicalhealth;andjustpossibly an unconsciousmeasure of how the investigatingscientistviewedindividuals who claimed to have left their bodies. The surveyelicited 339 replies and analysis of respondents’answersproduced an interestingranking of what might be calledpre-existentconditions — what, in otherwords, the situation wasimmediatelybeforeprojectionhappened. Theauthors of thesurvey, ouroldfriendsDrsTwemlow,GabbardandJones, expressed the followingcaveat: ‘Ofcourse, no cause-effectrelationshipneces sarilyoccursbetweentheseconditionsandthe experienceitself,althoughsuch has beenimplied by a number of authors.’ I fear I am about to makesuch an implicationmyself, formyexperiencesuggeststhatthosewhotrainthemselves to bringaboutcertain of the pre-existentconditionshave a far betterchance of projectingthanthosewho do not. Butwhat are the conditions? Some,admittedly, are hardlyrelevant to training.Fivepercent, forexample, projectedfollowingcardiacarrest. Ten per cent were near deathfromother causes. Three per cent had high fever, four per cent had just suffered an accident,while a furtherfour per cent left theirbodiesduringchildbirth.(This last is interesting, since it obviouslyrelatesonly to femalerespondents, who comprised 52 per cent of the sample. It is not clear if the 4 per cent figure is quoted in relationonly to females or to thesurvey as a whole. If to thesurvey as a whole, it indicates a surprisingly high incidence of projection during childbirth - almostone in tenamongsusceptiblesubjects.)Wemightalsosafely ignore the 2 per cent of projectionswhichoccurredwhiledriving a vehicle. Whenasked his adviceaboutwhat to do if youfoundyourself in thisposition,

37 The AstralProjectionWorkbook

RobertMonroeansweredwisely, ‘Getback as fast as youcan!’ Butevenleaving all theseaside,there are stifi a greatmanyareaswhichmay repaycloserexamination. Top of the list, present in some 79 per cent of cases, was the fact that the subjectwasphysicallyrelaxed. In all the projections I have induced by hypnosis, deep relaxation has been a characteristic. It was also present,withoutexception, in my ownspontaneousprojections. One analy ticalprojector of considerableexperience, has made the interestingsuggestion that projection is not a matter of driving the ethericbody out of the physical body, butrather of letting it go. If this is correct,thenrelaxation,which is itself a matter of ‘lettinggo’, is an obvious aid to the process. Drugs can sometimes be of assistance. Whileundermedicaltreatment I experienced a wholeseries of projectionstriggered by injections of a powerful musclerelaxant.Generalanaesthetic,whichnowalmostalwaysinvolves the use of musclerelaxants, was a pre-existentcondition in 6 percent of surveyed cases.Eventranquilizerscanhelp:some of myearlyprojectionsoccurredwhile I was enjoying the benefits of librium. But these are all drugswhichrequire medicalsupervision and are thusmorelikely to triggeraccidentalprojections than form part of a structuredtrainingprogramme. The most commonly availablesocialdrug — alcohol — although a relaxant and depressant, does not appear to be particularlyconducive to projection: it is listed as a factor in only two per cent of cases. Theproblemseems to be the wayalcoholreacts on the nervoussystem. By releasinginhibitions, it generateseuphoria.Relaxation does follow, but as deep muscularrelaxation is achieved,reflexes are de pressed,co-ordinationruined, speechslurred and mentationprofoundly affected. In otherwords, by thetimeyou arerelaxedenough to project,youare usuallytoo drunk to care. There is someevidence that hallucinogenicdrugs,includinganything but very smallquantities of cannabis, can induceprojection, but at the cost of control. In one experiment, for example, the subjecttriggeredprojections by smokingfairlyheavyconcentrations of cannabisresin,only to spendtwohours swinginguncontrollably in and out of his body like a pendulum.Fortunately there are several safer, and more legal, ways to achieve deep muscular relaxation. Onealreadymentioned is hypnosis. Although my own experiments have used hypnosis to triggerprojections directly,this is notwhat I amadvocatinghere. Formanypeople,hypnosis is an exceptionaltool for inducing a totallyrelaxedstate.Havingachievedthatstate, you can then go on to apply the various othertechniqueswhich will help you achieveprojection. But first find yourhypnotist. You might, of course, quiteliterally do justthat.Mostcitiesandquite a fewlargetownssupportone or two professionalhypnotherapists. Search the yellow pages or the advertisingcolumns of the eveningpaper and when you find one whose approach and credentialssatisfyyou, make an appointment. Say you suffer from a tensionproblem - which is probably true even if you do not realize it - and want to be trained in relaxation.Typically you will be expected to pay by the session, each of which will last about an hour. For commonplace problems like smoking or tension, some hypnotherapists are prepared

38 WhatHelps You LeaveYourBody

to conductgroupsessionswhich cut down on costs. If you wouldprefer not to attend a hypnotist, or simplycannotfind one in yourarea,youcanalwaysimportoneintoyourownhomethroughthemedium of a cassette tape. There are a great manyhypnoticinductiontapes on the market*,usuallyavailable for littlemorethan the price of a paperbackbook. Althoughyou can pickone thatsimplypromisesrelaxation, my advicewould be to go foronethattrainsyou in self-hypnosis, a trulyinvaluableskillonceyou get the knack.

Forthosenervous of hypnosis - andtheyarelegion - biofeedbacktraining is a possibility.Biofeedbacktraining is based on the interestingnotionthatnone of us arestupid:oncewe areshownhow to do something, wecanusuallymanage it a secondtime.

A great many physicalprocesses — your heart rate, for example, or the amount of acidsecretedbyyourstomach in response to a barbecuedspare rib — are not underconsciouscontrol. But they can be broughtunderconscious controlthroughtraining.Equipmentwhichmonitors these processes, then signalsthemeitheraudibly or visually,allowsthis to happen.Onceyoucan see or hearwhenyourbody is doingsomething, you can usually take conscious charge of the processafterrelativelyfewpracticesessions.

Musculartension is not entirely an unconsciousactivity - you can flex and relaxyourbicepsanytimeyouchoose — but for a greatmanypeople, it has an unconsciouscomponent.Howoftenhaveyoufoundyourselffrowning,gritting yourteeth,hunchingyourshoulders, or tensingyourstomachmuscleswithout realizing you weredoing it? Biofeedbacktrainingmakes you aware of these unconscious or semi-conscioustensions so that you can do somethingabout them.There arevariousindicators of musculartension.Perhapsthe simplest is one we havealreadyencountered:galvanic skinresponse. The morerelaxed you become, the lower the electricalresistance of your skin. Whilehighly sensitive,complexandexpensiveGSRmachinesexist, it is perfectlypossible to monitor this responseusing a hand-helddevice littlelargerthan a packet of cigarettes. Anaudibletonedrops in pitch as youbegin to relax,allowingyou to relaxevenfurther.

This and several otherbiofeedbackdevices are obtainable, in the United Kingdom, from Aleph One Ltd., of The Old Courthouse,Bottisham, CambridgeCB59BA,England.Currentlistsandcostingsmaybe hadby writing to thisaddress or phoning0223-811679. If you prefer to avoid anythingfancy, you can always train yourself in muscularrelaxation the hard way — by sheer, doggedpractice. This is, I suppose,wheretheworkpart of theworkbookreallybegins.Startingtomorrow morningandcontinuingeachmorningthereafter, I wouldlikeyou to set aside a shortperiod for the practice of relaxation. Howmuchtimeyouspend is up to youbutyouwillfindanythinglessthan 10

*ThorsonsPublishingGroupsells a comprehensiveselection by mail.Catalogues are free from the Group at DeningtonEstate,Wellingborough,Northants, NN8 2RQ, England.

39 TheAstralProjectionWorkbook

minutes is useless. If you are going to takeprojectionseriously, I wouldsuggest half an hour; and stronglysuggest you make the practice a habit, because continuity of effort is important.

Youwill needprivacy.This is one reason for selectingmorningtime - if you get up earlyenough,nobodyelsewill be about. Tryandfind a placewhereyou will not be disturbed. Lock the door if necessary;,and if you are particularly sensitive to noise, use earplugs.Conductyourrelaxationsession in an upright chair.Don’t lie down on a couch or bed: you are far too likely to fall asleep. If you are usingautohypnosis or biofeedback,follow the instructionsthatcame withyourtapes or instruments. If you are doing it the hardway, the following sequence,quotedfrom my ReincarnationWorkbook, may be of help:

Beginbyregulatingyourbreathing.Relaxation is a physicalfunction.Your muscles use oxygenextractedfromyourbloodstream.Yourbloodstream, in turn,extractsthatoxygenfrom the air youbreathe. By regulatingyour breathing, youincrease the oxygenavailable in yourblood,yourmuscles extractthe optimumamountand are far happier to relaxforyouthanthey mightotherwise be. If you havestudiedyoga, you willknowthere are all sorts of complex breath-regulationtechniques. But the one I wantyou to try is verysimple. It is called 2/4 breathing. What it comesdown to is thatyou 1. Breathe in to the mentalcount of four. 2. Holdyourbreath in to the mentalcount of two... 3. Breathe out to the mentalcount of four... 4. Holdyourbreath out to the mentalcount of two. It soundssimpleand it is, although I shouldwarnyouthere is a bit of a knack to getting it right.(Youwillknowyouhave got it right,incidentally, whenyoubegindoing it withoutthinking.) Therate at whichyoushouldcountvariesfromindividual to individual. Start by synchronizing it withyourheartbeat. If this doesn’twork, play arounduntilyou hit on the rhythmthat is mostcomfortable for you. Get yourbreathingcomfortablebefore you go on to the secondpart of the exercise.

Onceyouhaveestablished a comfortablerhythm of 2/4 breathing, let it run for aboutthreeminutes,thenstart the followingrelaxationsequence. (If youcanhold the 2/4 rhythmwhileyou do it, that’sgreat, but chances are youwill not be able to do so at first. In this lattercase, just startyour session with three minutes of 2/4 breathing, then go back to normal breathingwhileyoucarry out the mainrelaxationsequence,thentake up 2/4 breathingagainwhenyou are nicelyrelaxed.) Concentrate on yourfeet. Wigglethemabout. Curlthem to tense the muscles,thenallowthem to relax. Concentratenext on yourcalfmuscles.Tightenandrelaxthem. Concentrate on yourthighmuscles.Tightenandrelaxthem.

40 WhatHelps You LeaveYourBody

Concentrate on yourbuttockmuscles.Tightenyourbuttocksandanus, thenrelaxthem. Concentrate on yourstomachmuscles, a verycommontensionfocus. Tightenthenrelaxthem. Concentrate on yourhands.Curlthemintofists,thenrelaxthem. Concentrate on yourarms.Tightenthemrigidly,thenrelaxthem. Concentrate on yourback.Tighten the muscles,thenrelaxthem. Concentrate on yourchest.Tighten the muscles,thenrelaxthem. Concentrate on your shoulders,anothervery commontensionfocus. Hunchyourshoulders to tighten the muscles,thenrelaxthem. Concentrate on yourneck.Tighten the musclesthenrelaxthem. Concentrate on yourface. Grityourteeth and contortyourfeatures to tense up the facialmusclesthenrelaxthem. Concentrate on yourscalp. Frown to tighten the scalpmuscles, then relaxthem. Nowtighten up everymuscle in yourbody,holdingyourentirebody momentarilyrigid,thenrelax,letting go as completely as you are able. Do

thisfinalwholebodysequenceagain, thenagain — threetimes in all. On the thirdtime, take a reallydeepbreathwhenyoutense the musclesand sighdeeplyaloud as you let the tension go. Youshould be feelingnicelyrelaxed by now. If youabandonedyour 2/4 breathing at the start of the relaxationsequence, pick it up again at this point. Closeyoureyesandtry to imagineyourwholebodygettingheavierand heavier, as if it were turning to lead. You will find your visualization increasesyourlevel of relaxation stillfurther. Enjoy the sensation of relaxation for the remainder of yoursession. But stay vigilant.Should you find tensioncreeping in anywhere (and you certainlywill in the earlydays)don’t let it worryyou. Justtighten up the tensemuscles a littlemore,thenrelaxthem. Use the techniqueregularly until you have trainedyourself to relax totallyanytimeyouwant to.

Completephysicalrelaxation is notthewholesecret of ethericprojection, but it is a large and importantpart of the wholesecret.Anotherimportantpart is a calmmind,againreported by some 79 per cent of respondents. Manyyears ago, I worked as director of a clinic whichtaughtrelaxation amongotherself-improvementskills. A catch-phrase of the clinic was that a totallyrelaxedbodycannotharbour a destructiveemotion. In otherwords,whenyour body is completelyrelaxed, your mind must, by this definition, be calm. Howeveraccurate it might be, this catch-phrase was also a Catch-22.While your mind remains upset and disturbed, your chances of achieving total relaxationare minimal.Althoughcompleterelaxationandmentalcalm go hand in hand, they do so all the way. Onedoes not suddenlyappearfromnowhere when the other is achieved. Youneed to knowplainlythat to get thebestout of the relaxationsequence I

41 The AstralProjectionWorkbook

havejustdescribed, youmustapproach it in as worry-free a state as possible. There is somepositivefeedbackinvolved in physicalrelaxation, so you may findsome of yo.urworriesslippingaway if youpersevere,butyouwillprogress far morequickly — andrelax far moredeeply — if you tackleyourmentalstate head on. One of the bestways to do so is meditation. A total of 27 per cent of respondentswereactuallyengaged in meditation when projectionoccurred. This is not altogethersurprising. In the East, projection is oftenexperiencedduringyogicmeditation - indeedoftenexpected. Physicalrelaxation is generally a preliminary to meditation, the techniques of which tend to calm and still the mind. Even withoutfurther effort, the combination of these two factors is oftenenough to stimulate a spontaneous projection. As my favouriteprojector might have said, they facilitate the process of lettinggo. But as you willquicklydiscover, the wordmeditation is like the phraseastral projection — it meansdifferentthings to differentpeople.There are, in fact, a wholeseries of meditationaltechniques,somebetter for our presentpurpose than others.When, for example, I was originallytrained to meditate, I was taughthow to followspecificchains of thought, how to manipulateimagery andhow to avoidmind-wandering. It was a style of meditationwellsuited to a Westernmindand one whichdeveloped an unusuallyhighdegree of concen tration.Intensity of concentration does indeed block out worries, at least temporarily, but this is a long way from the tranquilitygenerated by other methods. Perhaps one of the mostsuccessfulmethods is the exercise of identification with an object or symbol — a techniquecalledcontemplation by the majority of Westernreligiousorders, but a meditativetechniquenonetheless.Themethod is easilyenoughdescribed.Youbeginwithyoursymbol or object - a rose-bud, for example,might be a pleasantstartingpoint - which you holdsufficiently close to enable you to examine it in minutedetail. You attempt to familiarize yourselfwiththetotality of therose: theform, thescent, theweight, thefeel, the colour. You meditate on the rose-bud’sposition in context, how it relates to othertypes of rose,otherflowers,otherplants,how it relates to thesunandthe soil, where it standswithin the universalwhole.

All sorts of associationsspin offfromthisexercise — far morethanyouwould imagine until you actually try it. But these associations are unimportant in themselves;merely a way of gettingmundaneperceptionsandlinkages out of yoursystem. Once you feel you havetravelled that pathsufficiently far, the core of the meditationpresentsitself. In thisyoureachoutwithyourmindand attempt to imaginewhat it feelslike to be a rose-bud.Withpractice,youwillfind eventuallythatcloseexamination, or contemplation, of an objectleadsquickly to identificationwith it. The intermediatestage of categorization in relation to form, colour etc., no longerintrudes. In the final stage of the exercise, identificationslipsinto a mergingwith the object of yourcontemplation. You become the rose-bud and, with any luck, experience a unity unavailable to mundaneconsciousness. If you succeed in this adventure, I have no doubt you will achieve an

42 WhatHelps You LeaveYourBody

unparalleleddegree of tranqufflity, not alone at the time, but for a longtime afterwards as well. Theproblem is thatcontemplation to the leveldescribed is far fromeasy. Ontheevidence of religiousmysticsthroughtheages,youmight have to workforyears to getrealresults.Sinceyou are onlyseeking to calmthe mind(not achieve the ultimateexperience of mysticalunity)theremust be an easierway.Andthere is. If there is one fundamentalconnecting link between the variousforms of meditation, it is the necessity to still the mind.Thisinvolvesthinking of nothing at all, a processwhich, withpractice,seems to leadautomatically to a calmer form of generalmentation. Butthinking of nothing is a lot moredifficultthan it sounds.Eventhinking of only one thing is a lot moredifficultthan it sounds. Try this simple test. Countmentallyupwards from one, while thinking of absolutelynothing else whatsoever. As soon as an extraneousthoughtcreeps in (like ‘I’m goingrather well here’) stop counting. If you are observant and will be to 10. unless to be skilled honest,you verylucky getpast . . youhappen in mindcontrol.

Somepeoplespend a greatmanyyearslearning to stillthemind,butthere is a short-cut.This is the technique of mantricmeditation. A gooddeal of supersti tiousnonsensehasaccumulatedaroundthe subject of mantras. But a mantra is simply a word or phrasewhich,whenrepeated, has an effect on the human mind. By this definition, a good manyadvertisingslogans and jingles are mantras, as certainlywasthe salutationHeilHitler in Germanyduringthe Nazi period. Advocates of TranscendentalMeditationsuggestthemostpotentmantras are personal,mysteriouslyattuned to the vibrations of the individuals who use them. Forpresentpurposes,youcanmake do withsomethingfarlesselaborate

- a circularmantra in dailyuse by millionsthroughout the Orient.Thismantra goes Aum mani padme hum, and is associated with Buddhism. It usually translates‘Hail to the Jewel in the Lotus.’ For those of you whoworryabout suchthings, the words are supposed to refer to the centralcore of enlighten ment (thejewel)within the humansoul. In point of fact, the meaning is of no importancewhatsoever. What we are after is the effect, whichmight just as easilybe obtainedfromtheIslamicmantraHuaaflahualazilailaha illa Hua(‘He is Godandthere is no otherGodthanHe’), theEgyptian A ka dua, Tufur biu, Bi aa chef-u, Dudu ner af an nuteru (‘I adore the might of thy breath,supreme and terribleGod,whomakestthe GodsandDeath to tremblebeforeThee’) or even Threeblindmice, see howtheyrun. They all runafterthefarmer’swife. Shecut offtheir tailswith a carvingknife. Didyoueverseesuch a thing in yourlife as threeblindmice... The commondenominatorbetween all thesemantras is that they swallow theirtails. You will see what I mean if you chant any one of themaloud. No soonerhas the lastword of the mantrabeenpronouncedthanyoucanbegin it againfrom the beginning.Which is more or less whatyoushould do to begin your mantricmeditationpractice. Sit comfortably where you wifi not be disturbed, go throughyourconsciousrelaxation as outlinedearlier,thenbegin to chant the mantraAummanipadme hum. Trychanting it aloud at first.Make it sonorousandrunthefinalmmm of hum

43 .i ne AstralProjectionWorkbook

into thebeginning of aurn. Therhythmandpronunciation are as follows: Aw-urnrnah-neepadrnehhurnrnrnrnrn urn rnah-neepadrnehhumrnrn... After you have listened to it aloud for a few cycles, lower the volume progressivelyuntil you ‘withdraw’ the sounds into yourmind and continue pronouncingthe mantriccirclementally.Experimentwithspeeduntilyoufind a rhythmwhichgripsyourattention so that extraneousthoughts are thrown out by the spinningmantra. Theeffect is verysimilar to thosetimeswhenyou get a tuneintoyourheadandcan’t get it out.Themantraspinsandexpands to fill yourconsciousnessuntilthere is no room for anythingelse.Even if you are aware of the meaning of the phraseyou are using, thatmeaning is soonlost, in the samewaythatyourmindblanksoutthe meaning of a wordyourepeat too often. Once the spinningmantra is firmlyestablished, it wifi continue with no consciouseffort,leavingyoufree to relaxmorefullywith an untroubledmind. When you wish to return to yournormalmode of consciousness, slow the spinrate of themantra,then‘externalize’ it by pronouncing it aloud a fewtimes beforestoppingaltogether.

44 6.

How to Make a Witch’sCradle

Profoundphysicalrelaxation, a calmmind, and a desire to travel, are factors in a successful and are in present great many projections . . . enough, themselves, to triggerprojection in a smallnumber of cases — perhaps 2 percent to 3 per cent of thosewhopersevere. If you are not amongtheselatterlucky few,whatothermethods are open to you? In sharpcontrast to the majority,almost a quarter (23 %) of projectorspolled indicatedthattheywereunderemotionalstress at the timethey left theirbodies. This is a fascinatingfinding, for it takes us directlyintotherealm of shamanism, whereinitiatoryrites are structuredexplicitly to inducestress.Closelyassociated with the stressfactor is unusualfatigue,reported in 15 percent of cases. Manyprimitivecommunities(andseveral not so primitive)make use of the stress/fatigueapproach in the form of rhythmicdancing to exhaustion or, like the Islamicdervishes,whirling to produceextremedisorientation.Projections are notuncommonamongparticipants of suchceremoniesand if youhave the stamina for it, youcan try yourhand at duplicatingthismethodology.

Whatanthropologists call ‘culturalfactors’ are important — in thiscontextthe beliefsandexpectations of the ceremonialparticipants.Stressandfatigueper se are not (usually)enough,otherwiseeverydiscowould be awashwithstartled projectors. Theessentialcatalystseems to be expectation. If youexpect to project at a certainpoint in theceremony - and if thatpointcoincideswith a moment of high stress and unusual fatigue — then your chances of projection are appreciablyheightened.Otherequallyunlikelymethodsexist, a fact to which JackLondon’s last publishednovel, The StarRover,bearseloquenttestimony. Thefictionalhero of the bookwasbased on an actualpersonage, an American convictnamed Ed Morrell. Morrell was a difficultprisoner and the Arizona State Penitentiary had a barbarouspolicytowardsdifficultprisoners. They were strapped into two strait-jackets,which were then soaked in water. As the jacketsdried, they shrank,crushing the unfortunatewithin - a form of legalizedtorture.Inevi tably, the shrinkingstrait-jacketswereapplied to Morell, whofoundhimself unable to breathe,withlightsdancingbeforehis eyes. Butthensomethingvery unexpectedhappened - he foundhimselffree, outside the prison. It was, of course, an ethericprojection. His physical body remaineduncomfortably

45 The AstralProjectionWorkbook

bound. and . . apparentlyasleep. Morrellfrequently fell foul of the prisonauthorities, but each time the strait-jacketpunishmentwasapplied, his ethericbodywalkedfree.Theywere validprojections. He was able to bringbackinformation on the worldoutside the penitentiary.GeorgeW.P.Hunt, the Governor of Arizona,testified to the fact that Morrell was witness to events which took place while his body remained in its cell. Morrellwas not a naturalprojector.Unlesssubject to the cruelandunusual punishment of the strait-jackets, he wasneverable to leave his body. CohnWilson, whomentions the case in his bookMysteries,suggests it was painwhichcausedMorrell to project — andcertainlythis is likely to havebeen a factor: some 6 per cent of polled projectorsmentioned severe pain as a pre-existentcondition to theirexperience. Butpainmaynothavebeenthe only factor.Indeed, I suspect a number of factorsmayhaveinterlinked. If you are trapped into a brace of shrinkingstrait-jackets, one thing that precedeseven the pain is immobility.And as the jacketsshrink, the degree of immobilityincreases.Whenthe paineventuallybegins,physicalimmobility is underscored by a sort of mentalimmobility.Pain, like hanging,concentrates the mindwonderfully. If youhave a toothache, it is all you canthinkabout. If you are beingsqueezed by a shrinkingstrait-jacket, the painquicklygrows to fifi yourentirehorizon.Eventuallyyoursystemgoes on overload.Youcease to react to stimulus or, morecorrectly,youcease to react to stimulusotherthanthe overridingpain. The bottomline, oddlyenough, is not a millionmilesaway fromsensorydeprivation. Sensorydeprivationexperimentshavebeenpopular for someyears now, since their findings are relevant to things like space flight and submarine warfare.Typically,volunteers are submerged in light-prooftanks,sometimes floating in lukewarmwater,oftenwithpaddedglovesandclothing.Theidea is to cutdownexternalsensoryinput to a point as close to zero as possible. In such situations, theaveragevolunteerwifispendthefirsteight to tenhourscatching up on sleep, a fewmorehoursamusinghim/herselfwithrecitationsandsong, and the rest of the experimenthallucinating. At least, the militaryscientists whohaveconducted the majority of theseexperimentsassumetheirsubjects havebeenhallucinating.Anyonewithexperience of projectionmight not be quite so sure, for amongtherecords of realhallucinations(liketheone in which a smallman,nudeexceptfor a tinhat,rowed a galvanizedmetalbathacrossthe subject’s field of vision) are a numberwhich read far more like astralplane projectionsand a fewwhichsuggestethericout-of-bodyexperiences. Officialexperiments in sensorydeprivation are high-technologyaffairs. The tanks are linked up to systems not at all unlike the life-supportsfound in spacecraft.Instrumentsmeasure the subject’srespiration, heart rate, blood pressure,mobility and EEG traces.Communicationlinks are there for visual observation and, in the otherdirection, to allow the subject to terminate the experimentshouldthings get out of hand. In underwaterexperiments, a reliable air supply is of obviousimportance.And so on. Butsimilarresultsmay be obtained by distinctlylow-techmeans. Centuries ago, Craft occultists

46 How to Make a Witch’sCradle

perfected a sensorydeprivation aid to etheric (and astralplane)projection known as the witch’scradle. Youcanconstruct a witch’scradle by finding, or making, a sacklargeenough to holdyouwhileyou are standinguprightandstrongenough to supportyou if it wasliftedwhileyouwereinside.Sinceyouwill be insidewhenthecradle is in use, it is as well to stressthatplastic or anyotherair-tightmaterialshould be avoidedbecause of the danger of suffocation.Coarse,strong,loose-weave sacking is probablythemostideal,close to the originalCraftdesignandcheap. Theneck of thesackshould be fastenable by a draw-stringandthewholething arranged so that it may be suspendedsafelywith a subjectinside. To use the cradle, youwillneed a reliablecolleague, a highbeam or a stout treeand a freenight.Puristsmightaddthickgloves,ear-plugsand a blindfold, although in practicetheseare seldomnecessary. If youareexperimentingout of doors in winter (or even in mostBritishsummers)makesureyou are wearing warm,comfortableclothing. For the site of yourexperimentyou needsomewhereisolated(hencequiet) where the cradle can be suspended a foot or so off the ground.Historically, Craftusersselected a strong-branchedtree in somesecludedspot,but it is often easier,alwaysmorecomfortable, andjust as effective to stayindoors so long as yourlocation is guaranteedfreefromdisturbanceandnoise.

Youneed to set aside a full night - at least - for yourexperiment.Haveyour colleaguehelpyouintothe sack,which is thensuspendedwhileyouremain in an upright,standingposition. Do nothingmore for a few minuteswhile you check to ensurethere is a good air supplywithin the sack. Then,assuming everything is all right,haveyourcolleaguespin and swingyou, sack and all, first one way then another, until you are thoroughlydisorientated. You are thenleft to yourowndevices.Left,that is, freefrominterference, butcertainly

not alone.Yourcolleagueshould - indeedmust - remainclosethroughout the experiment in order to terminate it at once should any majorproblemarise. He/sheshouldremainquietthroughout,untilsuchtime as yousignal the end of the session. Fromyourownviewpoint,inside the sack, you will begin the experiment disorientated to the pointwhereyouhave no sense of cardinaldirection; and mayeventuallylose the ability to discriminatebetweendownandup. There is somesuggestionthatyou shouldremainstanding for as long as possible, but while this certainlyintroduces the fatiguefactordiscussedearlier, it does not reallyseem to make a greatdeal of difference to overallresults. So stand,squat or lie within the sackandawaitdevelopments. The sack is not, of course,lightproof, nor should it be since any attempt to make it so wifi probablyrender it airtight as well: a situationguaranteed to ensure anyout-of-bodyexperienceyouachieve is permanent.This is why the experiment is carried out at night, or in a lightlessroom. Theinitialdisorienta tion, the darkness, the quiet and the obviousdifficulties in obtainingmuch differentiatedtactilestimulationinside a suspendedsack, all add up to a high

degree of sensorydeprivation. As with many shamanistictechniques - a category to which this one certainlybelongs - mindset and expectation are

47 TheAstralProjectionWorkbook

important. In otherwords,bear in mindthereasonyougotyourselfintosuch a peculiarsituation. Expectnothing(exceptpossibly some interesting panic feelings) for the first half of the night. If you do achieve a projection, it will almostcertainlyhappentowards the latterend of the experiment. The witch’scradle is one of the morelonely and uncomfortablemethods of stimulatingethericprojection. If youcarry it through — with or withoutresults — you might like to rewardyourself by attemptinganotherapproachwhich is neitherlonelynoruncomfortable:sexualorgasm.Amongthepolledprojectors, orgasmfeatured as a pre-existentcondition in only 3 per cent of cases, but I suspect the statistics.Even in the era of permissiveness,people are notoriously reticentaboutdiscussingtheir sex lives, so thatorgasmmayhavebeen a factor in far morecasesthanthefiguresindicate.Certainlymyownexperienceclearly suggests a particular type of sexual experience can very easily trigger a projection,although the end resultseems to be a littlemorecommonamong womenthanmen. Butthe emphasisheremust be placed on thosewordsparticulartype.There is no directcausalconnectionbetweensimpleorgasm and ethericprojection, otherwiseout-of-bodyexperienceswould be too commonplace to require an AstralProjectionWorkbook.Orgasm, of course,involves the simultaneousfiring of a greatmanyneuronsynapses. In this respect, the nearestthing to it is a sneeze.Interestingly, a greatmanypeople still say ‘Blessyou’whensomeone sneezes, a throwback to an oldbeliefthatthesoulmomentarilyleavesthebody. (Theblessingensures no invadingentity will take it overbefore the rightful ownerreturns.) Maleorgasm is typically a genitalaffair.Women, by contrast, areoftenslower to reachclimax, but tend to experience more of a whole-bodyinvolvement whentheygetthere.Theprojectiveexperience, forbothmenandwomenarises most often in cases of intensewhole-body (or, moreproperly,whole-body! mind) involvement. One of the first steps towardsbringing this about is temporarycelibacy. The keyword, you will be relieved to hear, is temporary. Celibacy is not, in thisinstance, theroad to spiritualenlightenment, butsimply a means of increasingfrustrationandbuilding up sexualtensions.There is no need, for example, to avoidsexualstimulation — ratherthe reverse.Thegreater the level of advancearousal, the morechancethere is of holisticinvolvement at the point of tensiondischarge(orgasm).

In the experiment itself — if experiment is an appropriate word in the circumstances — all effortsshould be directedtowards the pleasant task of achievingmaximumarousal and maintaining it as long as possible. This is a tightrope act, of course, butwithcare,patienceand,above all, self-control, it is possible to hold on the edge of orgasmforverylongperiods - up to eighthours or more. Men in particular are prone to go over the edge too quickly in this sort of situation, butbreathcontrol(i.e. deep,rhythmicbreathing) or firmpressure on thebase of the peniswillusuallyenable a retreatfromthebrink.Thisdegree of control is generally far moreimportant for a manthan a womansince, with males, it is the firstorgasmfollowing a lengthyperiod of celibacyandarousal

48 How to Make a Witch’sCradle

which is the mostintense. For womencapable of multipleorgasm,however, the reverseappears to be the casewithincreasingintensityexperienced as one orgasmfollowsanother. (Up to a point, that is. Manywomen who enjoy multipleorgasm find that exhaustionfairlyquicklyovercomesarousal, even amongthe youngestandfittest.) Havingcreatedandheld a situation of maximumarousal,youshouldaimfor the oldideal of simultaneousorgasm by bothpartners. It is notabsolutelycrucial to projection, but it doesseem to increase the probability of success.What is important is a totalletting go at the pointwhenorgasmfinallyarrives.Unless

youhavesexualproblems - in whichcaseyouwouldobviously be well-advised

to try a differentprojectionmethodaltogether - the timeandenergyyouhave investedintopreparationwillnormallymakethis easy,eveninstinctive. The subjectiveexperience of orgasmicprojection is extremelypleasant, if a littleuncontrollable. Forbothmenandwomen, the type of orgasmwhichdoes the trick triggers in the genital area, but rolls along the entire body in an

upwardssweepingsensationwhichcarriesconsciousness — and, I presume, the

secondbody - outthrough the top of the head. Likesomeothermethodsmentioned,orgasmicprojectioncanresult in either etheric or astralplaneexperiences.Where the result is ethericprojection, you

will typically find yourself out of the body and floating a distanceabove it - sometimes a considerabledistance above it. This a characteristicorgasmic projectionshareswithspontaneousprojectionfollowing an accidentandmany projectionswhichinvolvegeneralanaesthesia. Since, by definition, you are seldomalonewhileusingthis method, it is one of the fewapproaches in which the likelthoodarises of findingyourself out of the bodywith a friend. This has neverhappened to me in an ethericprojection (although I havefound it fairlycommonplace in astralplaneexperiments)but I understandthatyourpartner’sethericbody is perfectlyvisible, and tangible to you in the projectedstate. This is particularlyinterestingsince, as we have alreadynoted,physicalmatter is intangiblewhileyou are in the projectedstate. It is possible,although not particularlyeasy, for one out-of-bodypartner to help the other to achieveprojection.Contrary to some of the morepopular esotericmyths, I havefoundlittleevidence to suggestthat a projectedfriend can actuallypullyourethericbodyout of the physicalbody if the two are fully integrated. Butprojection is seldom as clearcut as ‘all in’ or ‘all out.’Situations frequentlyarisewhereyouwillprojectonlypartially, likeMonroe’sexperience when he waslyingwithoneprojectedarmpushedthrough the floor, or begin to come out, but slip back in again before achieving total projection. In situations of thissort, a projectedpartnercansometimeshelpby gentlypulling. But he/shereallyshould be verygentlesince anyovertinterferencewithyour ethericbodytriggers fear and evenpanicreactionsveryeasily; and these, of course, act to forcetheethericbackintothephysicalbody.Assistedprojections, if they are managed at all, workbestwhenthetwopeopleinvolvedenjoydeep bonds of emotionalintimacyandtrust.

49 7.

ScientificProjection

if RobertMonroe or SylvanMuldoon ever climbed into a witch’scradle or cultivatedintensewhole-bodyorgasms in order to project, theyneverwrote about it. Eachevolved his own techniques,largelybased on personalexpe rience.Hardlysurprisingly,certainaspects of theirtechniquesoverlapnotonly witheachother, butwithaspects of the methodsalreadyexamined. Driven by a desire to discover more about his peculiartalent, Monroe founded the MonroeInstitute of AppliedSciences. Its first laboratory had a researchwingwhichcontained an instrumentroom,threeisolationboothsand a briefingroom. Eachboothcontained a heatedwater-bed and was environ mentallycontrolled in terms of air supply,acousticsandtemperature.Subjects could be monitored for EEC readings, pulse rate, EMG (muscle tone) and galvanicskinresponse. As a qualifiedengineerwith a careerbackground in broadcasting,Monroe was led towards the use of sound as an aid to out-of-bodyexperience. In 1975, his Institutereceived a patent for a process called FrequencyFollowing Response(FFR),based on the intriguingdiscoverythatcertainsoundpatterns, fed into a subject’s ear, produced a similarbrainwavepattern. The discovery enabledtheuse of sound as an aid to creatingandmaintainingthosestatesmost conducive to projection. OnesuchstatewaslabelledFocus 10, in which all the body’sphysiological signs are those of sleep, but EEG monitors show an overlay of wakingbrainwavepatterns. Sometimes the sound-triggeredFocus 10 state is all that is needed to facilitate a projection.Duringoneearlyexperiment, a KansaspsychiatristusedMonroe’s patentedsoundsignal on four subjectswithoutgivingthem any indication what resultsmight be expected. One of the four quicklyopted out of the experiment. He had, he said,foundhimselfbouncingagainstthe ceiling of the roomwhilelookingdown on his physicalbody. TheFFRprocesswasfollowed by anotherdiscoverywhichwas, if anything, evenmoreintriguing.MonroecalledthisprocessHemi-Sync.Hemi-Syncarose out of research into the function of specific brain structures, which itself developedfrom a surgicalprocedureaimed at thecontrol of epilepsy. For a long time it hasbeenknownthatthe brain is dividedintotwinhemispheres,linked by a relativelynarrowband of connectingtissuecalled the corpuscallosum.

50 ScientificProjection

Epilepsyinvolvesperiodicuncontrolledelectricaldischargeswithinthebrain — a sort of miniaturestorm — whichtypicallybegins at a specificsite, but quickly spreads to give the symptoms of grand ma! or full-blownepileptic fit. In the early1960s, it becamefashionable to treatseverelyepilepticpatients by severingthe connectingtissuebetweenthetwobrainhemispheres.Thetheory wasthat if thediseasecouldnot be cured, it might at least be confined to a single hemisphereandthe symptomsconsequentlyreduced. Theprocedureworked. A markeddegree of relief was obtained.Furthermore, the patientsappeared nonetheworse forhavingthetwohalves of theirbraincutadrift. It seemed, for a time,thathumanitywasequippedwithnot onebrainbuttwo - thatonehalf acted as a sort of ‘spare’ for the other. Butfurtherresearchwithsplit-brainpatientsshowedthiswasnot, in fact, the case.Each of the brain’shemispheresactuallyspecializes. In about 90 percent of the population, the left hemispherecontrolsmotormovement in the right side of the body and deals with ‘logical’functions like language,writing, arithmeticalcalculation etc. The righthemispherecontrols the left side of the body and is the seat of ‘creative’function like drawing,perception of spatial relationships,imaginationand so on. Monroe’sHemi-Syncwasactually an ingeniousapplication of the Frequency FollowingResponse. It usedsoundpatternsfedthroughseparatechannelsinto each of the two ears to produce a synchronizedresponse in each brain hemisphere. In other words, the right and left brains were persuaded to generateidenticalwaveforms at the sametime. Aided by thiswholearray of toolsandtechniques,Monroewasable to report (In FarJourneyswhich was published in Britain in 1986) that his Institute had processedmorethan3,000subjectsthrough a ‘GatewayProgram’designed to them awareness of states of consciousness. help develop differing . . including the out-of-bodyexperience. This is all very well if you can get to Monroe’s

Institute — or raise the substantialfundsnecessary for the high-techapproach, butformost of us what is needed is a train-at-hometechnology, a do-it-yourself GatewayProgramwhichwouldenable us to obtainsimilarresults in returnfor a largerinvestment of effort. To his credit,Monroe has developedjust such a programme,which he described in greatdetail in his firstbookJourneysOut Of TheBody.

LikeSylvanMuldoon,Monroebelieves it likelythatmost - indeedprobably all — of us leave our bodiesunconsciouslyduring sleep. Despite this, his investigationssuggest the onegreatobstacle to ethericprojection is something he has called the FearBarrier.Most of us, it seems, are nervous of leaving our physicalbodies. It is a blind, unreasoning fear which, if projectionseems imminent, canquicklyturn to terror,evenpanic.Unconsciousprojections(like myownmidnightwalkswhen I wasaware of leavingthebody, buthad no idea how I managed it) seem to leap-frogthisbarrier, but anyattempt to develop a fullyconsciousprojectiontechniquerunsinto it fulltilt. There is no easywayaroundthis. Monroehimselfanalysed the Barrierinto threecomponentparts — fear of dying, fear of not beingable to return to the physicalbodyandfear of the unknown.Readingbookssuch as this one must

51 The AstralProjectionWorkbook

help a little.Theycanprovidesomereassurancethatprojectionwifinotkillyou, andreturning to yourbody is as easy as wigglingyourbigtoe.Andtheycantell you in detailwhat to expectduring and after a projection. But readingabout spaceflight is notthe same as travelling to themoonandwhilepreparationcan minimize the Fear Barrier, you may as well acceptyour first few attempts at projection will be frighteningexperiences. And the moresuccessfulthey are, the morefrighteningthey are likely to be. The only way through the Fear Barrier is determination. The only way to flatten it is familiarity andexperience.Onceyouhavesuccessfullyprojected a fewtimes, youknowwhat to expect.Youknow it wifinotkillyou.Andyouknow you can get back into your body any time you wish. Gradually the fear subsides.Eventually it will disappearaltogether. But for your first attempts, recognizethatyou are going to be afraid,takeyourcourage in bothshandsand persevere. Thefirststage of Monroe’stechnique is relaxation. If you are stifinotentirely proficientwith the relaxationtechniquesalreadygiven, youmightlike to try a new one, whichMonroe calls the borderland sleep state. This technique is straightforward, buttricky.Whenyou go to bedtonightandbegin to driftinto sleep, fix yourmentalattention on a particularthoughtandhold it. Almostcertainly you will not be able to hold it for verylong the first few times:youwillsimplyfallasleep as usual. But if youpractisediligently,youwill findyou are graduallyable to extend the period in whichyoubalancebetween waking and sleepingstates.Monroewarns that your first attempts at this exercise can make you nervous — the mindseems to resent any interference with its normalfunctioning. If this happens,break the relaxation, get up and walkaround,thencomeback to bedand try again. If the nervousnesspersists, abandonyourexperimentand try againanothernight. Monroe has coined the term Condition A to describe the abifity to lie indefinitelybetweensleepandwaking,eyesclosedand the mindfocused on a singlethough or picture.Whenyouhaveachieved it, you are ready to pass on to Condition B. Condition B is actuallyverysimilar to Condition A, exceptthatyou no longer concentrate on an anchorthought.Instead you simply lie therestaringwith closed eyes at the blacknessahead of you. There is a possibility of visual hallucinations at thisstage,sometimesquitevivid.Theseappear to be related to youractivitiesprior to going to bed. Thus you mightexperience a rerun of a tennistournamentyouwatched on TV or, as I havemanagedquitefrequently, seethepages of a bedtimenovelyouwerereading.Youcanassumeexpertise in Condition B when any nerv6usness and hallucinationshavefadedaway and you are able to hold the state as long as youwish,staringintodarkness. Condition C, the stagethatfollows, is achieved by carefullygradedpractice. Youallowyourself to drift a littledeeperintosleepby carefullycontrolledstages

— or rather, you let your body drift a little deeper into sleep by carefully controlledstages.This is difficult to getright, butonceagainpracticewifiallow you to succeed. Each successive stage is marked by the shut-down of a particularsense.Touch will normally go first and you will find you are no

52 ScientificProjection

longeraware of tactilesensations.Smellandtaste go next,thenauditoryinput andfinallyvision. As youwifihavenoticed, the stateyouhavenowreached is similar,possibly evenidentical, to the Focus 10 stategenerated by Monroe’shigh-techtechni ques. In otherwords,yourbodyfallsasleepwhileyourmindremainsawake. You wifi also havenoted the linkswith the sensorydeprivationexperiments mentionedearlier.Sensoryinput has been cut off, but by a trainingprocess ratherthanbeingimposedfrom the outside by somedevice like the witch’s cradle.HavingachievedCondition C throughregularbedtimepractice, you need to gainthe ability to passintothe state at anytime — notmerelywhenyou are tired and ready for sleep. One good tip is to startpractisingimmediately afterwakingup, beforegettingout ofbed,sincethebody is usuallyveryrelaxed at thistime. The Focus 10 body-asleep/mind-awakestate can, of course, be achieved by othermeans.Onceyouknowwhatyou are lookingfor, hypnosis or autohyp nosis will do the trick, as will deepprogressiverelaxation and someforms of meditation. ButFocus 10 is only a part of the consciousprojectionprocess. The wholetechnique,which will carryyou all the waythrough to an out-of-body experience, is as follows:

StepOne Find a roomwhereyouwifinot be disturbed. Setyourselfno deadlineandtry to ensure you havenothingelse to do except the experiment.Darken the room, butnotcompletely — youneed to retain a visualreferencewithyoureyesopen, butensure no lightfiltersthroughyoureyelidswhenthey are closed. Lie down in a comfortableposition with yourheadtowardsmagneticnorth and your bodyalong the north/southaxis. (Somepeoplehavelongsuspectedtheyslept betterwhentheir bed was orientednorth/south.Whateverabout this, Mon roe’sresearchindicatedthere was a smallstatistical bias towardssuccessful projection in thisposition.)

Step 2

Enter the Focus 10 state - bodyasleep/mindawake - using any method you havepreviouslyfound to work for you. When the state is achieved,mentally repeathalf a dozentimesthatyou wifi consciouslyperceive andremember all thathappens to youduringtheexperiment.Begin to breatheregularlythrough yourhalfopenmouth.

Step 3 Starethrough the blackness(withyoureyesclosed) to a pointabout a foot in front of yourforehead.Pushyourconcentrationthreefeetaway,then six feet. Holdyourgazefocused on thispoint six feet in front of yourforeheaduntilyou have it firmly and clearlyestablished.Once it is firmlyestablished,swing the point of focusbackwards in a 90° arc so that you end up withyourattention focused on a pointabove(behind)thetop of yourhead, sixfeetdistant on a line runningalongyourbodyaxis.

53 The AstralProjectionWorkbook

As youfocus on this point, youwifi be aware of vibrations. The sensation is subtle,verypeculiar, but quitedistinctive as if somethingwasvibrating on the spotandyouweresensing it ontheedge of yourperception.Mentallyreachout anddraw the vibrations intoyourbody. Onceyouhavelocated anddrawn in the vibrations a fewtimesover a series of experiments, youwilltypicallyfindyou haveonly to achieveFocus 10 andthink of the vibrations to startthembuzzing in yourbody,thusshort-cutting the process a little.

Step 4 Giveyourselftime to allowanyfearreaction to die down.Thevibrationsare, of course, the samevibrationsMonroehimselffelt when he firstbegan to project spontaneously.Theywere so bizarre, so alien to his normalexperience,that he wasconvinced he was ill andsoughtmedicalhelp.Evenwiththeinformation in thisworkbookunderyourbelt, it is stillverydifficult to keep a coolheadwhen the vibrationsstart. To makemattersworse,shouldyou try to struggle at this point, you will find yourbodyparalysed. You can breakparalysis if you try reallyhard, but it involves a substantialeffort of willand, of course,terminates an experimentyouhaveworkedveryhard to set up. If youavoidpanic,work on yourfearandsimplyobservethevibrations,they will die down of theirownaccordafterapproximatelyfiveminutes - although it canseemsubstantiallylonger the firsttimeyou are waiting for it to happen.

Step 5 Whenyouhavecontrol of yourfearreactions, the timecomes to takecontrol of the vibrations. Call them up again if necessary, thenusingyourmind, form theminto a ring at yourhead.Whenyouhavesucceeded in doingthis, push themdownyourbody to yourfeet. After you havepractisedcontrolling the vibrations in this way, start themsweepingdownyourbody in a rhythmic wave,fromhead to feetthenbackagain.Continue to do so untiltheyfade. You can assumeexpertise in this step when you are able to call up the vibrationsinstantly and keepthemcoursingalongyourbodywithoutpause untiltheyfade.

Step Six The natural ‘raw’vibrations are thosewhichMonroe felt during his earliest experiences, a sensationwhich can seemverysimilar at times to shakingfrom malaria, or travelling too fast in an old car withunbalancedwheels.Yournext step is to refinethem. You can do this by causingthem to pulse as you send themalongyourbody. The effectshowsonlyslowly, but eventuallyyou will find the vibrationsgrowsmoother. It is as if theyhaveincreasedtheirrate of frequency, a processwhichcontinues to builduntil, likehighfrequencysound, you are no longerreallyaware of them at all. Youmaynotice a pleasanttingling warmth in yourbody,however.

StepSeven By this stage of the technique, it is important to controlyourthoughts and

54 ScientificProjection

desires, foryou are verycloseindeed to prOjectionand it is entirelypossible for an errantvisualization to sendyououtand to a destinationwhereyoureally do notwant to go. In order to achievesmoothdissociation of the ethericbody,practisereaching for something by stretchingyourarm. If all goes well, you wifi extendyour etheric arm out of your physicalbody, somethingwhich may be tested by pushing it into or through a solidobject.Onceyouhavesucceeded,withdraw the projected armbackinto the physicalbody,decrease the vibrations,move yourbodyandopenyoureyes. Experimentwiththesepartialprojectionsuntilyou are entirelycomfortable withthem.

StepEight Havingagainachievedthehigh-frequencyvibrationarystate,imagineyourself growinglighter andfloatingupwards. Youwillfindafter a few attemptsthat this is what will do behind. exactly you . . . leaving your physical body

Alternatively, somepeoplefind it easier to roll out of the physical — which is what I foundmyselfdoingduringsome of my ownspontaneousprojections. Whichevertechnique you use, practisereturning to the physical and realigning. If you have any problems, think of moving a physical limb or wigglingthebigtoeandyouwill be ‘clicked’back in. Whenyouarehappywith yourability to enterandleavethebody at wifi, try moving a littlefurtheraway. Yourfull-scaleethericprojectionshavebegun. *

*Probably.Monroe has more recently gone on record with the opinion that this method is unreliablesince it takes no account of importantfactorsdiscoveredlater. My ownexperience hasbeenthat no singlemethod is guaranteed to work for everybody, butthisonegetsresultsfor a lot of peopleand is wellworth a try if youareprepared to invest the necessaryeffort.

55 8.

Preparing to Project

SylvanMuldoon was the product of a different age from that of Robert A. Monroe and talked a differentlanguagewhen it came to creatingprojection techniques. Not for himsuchspace age expressions as Focus 10 and Gateway Program. Like Monroe, he felt there were a variety of factorsinvolved in projection, butexpressedthem in termslike desire,needandhabit. Desiremight be intense or suppressed, but not sexual, since he believed a state of (unsatisfied)arousaltended to lock the ethericinto the physical.Need was defined as a physicalpriority.Muldoonlistedhunger,thirst and ‘lack of cosmicenergy.’ I wouldtend to add the necessity of emptying a fullbladder. Habitmight be somelong-standingritual or simply a routine way of doing things. None of thesefactorsinduceprojection in themselves, butMuldoonfelt that if they arose while the physical body was incapacitated they had a distinct tendency to pull out the etheric. His theory was that the unconsciousmind, desperate to satisfytheneed or desire - or simplydrivenby habit - wouldmake a symbolicgesture to do so. Sinceillness left himphysicallyincapacitated for longperiods, it is likelythat he experienced the fruits of this theory on a great manyoccasions,withoutparticulareffort. Forthoselessfortunate,however, he developed a number of techniquesbased on his insights. First, he tackledthe problem of inducingincapacity. To do this, he advocated a voluntaryslackening of the pulse - somethingwhich, he maintained, also triggeredconcentration and relaxation. You lie on yourback (or right side) hands by yoursides,thentake a deepbreathforcing it down to the pit of your stomach, so thatthe abdomenbulgesoutwards.Exhalecompletely,usingyour stomachmuscles to empty the lungstotally. Repeatthisprocesseighttimes. Closeyoureyesandpictureyourself in yourmind.Starting at thetop of your head, pictureyour scalp, then tense and relax the muscleswhichcontrol it. Movedown to yourjaw,picture it, tenseandrelax it. Nextthink of yourneck, tenseandrelax it a fewtimes.Continue in sequence to yourupperarms,your lowerarms,yourhands.Thenbeginning at the base of the neck, go down the entirebodytensingandrelaxingeachpartuntilyoureachyourtoes. This is, of course, very similar to the consciousrelaxationexercisegiven

56 Preparing to Project

earlier, butMuldoon is aiming for morethansimplerelaxation. Thinknext of yourheart (in a relaxed,unworriedmanner)andtry to sense its beat.Keeptryinguntilyoucanhearandfeel the heartbeatdistinctly. Yournextstep is to feelandhearthepulse in anypart of thebodyyouselect, simply by concentrating on the part. This is not actuallynearly so difficult as youmightimagine, butlike most of thesetechniques, it doesrequirepractice. Lookfor a pulse, in sequence, in yourchest,yourneck,yourcheeks, thetop of yourhead,backdown to cheeks,neck,chest,stomach,abdomen,boththighs, calvesandfeet.Comeback up to thecalvesagain,thenconcentrate on theright thigh to prove to yourself how selective you can be in sensing the pulse. Muldoonremarksthat if you concentrate on the medullaoblongata(back of the head)region, the pulse sensationthere is almostidentical to the pulse felt where the ‘silvercord’joins the ethericbodywhenyou are projected. Once you havesucceeded in clearlysensing the pulse at will anywhere in yourbody,returnyourconcentration to the heartregion(where,obviously, you will feel the pulse as clearly as anywhere else.) Will a steady,smooth rhythm,mentallyechoing the beat.Then,whenyouhavesynchronizedyour mentalbeatwith the pulse in the chest, slow the mentalbeatslightlyand will the heart to followsuit. This is, I suppose, a goodtime to repeatMuldoon’sownwarningthat the

exercise — and indeedethericprojection as a whole — should be left severely alone if yousufferfromanysort of heartcondition. He is of the opinionthat all projectionsinvolve a considerabledrop in heartrate and consequentlymight place too muchstrain on an alreadyweakenedorgan. It is an areaaboutwhich youmustmake up yourownmind. In myexperience not all projectionsinvolve a loweredheartbeat,althoughsomecertainlydo. Furthermore, it wouldappear to me that a slowedheartratewouldtakesomestrain offthatimportantorgan, notputmoreon. As againstthat,there is a verysmallchance in interferingwith theworkings of anyautomaticbodyprocessthatyoumayhavetroubleletting it revert to normal.Thisseldomhappensand I have yet to findanycasewhere it led to permanentdamage, but it can certainly be very frightening and uncomfortablewhile it lasts. How far youshouldattempt to slowyourheartbeat is a matter for yourown judgement;although I hope I do not have to tell you that you shouldavoid stopping it altogether.Whatyou are lookingfor is a markeddegree of physical relaxation,torpor or incapacity. In Muldoon’sowncase, thiswasachieved at 42 beats per minute, but varieswidelyaccording to the individual. My stepson, whohas made a fetish of fitness, has a restingheartrate of 42 beats perminute with no noticeabletorporunlessthere is work to be done. Muldoonlinkedphysicalincapacitywithsleepbefore he felt therewas any

realcertainty of success in a projection — a pointwe willgetback to in a lot more detaillater. He also felt it necessarythatyou develop a consciousness of self, an intriguingnotionwhichled to thisunusualexercise:

Step 1 Set up a chairbefore a full-lengthmirror. Sit in the chair, relax and study

57 TheAstralProjectionWorkbook

yourself in the mirror not as if youwerelooking at a reflection, butrather as if you wereactuallyseeingyourselffrom the outside. Try to imaginethat is the real you in the mirror.

Step 2 Scrutinizeyourself in detailtrying to discoverthingsaboutyourselfthat you nevernoticedbefore. are forthefirsttime. and Imagineyou meetingyourself . . arerequired to writesuch a detaileddescription of thisstrangepersonagethat it could be used to identifyyou in a Court of Law.Don’t be tempted to hurrythis

step - take as muchtime as youneed.

Step 3 Stand up, directly in front of the mirror, and staredirectlyintoyourreflected eyes.Holdyourowneyesuntilyoubegin to feelunsteadyandstart to sway.

Step 4 Sit downagainandoncemorelockyourgaze on yourreflectedeyes.Begin to repeatyourownnameoverandover,aloud, in a monotone.Thisstepcreates a measure of confusionwhich you shouldreinforce by stronglyimaginingthat yourreal self is thatreflection in the mirror;that, in otherwords, the essential you is out there. Theexercise is one of preparation, notprojectionandhoweverconfusedyou become at Step 4, Muldoondoes not suggest this wifi lead to an out-of-body experience.Rather he believes the wholesequenceimplants in youruncon scious the strongsuggestionthat you are out theresomedistancefromyour bodyandtheunconsciouswificonsequentlyaidyou to projectmoreeffectively whenyouapply the othertechniques. Induction of stresses, like habit and thirst, are commonsenseprocedures. Virtuallyanyhabit or routinemay be built up and thebodythenincapacitated so that the habitcannot be followed.Something like thirst is induced by the simpleexpedient of denyingyourselffluids, althoughMuldobn adds the interestingpsychologicalpressure of ensuring a drink is visibly and readily availablewhenyou do so. Onceagain,whenthephysicalbody is incapacitated, the desperatesubconsciouswillsend the etheric out to fetch the water. * All thesetechniqueswerelinked by Muldoon to sleep. Hewasconvincedthe ethericmovedslightly out of coincidence with the physicalduringsleep in order to absorb the cosmicenergy the Hindus call prana and the Chinese call ch ‘i. He alsobelievedthatalmosteveryoneexperiencedmuchfullerprojections duringsleep, but thesewereuncontrolled and unconscious,althoughsome timesremembered in a distortedform as dreams.Dreams of flying,falling, or associatedactivities like travelling in a lift, levitation or swimming he believed to be particularlysignificant. The belief is shared by Monroe, who went on recordwiththisinterestingstatement:

*ff the body is not sufficientlyincapacitated, thesetechniques will tend to induce sleep-walking.

58 Preparing to Project

‘Wegenerallyrecognizethattheflyingdream,with or without an aircraft, is a rationalization of an OBEwhich is unacceptable to thebeliefsystem of the consciousmind.Laterdatasuggests that the dream of getting out of your car andperformingsome act falls into a similarcategory.Have you everdreamedthatyouforgotwhereyouparkedyourcar! Also, thefalling dreamoftenbecomesre-entry into the physicalwhenpractised in slow motion.’

This agreementbetweenexperts is not altogethersurprising, for careful analysis of Muldoon’scentraltechniquecomparedwiththat of Monroe,clearly indicates they are both approaching the same methodology from different angles.Monroeconsidered a prerequisite of projectionwas to achieve a state in whichthe mindwasawakeandthebodyasleep.Muldoonbelievedessentially thatprojectionsoccurredwhilebothmindandbodywereasleep, thetrickbeing to wake up while it washappening. AlthoughlessinterestingthanMonroe’smethod in somerespects, thislatter approach has its advantages.Using it, you seldomexperience the vibrations mentioned by Monroe; andyouwifioftenleap-frogtheFearBarrieraltogether. Muldoonfurtherbelievedthat it was possible to ensure a sleepingprojection actuallytookplace. The method he used was ingenious - dreamcontrol. His description of the technique carries echoes of Monroe’sinstructions for achievingFocus 10.

Step 1 Set asideseveralweeks in which you shouldundertake to observeyourself during the process of fallingasleep.Concentrate your thoughts and try to becomeaware of yourownconsciousnessgrowingdim as you slipinto sleep. Work to retain the realization that you are awake and observing, even as wakefulnessdesertsyou.

Step 2 When you haveestablished the knack of holdingontoconsciousness so that youremainalertand in controlwellinto the hypnogogicperiod, youmustuse this period to construct a dream. There are twovitalpoints to rememberwhilecreatingyourdream: a) It must permit you to take an active role and b) The actionmust correspond to the movementexperienced in a projection. Point a) is straightforwardenough, but point b) requires a littleexplanation. In a projection,yourethericbody will normallymoveupwards and outwards fromyourphysicalbody.Dreamactionswhichwouldcorrespond to thismight be taking off in an aeroplane, flying a balloon,launching a hang-glider, climbing a ladder or simplygoing up in a lift. Thislittle list is not meant to be definitive.Youcanuseany of theseideas, or findyourowndreamanalogy, so long as you selectsomethingyou enjoydoing. I sufferfrom a fear of flying, so

59 The AstralProjectionWorkbook

taking off in an aircraft would be useless for me. But since I have no claustrophobia, I quiteenjoytravelling in a lift.

Step 3 Start the dreamdrama in motionbeforeyou fall asleep.Since by this stageyou will be practised in retainingconsciousnessthroughoutthehypnogogic(falling asleep)periodyoucanimagine the dreambeginning.Youmight, for example, imagineyourselflying on the floor of a lift and tell yourselfthat as you enter sleep, the lift is going to moveupwards,carryingyoupleasantlyandsmoothly to an upperfloor.Directthe dream so thatyouare indeedcarriedup, getout on the top floor and explore, thenreturn to the lift and descend to where you began.

Step 4 Use the samedreamnightafternight.This is particularlyimportantsince it is a signal to yourunconscious, the part of youthatactuallytriggerstheprojection. Experimentingwithdifferentdreamseachnightonlyconfuses the pictureand ensures no clearsignalgetsthrough. In the quotedexample, youcanexpect to project as youleave the elevator on the topfloorandinteriorize as youreturnhavinglookedaround a bit. Youcan alsoexpect to rememberthe dream. AlthoughMuldooninsists a properlyconstructeddreamwifialwaysproject thephantom,youare going to have to takehiswordfor it untilyoulearnhow to wake up while in the projectedstate.Sometimes, of course, this will happen spontaneously, but if you prefer not to trust to luck, Muldoon gives two wake-upmethods. One of these,oddlyenough, is to use an alarmclock (or somesimilarsoundsource). Soundswillwakeyou up just as efficientlywhenyouhaveprojected as they will while you are asleep in yourphysicalbody. But there are problems. The first is that a frightening or startlingnoise will tend to jerk you back into the physicalbody, so select a soft,persistenttone in preference to a clangingalarm. The second is that any sound,howevermellow, wifi take you back into the physicalbody if yourphantomhappens to be too close to the bodywhen it occurs. Theseproblems tend to make the alarmclockapproachunreliable.Fortu nately, the alternativeseems to have no drawbacks at all. This is to build a wake-upsuggestionintoyourconstructeddream. The methodrequireswork.First, youneed to examine the dreamyouhave constructedanddecide at whatpoint it willtrigger an actualprojection.Next, youhave to decide at whatstage in the dreamyour(unconscious)ethericbody will be sufficiently far awayfromthephysicalbody foryou to wake up without shockingyourselfback.Finally, youwillneed to examineyourroomand try to decidewhereyourethericbody is likely to wake up - the area of yourroom, in otherwords,whichequateswith the wake-uppoint in yourdreams. It is important to be clearabout the last of thosesteps. As you dreamyour specialdream,(aboutgoing up in the lift, for example)yourethericbodywill

60 Preparing to Project

separatefromthephysical.Youwillnot be aware of this;only of thedream. But eachelement of the dreamcoincideswithsomeaction of yoursleep-walking ethericbody. Thedreambecomes a symbolicexpression of whatyou are doing in the projectedstate.Whatyou are nowtrying to do is decidejustwhatthose actions are likely to be.

This is probably a little easier than it soundssince — to continue with the example of the lift - you mightdecide that yourmoment of separationmust come as youleave the lift on the top floorand if youthenenter a dreamroom similar in size, andpossibly in furnishings, to yourown, it is a reasonablysafe assumption that your dreamlocation wifi correspondmore or less with the physicallocation of yourphantom.

Onceyouhavefoundthephysicallocation of yourchosenwake-uppoint - or as close and reasonable an approximation as you can manage - you should follow the route of yourprojection in yourphysicalbody.Whenyoureach the spotwhereyouhavedecided to wake up, tell yourselfconfidentlythat this is exactly what you wifi do. Reinforce the suggestion by visualizingyourself remembering to awaken at the relevantpoint of the constructeddream. Dreamcontrol is a littlemorepleasant, a littlelessfrighteningthanMonroe’s Focus 10 approach, but no lessdifficult.Andequipmentlike the witch’scradle does notappeal to everyone.Furthermore, as we havealreadynoted,many of the techniquesalreadyexamined are essentiallybased on the same funda mentalapproach: you somehow keep your mind alert and active while persuadingyourbody to fall into a state of passivity,incapacity or sleep. The questionnaturallyarises: is thereanotherway? Not simply a different variation on whatMonroe calls Focus 10, but somethingbased on a totally differentprinciple.Theanswer to thisquestion is yes;andthemethod is farfrom new.

61 9.

TheBody of Light

The dayyoujoined the GoldenDawn,thatmagicalVictorianOrderwhichhas so profoundlyinfluencedmodernoccultthought, you weresworn to secrecy withthesedisturbingwords:

If I break this, my MagicalObligation, I submitmyself, by my own consent, to a Stream of Power, set in motion by the DivineGuardians of thisOrder,Wholive in the Light of theirPerfectJustice, andbeforeWhom my Soulnowstands.Theyjourney as upontheWinds.Theystrikewhere no man strikes. They slay where no man slays. And as I bow my neck under the Sword of the Hiereus, so do I commitmyselfuntotheirHands for vengeance or reward.

One of the secretsyouweresworn to concealwassomethingcalledtheBody of Lighttechnique. It was a method of triggering an out-of-bodyexperience. Likeeverythingelse, theBody of Lighttechniquerequirespractice, butyou are notasked to holdyourselfbalanced in a hypnogogicstate or takecontrol of your dreams. All you are asked to do is useyourimagination. Begin by finding a comfortable chair in a room where you will not be disturbed. Then relax, using any method you find works for you. Deep, trance-likerelaxation is definitely not required.Simply let go of yourworries andmusculartensions so youcanconcentrate on thejob at hand.Nowimagine you are no longerseated in yourchair, butstanding in theroom at a spotabout six feet away. Try to visualizeyourselfstandingthere as clearly as you can. Make a real effort to paint in detail. Don’t just settle for a vague,imaginary shape. Try to ‘see’ what you are wearing.Imagine the scuffmarks on your shoes.Count thebuttons on yourjacket.Note the wayyourhairfallsoverone eye. Examine the expression on yourface. Visualize in colour and in depth. (Muldoon’smirrorexercise is a reallyexcellentpreliminary to this technique since it familiarizesyouwithyourownappearance.)

It is perfectlyacceptable to visualizeyourself as youare in reality — i.e. dressed in sweater andjeans, or whatever — but someromanticsoulsfind it easier, or possiblyjustmorefun, to see themselves as a mysteriouslyrobedandhooded figure. That is okay too, but pay attention to detail - mysteriouslyrobed and

62 The Body of Light

hoodedfigures do not all look the same. Spend as muchtime as you need to build up this imaginaryfigurefully. A goodidea is to set aside a particulartimeeachdayfortheexerciseanddevote 10 to 15 minutesdaily to it for a week or more.Avoidrushing this preliminary stage: it is actuallythemostimportantpart of thewholeexercise, thecreation of the ‘Body of Light’afterwhich it is named. As youpractise, youwillfind the visualizationbecomesprogressivelyeasieruntil a simpleeffort of will is enough to call it up in its entirety.Onceyouhavereachedthis stage,proceed to phase two of the exercise. Phase two involves you imagining that you are risingfromyourchair and walkingaround the room.Closeyoureyesand try it out. Rememberhow the roomappears from the viewpoint of your chair, close your eyes and try to visualizethatsamescene. If youfindthe detailsdifficult,openyoureyesagain for a refresher.Keepworking at it untilyou are perfectlycapable of describing the room in detailwithyoureyesclosed. With this achieved,imagineyourselfrising from your chair and walking slowlyround the edges of the room in a clockwisedirection. Try to see in your mind’s eye how the perspective of the roomchanges as you move. Try to remember those small objects and ornaments which were not necessarily visiblefromyourchair, butwhichyouknow to be in the roomnonetheless. If youhavedifficultywiththispart of the exercise,openyoureyes,stand up physicallyandwalkclockwisearoundtheroom.Then sit down,closeyoureyes again, and try to duplicatethejourney in yourimagination.Keepworking on it until your visualizationbecomes easy and vivid. Now try the same walk anti-clockwise.

After a time - and how much time varies with the individual - you wifi discover the visualization no longerrequiresmucheffort.Whenthishappens, tryvisualizingyourself in anotherroom,againwalkingaround it firstclockwise, thenanti-clockwise.Select a roomyouknowwell, but try visualizingwithout firstvisiting it if at all possible. You should find yourmentalpictures of the secondroomcomefaster and easier than the first since you are, of course,exercising your visualization ability.Whenyouhavethoroughlyexploredthe secondroom,mentallyextend yourrangeandvisualizeyourselfwanderingthroughoutyourentirehouse. Manypeoplevisualizeextremelywell and have little difficultywith any of this. If you are not so fortunate, keep trying: there is no time limit on the exerciseandpracticewifieventuallybring it right.Justdon’tdevotemorethan, say, 20 minuteseach day to the practice: this is morethanenough, so long as youpractiseregularly. Thefinalstep in thisstage is to imagineyourselfexploringsomemoredistant andless familiarscene.Indoors is easier to mostpeople, but if you are feeling reallyconfident,youmighttryimaginingyourself in an outdoorlocation.Once again,youshouldexploremethodically.Avoidvisualizingpeopleduringanypart of this exercise since this will introducecomplicationswhich will slow your progress. Whenyou are totallyhappythatyoucanquicklyandeasilyvisualizeanyarea

63 TheAstralProjectionWorkbook

you setyourmind to - andvisualize it in detail - you are ripe to move on to the finalstage of the exercise.This is the crunch.Youhavenowtrainedyourself to do two things. One is to visualize a sort of mirrorimage of yourselfstanding somedistancefromwhereyou are seated in yourchair.Theother is to imagine yourselfwalkingaroundvariouslocations and examiningthem in detail. For your great leap forward, you are now going to combine the two previous aspects of the exercise. First, visualize the mirrorimage of yourselfexactly as before. Do this with youreyesopen if at all possible.When the figure is definitelythereandstable, imagineyourselflooking out from its eyes.There is a knack to this,ratherlike learning to balance on a bicycle. Thefirstfewtimesyou try, youwillprobably fail. But then, for no apparentreason, youwillsuddenlyfindyoucan do it. Imagine the roomfrom the viewpoint of the figure you havecreated.Look aroundandnote the details,includingyourown(physical)bodyseated in the chair. Once you feel the focus of your perceptions is firmlyseated in this imaginarybody,have it walkaroundthe room in a clockwisedirection,exactly as you did in yourimaginationduring the secondstage of the exercise. Since you have alreadypractised this again and again, you should find it relativelyeasy to maintainthe newperspective. But if youfindyourconscious nessflickeringback to where you are sitting in the chair,don’t let thatworry you. Simplystart up againfrom the beginning. As youcontinuewiththisexerciseover a period of time,projectingyourfocus of consciousnessinto the imaginarybodyandhaving it carryyoufromroom to room, one of twothingswillhappen.Eitheryouwifigraduallyfind the reality tone of the experienceincreasesuntilyoucan ‘see’vividlyfromthe newbody, or you will reach a stage where there is a sudden‘jump’ after which the experience of the newbodyseems far morereal to you. At this point, try exploring a totallyunfamiliarareawhile in this imaginary body, then visit the same area when you get back into yourphysicalbody. (Which,incidentally,you do by reversingtheinitialprocess:fromtheviewpoint of yournewbody,simplyvisualizehowtheroomlooksfromthephysicalbody sitting on the chair.) Do not be too shocked if you discoverthat the scene you sawwhile in yourimaginarybody is confirmed in everydetailwhenyouvisit the spot in reality. What, you might reasonablywonder, is going on here? If you have successfullyfollowedthetechnique all thewaythrough, it seemsfairlyobvious thatyouhavemanaged to projectyourconsciousnessinto a secondbody, that you have, in essence,created a phantom. But while this body can take you anywhereyou want to go — andpassthroughsolidwalls in the process - it is equallyevident that there are substantialdifferencesbetween the experience and the sort of projectionsdescribed by peoplelikeMonroeandMuldoon. Where, for example, is the separation of one bodyfrom the other? In this exercise, you did not actuallyseparateanythingfromanything - you simply imagined a secondbodystanding in the corner. Andwhere was the peculiar state of consciousnessapparently so necessary for ethericprojection, the hypnogogicboderlinebetween sleep and waking?Where was the physical

64 The Body of Light

incapacity?Youwere in a perfectlynormalstatethroughoutand if youwant to moveyourphysicalbodyyoucould do so with no troublewhatsoever. Whatever the similarities, you might be tempted to conclude you were not projectingyourethericbody at all. Andyouwould be right. TheBody of Light techniquebringsyoucloser to somethingevenmoreexcitingthansteppingout in yourethericbody. It introducesyou to astralplaneprojection.

65 PartTwo ASTRALPLANEPROJECTION

67 1.

Descriptions of an Otherworid

‘It seemed to herthatshetravelled to the steps of a whitestonetemple. A colonnade of pillarsstretchedout on eitherside of her, givingthebuilding a classicalappearance,althoughthereweredifferencesfrombothGreek andRomanarchitecture.

‘She climbed the steps - seven in all - and stood upon a terrace. I to her that she went to the This she suggested directly library . . . did, it housed a room on the left. To three finding in, my surprise. . . people werewaiting for herthere: twomenand a woman. Thewomanappeared

in her mid-forties,withcalmfeaturesandlightlycolouredhair — the type thatcould be blonde or silver. It was the woman to whomJosephinepaid mostattention, but she noticed all threeworeplain,whitetunics. ‘Theywerestanding at a table and registeredJosephine’sappearance almostimmediately.Although there was no communication, she felt welcome.When told me of these I assumed. that Josephine presences, . .

theywerelibrarians — or at leastmighthelpherusethestore of information in the I that she couldhave the choice of library. suggested . . . reading frombooks or viewingtheircontents on a screen. Sheoptedforthelatter, andthelocation of the screen,high up on onewall,waspointedoutbythe figures.Somehow it occurred to Josephine that she could ‘think’ the contents of anybookonto the screen. ..‘

The quote is from one of my unpublishedfiles. The question is: wherewas Josephine?Certainly not in this world. A littleearlier,whilewalkingalong a desertpath, she had decided to create a rose; and thought it into existence, completewiththorns and dew. The plantwas stifi growing in the sandnext time she passedthatway. was of the to findherself. elsewhere. Josephine not, course, onlyperson . . EmmanuelSwedenborg, the eighteenthcenturymystic,recordedthis account of what he believed to be a descentintohell:

‘I once heard loud shoutswhichsounded as if they werebubbling up throughwaterfromlowerregions; andfromthe left camethe shout, ‘Oh, howjust!’,fromtheright,‘Oh,howlearned!’,andfrombehind,‘Oh,how wise!’

69 The AstralProjectionWorkbook

‘And as I wonderedwhethertherecould be any just, learned or wise persons in hell, I stronglydesired to see the truth of the matter. A voice fromheaventhensaid to me, ‘Youshall see andhear.’ ‘So I departed in the spirit and saw before me an openingwhich I approachedandexamined, andbehold!,therewas a ladder, and by this I descended. ‘When I had got down, I saw a plaincoveredwith shrubsintermixed withthorns andnettles. I inquiredwhether this washell, andwastold it was the lowerearthwhich is immediatelyabovehell.’

Morerecently, the controversialanthropologist,CarlosCastaneda,recorded details of an extensiveseries of tripsthroughwhat he called‘thecrackbetween the worlds’,includingthisinterestingdescription:

‘Suddenly the scenebecameveryclear, it was no longer like a dream. It was like an ordinaryscene, but I seemed to be looking at it through windowglass. I tried to touch a columnbut all I sensedwasthat I couldn’t move; yet I knew I couldstay as long as I wanted,viewingthescene. I was in it and yet I was notpart of it. ‘I experienced a barrage of rationalthoughtsandarguments. I was, so far as I couldjudge, in an ordinary state of sober consciousness. Every elementbelonged in the realm of my normalprocesses.Andyet I knew it was not an ordinarystate. ‘The scenechangedabruptly. It was night-time. I was in the hail of a

I saw a man out of a room a building . . . young coming carying large onhis shoulders. Hewalked me andwentdownthestairs. knapsack . . by By then I hadforgotten my apprehension, myrationaldilemmas.“Who’s thatguy?” I thought.“Why did I see him?”

I could,without too muchdifficulty, fill the rest of this book - and a good manyfuturevolumes - with accounts of this type. WffliamBlake, the poet, visitedheavenlyspheres. Carl Jung, the psychologist,foundhimselftrans ported to a phantasmagoricalregion of outerspace.Everycompetentshaman has travelled to ‘spiritworlds’ andbroughtbackpower. In ruralIreland, it is stillpossible to collectsecond(andoccasionallyfirst)handreports of visits to a faeryunderworld. But is there anymystery to this sort of thing?The ‘Josephine’mentioned in my openingaccountwas in a hypnotictrancewhenshevisitedhertempleand grew her rose. Castaneda’sexperiencearoseafter he tookpeyote, a powerful planthallucinogenic.Swedenborgwas a prey to visions.Andmentalhospitals are filledwithpatientswholive in worlds of wonder. More to the point, there is not one of us who does not visit strange dimensionseverynight,rememberedfleetingly as dreams.Worse,mostpeople have the ability to createpicturesinsidetheirheads. In somepeople — novelists, graphicartists,inventors - suchpictures can be veryvividanddetailed. Againstthisbackground, it seemsclearthataccounts of visits to strangeand

70 Descriptions of an Otherworid

aliendimensionsareactuallysubjectivevisions.Theyareconstructs of thehuman mind,wakingdreamsconditioned by the individual’spersonalconcerns and culturalmilieu. In thiscontext, it is relevantthatSwedenborg, an engineerand geologist, was also the son of a Bishop and underwent an ecstaticreligious conversion at the age of 56. Blakeclaimed his ownvisionssprangfrom his imagination.Theywere, he saidtapping his forehead, ‘in there.’ And MichaelHarner of the School for SocialResearch yet.. . anthropologist in NewYorkingested a sacreddrinkmadefromthe ‘soulvine’ayahuascawhile workingwith the PeruvianAmazonConibopeople. ‘Ayahuasca is wellknown,’writes Dr LyallWatson. ‘It is a woodyvinewhich contains a number of alkaloidswithhallucinogenicproperties - one of which hasbeencalled‘telepatin’because it seems to turnthosearoundyou to glass, so that you can see throughtheirbodies and readtheirminds. I havetried it in Braziland canvouch for this effect.’ Harnerexperiencedsomethingratherdifferent. He hadvisions of soulboats, crocodiledemons and bird-headedhumans.While the experience was vivid and disturbing,Harner had no doubt it was subjective. He knewwhere the imagerycamefrom.Evensuperficialanalysisindicatedsimilarities to theBook of Revelation. He concluded the action of the drughadunlockedstrata of his own unconsciousandreleased a string of associationsrelated to hisownbackground andculture. It was a reasonableassumption, but it waswrong. For Harnersubsequently met an old,blind,Amazonianshamanwhowasable to tellhimexactlywhat he hadseen - fromthe shaman’sownexperience.Theyhadbothvisitedthe same visionaryterritory. ‘I wasstunned,’Harnersaid.

This is a disturbingcase - all the more so because it is onlyoneamongmany and not all of them involvingbarefootshamans. Duringesoteric experimentation, I have had the curiousexperience of ‘looking into’ other people’svisionsandaccuratelydeterminingthe ‘dream’environment in which theywereoperatingandthethingstheyweredoing. 1 havealsometindividuals whocould do the same in reverse — telling me details of what I believed to be a personal,subjectivefantasy. Although it is still a longwayfromattracting the attention of psychologists, scientists or evenoccultists, the explosivegrowth in role-playgamingsince the middle 1970s had dramaticallyincreased the incidence of ‘sharedvision.’ Typically, half a dozen or so participants in a role-playgamehave a particular fantasyenvironmentdescribed to them by a game master. They imagine themselvesentering this environment as a group and engaging in various adventurestogether. Much of the appeal of role-play lies in the freedon it offers to individual players.Within the rules of the game(which are actually the ‘Laws’ of the imaginaryworld)you are free to do anythingyoulike. You can staywithyour colleagues or wander off on yourown,fight an enemy or run away,develop skills or lazilystagnate. The process of the game is highlyinteractive.Players state what they have decided to do and the game master tells them the immediateresults of theiractions. As a result, a veryvividmentalpicture of the

71 The AstralProjectionWorkbook

imaginaryworld is built up. Andhere, so often it is almostcommonplace, a strangephenomenonoccurs. A playerdecides to take a certaincourse of action andimagineshimselfbeginning to do so. And at thatpoint,before he explains his intent to the gamemaster, one or more of his fellowplayers,lockedintothe samesubjectivevision, will ‘see’what he is up to. In my earlierbook,AstralDoorways, I describedhow a friendandcolleague, the artist Nick Van Vliet, triggered a visionaryexperience by pressing his foreheadagainst an Irishmegalith. As he describedwhat he was seeing, his thenwife,Bea,stoodbesideme severalyardsaway,eyesclosed,whispering an accuratedescription of his innerenvironmentmoments in advance of his own words.Onceagain, we are forced to stopand ask ourselves:what it going on here?

One answer has already been given by Carl Jung, who discovered that psychoanalysisoftentriggered the emergence of identicaldream or visionary symbols in differentpatients. In a techniquecalled ‘activeimagination’ he invitedpatients to explore their own unconscious by means of imaginary journeysandfoundthatinnerlandscapescreated by themoftenhad a striking similarity.Broaderinvestigationssoondeterminedthatcharacters andscenes frommythologywerestillverymuchalive in humanimagination,evenamong patientswhohadneverbeenexposed to the myths. Jungfound an explanationfor all thisstrangeness in his theory of thecollective unconscious. He decided that just as humanityshares a singlebroad body pattern — head,torso, two arms, twolegs etc — so it also shares a singlebroad mindpattern,possiblybased on the overallstructure of thephysicalbrain.This patternmanifestssubjectively as an experience of archetypes — tendencies to formsimilarpictures,linked with similaremotions at a bedrocklevel of the psyche. Jung’stheoryhasbeenfrequentlymisunderstood. It is all tooeasy to read it as a sort of pre-existentgroupmind,perhapsgenerated by thehumanrace, out of whichindividualmindsemergelikeislandsfromthe sea. ButJung’s use of the term‘collective’carried no suchimplication — andthereinhungtheweakness of his wholeidea. Jung is quitecorrect in his assertionthat all humanbrainssharethesamebasic structure.They are divided in halfandlooklike a walnut.They are layered in a predictable way and can be divided into similarlobes. But the similarities between anytwohumanbrainspaleintoinsignificancewhen set againsttheir differences. There are physicalvariations in size and weight,variations in overallshape(determined by the shape of the enclosingskull),variations in development of thevariousareas.Perhapsmore to thepoint, theactivebrain is not a lump of meat, but a complexelectro-chemicalmachine,whichchanges its electro-chemicalprofilemillions of times a minute.Fromthisviewpoint, no two humanbrains are evenremotelysimilar at anygiventime. It seems to methatthephysicalbasis of Jung’scollectiveunconsciousmustbe heldsuspect. But even if I am wrong, it does not matter.Whenyou compare certain‘visionary’reports, you are not dealingwith the sort of parallels that might be based on thosebroadstructuralsimilaritieswhichcertainly do exist

72 Descriptions of an Otherworid

betweenbrains;rather you are dealingwithprecise,frequent and sometimes ongoingareas of identificationbetween two visions. And you are dealing (if you are prepared to workfrom the findings of occultism and role play)with visionaryinteraction.Thisabsolutelyprecludesthe sort of collectiveunconscious

Jungpostulated — at least as an explanation for the phenomenon. There is possiblyanotherexplanation, if not for everyanomaly in visionary experience, at least for some. In the studymentionedearlier,triggered by hypnosis, the subjectJosephine was temporarilyunable to differentiate be tweenhervisionandwakingreality. Shefoundherself in an environmentthat lookedsolid and felt normal, but refused to obey the rules. She couldmould matterjust by thinkingabout it. Gravitywaspresent, butobliginglypermitted her to fly. There was no familiarcycle of day and night: someareaswere in sunshine,others in moonlight... Occultistsreading the full accountmightspot the tell-taleclues.Elements of Josephine’saccountsuggestthat,however she got there, she wasvisiting the AstralPlane.

73 2.

A Model of the AstralPlane

In AstralDoorways, I tried to explain the AstralPlaneusing a diagramlikethis:

mentalworld self physicalworld

I am not sure I did a particularlygoodjob, but I am certainlywffling to give it another try - using the samediagram. Theproblem is thatthe diagramrepresents an unfamiliarmodel of the mind. Most of us havebecomeaccustomed to thinking of themind in Freudianterms, with the conscious/unconsciousid/ego/superegosubdivisionsoverlaid by an almostinstinctiveconviction that the mind is somehow not quite real — or at leastnotreal in the way the physicalworld is real. Scientists are amongthosewhohavefallenprey to theconviction.Behaviour ismsuggests ourperception of an innerworld is actually an ifiusion,generated by nothingmore than a complexpattern of innate and learnedresponses to stimuli. Evenoutside of Behaviourism, there are few scientistsprepared to considerthe minddistinctfrom thebody.Whatever its structure,mostbelieve it is essentiallysomethingcreated by the electricalimpulses of thebrain,‘given off’, as it were like steamgiven off by a kettle. I fearyou are going to have to forget all thatnonsense if you are to understand the AstralPlane. Look at the diagramandyouwillnoticethat it does notshowmind at all, but rather a mentalworld. This world is not created,caused, or given off by the physical. In fact, the mentalworld is not evendistinctfrom the physical: the twoform an overallcontinuum. Theidea is neitherarbitrary norparticularlyoccult.Thosemostpragmatic of all scientists, the physicists, havebeenhaving a hard time latelycoming to

74 A Model of the AstralPlane

termswithwhatmatter, thebuildingblock of thephysicalworld,mightactually be. In the old days it waseasy.Matterwassomethingyoucoulddrop on your foot. It had mass; it had weight. If you dropped it on your foot, it had momentum. It wascapable of measurement. Anyfoolcould see it wasactually there.Mostfoolscouldalso see it was a verydifferentthingfrom, for instance energy. There was a notionabout that if you took a lump of matter and cut it into smallerandsmallerbits,youwouldeventuallycomedown to a bit so smallyou could not cut it any more. The Greeksnamed this smallestpossiblelump of matter the atom. It was whenscientistsdiscovered you couldactuallycrack open an atomthatthetroublestarted.Becausewhattheyfound in therewas no longermatter at all. Worse, it soonturnedout to be no longerreasonable. Sub-atomicphysics is an Alice-in-Wonderlandworld of emptyspaces and thingscalledparticleswhichcould be thought of as tinycannon-balls, butcould equallyaccuratelybe thought of as wave-forms.Thetrouble is, particleschange theirbehaviour if youlook at them, and some of themeven go backwards in time. It is a world of weirdnesseslike the UncertaintyPrinciplethatsayswhen you get down to individualparticles,there is no way to predicttheirbehaviour. Thusthe entirestructure of the physicalworld is based on nothingmoresecure than a statisticalprobability. We do notthink it willfallapartwithinthenextfive seconds.. but it . might. If you haveproblemscoming to gripswiththese sort of concepts,imagine how the physicistsmusthave felt. Historically, they had entered a discipline that once promised to weigh and measure the universe. Now it was telling them the universe was hardly there at all. Coming to terms meant the development of newconcepts.Oneprominentscientistsuggestedtheuniverse waslesslike a giantmachine(theNewtonianmodel)than a giantthought. This is somethingmorethananalogy.One of the mostremarkablecollabora tions in scientifichistorywasthat of CarlJung, thepsychologist, andWolfgang Pauli, the leadingphysicist of his day.Specifically,theyworked to produce the theory of synchronicitywhichsuggests an acausalconnectingprinciplemightbe abroad in nature. Ontheway,theycame to adopt a viewpointwhichholdsthat mind is the ‘reverseside’ of matter or, moreproperly,thatmindandmatterare the obverse of the same coin — in otherwords, the universe is a mind/matter continuum. Standingcentred in that continuum is the thing I havelabelled Self in the That is andme as of course. to this diagram. you.. . well, According model,any one of us is a focus of consciousness (and severalotherthingswhich we will examine in a moment)capable of lookingonewayinto the physicalworldand lookinganotherwayinto the mentalworld. Generally, while you are awake and active, you are a Janus-headed indi vidual - that is, youcontinuallylookbothways at once.Youcantestthetruth of this quiteeasilywith a littleself-observation. At this momentyou are looking outinto a physicalworldwhichincludes,amongotherthings,yourcopy of the AstralProjectionWorkbook. Buteven as you do so, you are watching a reflection of the printedwords on an innerscreen, part of the mentalworld. If I start to

75 The AstralProjectionWorkbook

describe a scenewithrivers,lakes and mountainsyoumayevenstart to see a reflection of that scene in the inner world as well. But the Janus-headed condition is by no meanspermanent. It is possible for yourfocus of conscious ness to become so intrigued by one world or the other that it moves into that worldandtemporarilylosestouchwith its counterpart. A movement of consciousnessintothephysicalworldmighttypicallyoccur at someexcitingsportingevent, like a soccermatch or the Wimbledontennis championships. As a participant, or observer,yourattention is so absorbed by what is going on in the physicalworld thatyou lose awareness of the mental world.Obviously you do not cease to think - it would be impossible to play tennis (and probably even soccer) if you did. What is lost is not mentation, something often confused with the mentalworld, but an aspect of your perceptionwhichwouldotherwisestareacrossinnervistas. Thisbecomesclearerwhenyourecallwhathappens to you everynight. As sleepclaimsyou, yourperception of the physicalworldceases andyou move further into the mentalworld.Dreamlandscapesopen up, clear-cutpercep tionswhich (at the time you perceivethem) are obviously as real as anything you have ever experienced.Orthodoxpsychologyassumesdreamscapes are processesratherthanplaces,butevenorthodoxpsychologydoesnotsuggestthe dreamingprocessabsorbsyourwholementalcapabilities.Observably,youcan stillthink in dreams,albeitperhaps a littlelessrationallythanyou do in waking life. A littlelater you will discover you can actuallywake up in dreams,think andstificontinue clearly. . . dreaming. The notion of a mentalworldwhichyou can observe and in whichyou can function is notputforward as an ultimatetruth. It is no morethan a model - and a prettysimplisticmodel at that. But as a model it expresses very clearly something I believe to be bothfactualandimportant — the objectivereality of a dimensionothermodelsequatewithindividualmentalprocesses. I shallnow do a littlefancyfootworkandextendthemodel. Butfirst, I need to relabel the diagram.Although the meaning and the explanation of the diagram havenotchanged, I think it might be moreaccurateandcertainlywould be less confusing if it waslabelledlikethis:

physicalworld

The new label on the left indicates that while there is an inner, finer, intangibleaspect of physicalreality, a mind-side of matter,which we can (and do) sense by lookinginwards, this part of the continuumshouldnever be confusedwith ourownsubjectiveprocesses.

76 A Model of the AstralPlane

To call it the ‘MentalWorld’ as I did earliermeansonly that this aspect of reality is analogous with the humanmind and can be sensed by our mental processes, not that it is thoseprocessesthemselves.Hopefully, the change of label to ‘AstralWorld’, wifi make sure no confusionarises. Onceagain, the Astral World is the inner, mind-side of matter, an aspect of an overall continuum. It may be perceived by yourmind, it mayalso (as we shall see in a moment) be influencedbyyourmind,but it is certainlynotthesamething as your mind. So wheredoesyourmindactuallycomein?Forthat I need a diagramthat didnotappear in AstralDoorways:

self ~IIND

Astral Physical

Thelowerportion of thediagram in no waydiffersfromthediagramwehave alreadystudied. It shows the continuum from the finer astral world of mindstuffthrough to the universe of physicalmatter. But now we have a somewhatdifferentrepresentation of the Self, that focus of consciousness whichstandsbetweenthetwoworlds.Thismayactuallybe a goodtime to look moreclosely at the Self, which has so far beendescribed only as a focus of consciousness, but is, even in ournewmodel, a greatdealmore.TheSelf is the totality of whatyouare.Oneaspect of it hasextensionintothephysicalworld - the bit you call yourbody. Oneaspect of it processesperceptions of both the outer(physical)andinner(astral)worlds - the bit youcallyourmind. Within this model, your mind is seen in fairly orthodoxterms. It has consciousandsubconsciousaspects. It has - or mayhave, for all I know - those structureslike id, ego,libido,superegoetc., of whichFreudwrote.What it does not have is a collectiveunconscious.Jung’sremarkable idea was a mistaken attempt to explain his observations of the AstralWorld.Much of the inner, AstralWorldbehaves as Jungobserved his collectiveunconscious to behave. AndJung, to his credit,insisted the experience of the collectiveunconscious was objective, not subjective. But he stifi believed the collectiveunconscious was essentially a realmtrappedinside your skull, a reflection of the basic

77 TheAstralProjectionWorkbook

pattern of the brain. In fact it was genuinely ‘out there’, a dimension of the physicaluniversethat all of us experience,consciously or otherwise. If youexamineourlatestdiagram,youwillseethattheMindaspect of theSelf has extension in two directions.Over to the right, it extendsinto the physical world by reason of its perceptions. This is just a fancyway of sayingthe input of yoursensesallowsyourmind to examine thephysicalworldandparticipate in it, by way of yourphysicalbody. To the left top of the diagram is the mind’s extensioninwards,labelled‘imagination’. This is particularlyinteresting, if onlybecauseimagination is a facultywhich is almostuniversallydevalued by thevariousschools of orthodoxpsychology.Imagination is yourability to make mindpictures, to visualize, to daydream. It can be - and often is - a purely subjectiveprocess. But, as I have tried to show in the diagram, your imaginationstands in a veryspecialrelationship to the AstralWorld. Yourimagination is, in fact, yourmentalpoint of contactwith the astral. It

‘overlooks’theAstralWorld in a waysimilar - butcertainlynotidentical - to the wayyourperceptionsoverlookthephysical.Yourimaginationlies, so to speak, alongside the AstralWorld; or, as I havechosen to show it in the diagram, is spreadover it like a blanket. A closeranalogystifimight be that of a layer of oil floating on the surface of the sea. The layer of oil is your imagination, somethingquitedifferentfrom the sea with its own structures, but equally something so profoundlyinfluenced by the seathat it takes on the shape of the waves. Because of its overlayposition,yourimaginationwillalways be influenced by events in the AstralWorld, but for mostpeople the influence is experienced only at an unconsciouslevel.Withtraining,however,yourimaginationcan be turnedinto a sort of seeingeye, whichwillallowyou to observeastralevents quiteconsciously. Thus you are born with a mind which is equipped with two distinct data-gatheringfaculties - yoursenses and yourimagination.Once you leave the womb,yoursenses are trainedandexercised to do their job efficiently, so thatthroughoutyour life theycontinuallyfeeddata to yourmind for process ing. There is an evolutionaryurgencyabout the exercise of yoursenses,since youwould be utterlyunable to survivewithoutthem. No suchurgencyexists in relation to the training of yourimagination as a data-gatherer. Most people can - and do - surviveperfectly well without exercisingtheirimagination in thisway at all. So it is no surprise to discoverthat the averagepersonhas no perception of the AstralWorld: the innereye of the imaginationhas neverbeentrained to see it. Withoutknowledge of its natural linkage to the AstralWorld, the imagination itself is devalued. The term ‘imaginary’ has come to describe that which is essentiallyunreal and conse quentlyworthless.Fortunately it is never too late to train the innersense — somethingyouwifi be doinglater in thisworkbook.

78 3.

imaginationand its Influence

Unless you are a sub-atomicphysicist, your perceptions do not directly influence the outsideworld. If you want to move mountains, you have to persuadeyourphysicalbody to co-operate in the job. Butjust as events in the AstralWorldimpressthemselves on your imagination (thus allowing your imagination to be trainedforuse as an organ of perception) so do theconstructs of yourimaginationimpressthemselves on the AstralWorld.This is one of the most importantdoctrines of traditionaloccultism - and a concept with far-reachingimplications. It is actually the underpinning of almost all magical practice in theWesternEsotericTradition,and a knowledge of it willsaveyou a greatdeal of confusionwhenyouundertakeastralplaneprojection. It seemslikely that the reason your imagination can influence the Astral World is that they are actually two of a kind. Some of the veryoldestoccult schoolsrefer to the astral as the Imagination of the World, or, moreaccurately, the Imagination of Matter. This is essentially the same idea we havealready studied via my little diagrams: the notion that the universe has its mental aspect,whichoccultistshavelabelled the AstralPlane. But the ideaextends in importance, for we are examiningliteral, not symbolic,realities. As part of the physicaluniverse, youtoohaveyourownastralaspect,part of which you perceive as yourimagination. But yourimagination is under the direction of the Self.Youcanmould it intoanyshapeyouwish - androutinely do so every time you day-dream. Since the wider, objectiveAstralWorld resonates to your subjectiveimagination,creations of yourimagination wifi automatically be reflected in the AstralWorld. Notveryclearly, to be sure, and fornotverylong, at least as far as mostpeople are concerned, butyoucantrain yourself to improveyourperformance; andthere are ways of usingthe human imagination to influence the AstralWorldprofoundlyandpermanently. It may have struck you by this stage that if your personalimagination is simplythesubjectiveexperience of yourownastralaspect,then anexamination of imaginationshouldgiveyousomeidea of whattheAstralWorlditself is like. Andthis is, in fact, the case. Verymany of theoldergrimoiresavoidthetermsAstralWorld or AstralPlane in favour of the termAstralLight.Thishasfollowedthe experience of mystics, magicians and other astral travellers who have found that beneath the

79 The AstralProjectionWorkbook

superficialappearance of the AstralWorld, the ultimaterealitywasbillows of lightwhichhadformedthemselves into variousenvironments. Thisdoes not detractfrom the reality of the environments anymorethan the discoveries of sub-atomicphysics(whichshowmatter to be largelyemptyspace)detractfrom the fact that a roof above yourhead wifi normallykeep out the rain. But a realizationthatyou are essentiallydealingwithAstralLightcertainlyprepares you for one of the most peculiarcharacteristics of the AstralWorld — its malleablefluidity. If youwant to build a wallaroundyour(physical)backgarden, youtake on quite a lot of work.Youhave to buyandstackthenecessarybricks.Youhave to bring in sand,waterandcement to mixyourmortar.Thenyouhave to lay one brick on top of the other in a specialway and stickthemtogetherusing the mortaryouhavemade.Eventhen, if you fail to do it justright,there is a good chanceyourwallwill fall down. All thisindicatesthat if youwant to makeany change in thephysicalworld,youaregoing to have to invest a lot of energyand effort. We are all so accustomed to the problemthat we scarcelystop to think about it, but the physicalworld is remarkablyresistant to change.Look at the heavymachinery we wereforced to invent for something as simple as laying a road. The directopposite is the case in the AstralWorld. The ‘matter’which comprises the astral is so plastic, so fluid, so easilyshapedthatyoucanchange it withlittlemoreeffortthan a thought. Thinkabout the wayyourimaginationworks. As you sit down to enjoy a goodday-dream, youconjure up an imaginaryenvironment. Thechampagne, cigarsandRollsRoyceappearby magic, as doesthehandsomecompanionwith whom to sharethem.Almost no effort is involvedunless, like an author or painter, youwant to increasedetailandrealitytone, at whichpointtheprocess becomeshardwork - buthardonlybecause all creativity is hard. If youfind it difficult to mould a life-likehead in clay, the problem is yourability, not the clay. Howeverclearly the term‘AstralLight’expressesthis underlyingmalleabil ity, I dislike it because it gives the impression that the Astral Plane is a featurelessandformlessarea, likelookingintofog or clouds.Thereality is very different. Cast your mind back to that earlierabstract from my records of Josephine’sastralexperiences.There was groundbeneath her feet and sky above her head.Therewere growingplants and desertsands.There was a building.Therewerepeople.Nothing at all formlesshere.Indeed, by carefully selecting the quotes, I mighteasilyhavegivenyou the impression she was on holiday in Greece. Howdoesthistallywith the ‘astralbifiows’spoken of by, amongothers, the FrenchmagusEliphasLevi?Thefact is, the astralbifiowsexistonly in the way thatelectrons,neutronsandpositronsexist - as part of a background of which very few of us everbecomepersonallyaware. You maylearnthat the Astral Plane is actually the AstralLight, but you will neverexperience it that way. Whatyouwillexperience is strangelandscapes in which the wallaroundyour backgarden is a greatdealeasier to build. Thelandscapesandstructures of the AstralPlanearisefrom a multiplicity of causes.

80 Imaginationand its Influence

First, there are reflections of the physicalworld.Physicalfeaturesseem to impressthemselves on correspondingareas of the astralgivenenoughtime. The qualifier is important. Thefactyouknocked up a tool-shedyesterdaywill not create an instantastralstructure. It requires not merelyweeks, or even years, butseveralcenturiesbefore a physicalfeaturewillautomaticallybegin to impressitself on the astral. Thus you might find a familiarcathedral on the innerlevel, butfewenoughredbricksemi-detachedbungalows. Twofactors are required for an impression to form: age andpermanence. A building, for example,which is of great agebuthasbeencontinuallymodified does not impressitselfwell. Ancienttrees,which are continuallymodifying themselves by growth,scarcelyimpress at all. Evensomething as apparently permanent as a landscape is usuallysubject to erosion,changes in vegetation, movement of water courses and so on to a degreesufficient to halt the formation of an astralcounterpart. But somelandscapes do impress.Areas of hardrock,mountainfastnesses,ice-fieldsandthelike all have a goodchance of developingastralreflections;and in so doingbecomingpart of thelandscape of the AstralPlane.

Thoughts — or, moreaccurately,mentalpictures — impressthemselves on the AstralLight far moreeasily, as we havealreadynoted. But not so easily as all that. Thatpassingfantasy you had last night will leave no trace(youmay be quiterelieved to hear).What is requiredfor animpression is that a largenumber of peopleconcentrate on a singleimagesimultaneously; or that a smaller numberconcentraterepeatedly on the sameimage.That‘smallernumber’may actuallyshrink to one, but if you are going solo, you wifi need a trained imaginationand a lot of perseverance.Anotherfactorwhichaidstheimprinting process is emotion. An emotionally-drivenimageimprints far moreeffectively on the astralthananyother. Takingthesevariousfactorstogether, it is possible to predict the sort of imprintsthatmight be made on theAstralLight.First,youwillhavereflections of variousphysicalenvironments,characterized by the fact that they have remainedunchanged, on the physicalplane, for a greatmanycenturies. This categorywouldlargelycomprisegeographicalfeatures, but wifi also include certainman-madestructures - e.g. the pyramids at Giza.Next, youhave the reflectedimagery of certainhumangroupconcerns. There has been some reference in occultliterature to areas of the ‘lowerastral’which are supposed to reflectthe shibboleths of thehumansubconscious,darkplacesfull of repressed rage,uncontrollablefearsandpervertedsexuality. I have yet to meetanyonewho has experiencedtheseareaspersonallyand I have considerabledifficulty in accepting their reality. The mechanics that supposedlyunderlietheirformation are franidywrong.Whatimpresses is a long-standing image, not an amorphous mass of emotions. You might, admittedly, pick up a ‘feel’ or ‘atmosphere’generated by mass emotional response to somehumandisaster - the miserycaused by an Ethiopianfamine, for example. Buthumandisasters are self-limiting in time(because the people whoendurethemdie) andemotionalresponse is consequentlyshortlived, so that the chances of permanentimprint are small.

81 TheAstralProjectionWorkbook

Since the human race as a wholeshares very few obsessionalimages, the mostlikelyimpressionstend to ariseraciallyand are usuallyrelated to religion, as secularimages are frequently too short-lived. At any given time, certain fashions in architecture or art mightimpress, as might a long-standingpolitical concern, but these will all be unstable in the AstralWorld and will not long outlasttheirphysicalworldcounterparts. Theexceptions are, of course,styles

generated by themoreenduringcivilizations — all of themancient — likeGreece, Rome or china.Thesewilltypicallyoutlasttheirphysicalmanifestations,often by a verylongtimeindeed. An example of astrally-impressedreligiousimagerymight be a culture’s perception of the dwellingplace of its gods.Thusonemightreasonablyexpect to find a reflection of Olympus,based on the Greekconceptandstillsurviving long after AncientGreece has passedaway. Our own culture, I suspect, is busilyengaged on impressingrathersillypictures of Heaven as a city of clouds andharps, andHell as a cavern of fierybrimstone. A step downfromracialconcerns are groupconcerns, but here again the

imprintstend to be religious - nothingelse reallyprovides the single-minded imagery and the emotioncombined with the sort of ritualisticconcentration whichcankeepthrowing up the sameimagerydayafterdayfor years.Political or commercialgroupings,howevertraditional,wifiseldomprovidesufficient of the necessaryfactors for a permanentimprint. At individuallevel, few of us have any opportunity to imprintpermanently on the astral.Butthere arefourexceptions: the creativeartist, themagician, the astraltravellerandthe mentally-ifiobsessive. To take the lattercategoryfirst, an emotionally-drivenobsessive can some times raise sufficientenergy and perseverence to imprint the object of his

obsession on the AstralLight - an unfortunatedevelopmentsince it willthen tend to reinforce the obsession.Theothercategories are a littlemorefortunate. The magician is, of course,trained to astraloperations. The magicalmind is skilled in visualization and concentration; and adept in the techniques of drumming up emotions to fuel a successfulimprint. It is a sort of controlled hysteria, but it works. The creative artistbringsotherfactors into play, in relation to his or her particularspeciality. An architectbrooding on a house design will, given emotionalinvolvement and clear, detailedvisualization, create a temporary imprintwhichwill, however,tend to stabifizeonce the physicalhouse is built. A popularnovelist, by contrast,imprints on the astral through reader assistance. The emotionalinvolvement of millions over a time span of more than a century,make it a safe bet thatyoucould,withluck,meet Mr Pickwick and Sam Weller on the Astral Plane. They would be shells, of course, personalityconstructs a shademorelimited than a genuinearticle, but you wouldneverthink it as youshookhandswiththem. The category of astral travellerimprintseffectively for reasons I do not entirelyunderstand - indeed, to be honest, for reasons I do notunderstand at all. But on the basis of experiments, I knowthat if you canprojectdirectlyinto the astral, you willfind it far easier to modify the astralenvironmentthanyou

82 Imagination and its Influence

wouldfrom the physicalplane.Josephineneeded no specialtraining to create her rose. And this brings us to an interestingpoint. We haveseenthat your imaginationcan be trained to lookintotheAstralPlaneandevencreatestructures on the AstralPlane, but neitherabilityseems to haveverymuch to do with actuallyprojecting. In fact, up to this point,there is nothing we haveexamined whichseems to provide any promisingmechanism for projection. The whole picture has suggested that you can look and you can manipulate, but you cannotenter. Yet it obviously is possible to enter the AstralPlane.Occultistshavetalked about doing so for centuries and we already have examinedreports from Josephine,Swedenborgandothertravellerswhoclaim to havebeenthere. To find out how it was done, take a looknow at yet anothermodification of our familiardiagram:

self

IMAGINATION PERCEPTION

Astral Physical

Two little figures have beenadded, one walkingtowards the right of the picture, the other towards the left. The one on the right symbolizes your physicalbody, thathandsomehunk of muscle,bone andbloodwhichallows you to function in the physicalworld. The one on the left is a different sort of bodyaltogether - oneyouneverknewyouhad.

83 4.

IntroducingYourAstralBody

If youreadthefirstpart of theworkbookbeforeturning to thissection,youwill already know about your second(etheric) body, an electrical field which provides the pattern for your physicalform. You may also recall a passing reference to the fact that you comeequippedwithseveralsubtlebodies, one inside the other like Russian dolls. And you shouldremember that final exercise, theBody of Lighttechnique,whichenabledsomethingverysimilar to an ethericprojection, but seemed to involve a differentsort of ‘etheric’vehicle to the one we hadpreviouslydiscussed. Thetime has come to admitthat the Body of Lighttechniqueonlymimics an ethericprojection — it does not actuallyproduce one. What it really does is promote the separation of a differentsubtlebodyaltogether — the true astral body. This body can function on the physicalplane; and does so when it simulates an ethericprojection. But its real home is the AstralWorld; It is the vehicleyouwilluse for anyfull astralplaneprojection.

Theastralbodydoesnotappear to be an electricalfield — or, indeed,anything easilyrecognizable to modernscience.Occultists say it is made of ‘mindstuff’, specifically the same‘stuff’ you manipulatewithevery act of visualimagina tion.Thismeans it is made up of thesamesuperfine‘matter’ as theAstralPlane itself.Butsince we knowpreciouslittleaboutthephysics of the astral,thisdoes not take us verymuchfurther. It is, however,possible to say quite a lot about the astralbody on the basis of experience.Certainly it exhibits some very strangecharacteristics. During an ethericprojectionyoufeelmore or less as you do in yourphysical body,untilsuchtime as youdecide to wanderthrough a wall. An astralbody confined to the can be similar. but it projection physicalplane very . . equally can be verydifferent. Castyourmindback to the Body of Lighttechnique. By means of thattechnique, youcreated a subtlebody for yourselfthrough an act of imagination. We are culturallyconditioned to consideranythingcreated by the imagination as essentiallyunreal, or at very least subjective. There is, however,strongevidencethatthis is not so. MadameAlexandraDavid-Neel, one of the few Westerners to thoroughly explorepre-invasionTibetandthe onlywoman, so far as I amaware,ever to be made a lama,wrote a fascinatingaccount of somethingcalledtulpacreation. A

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tulpa,according to traditionalTibetandoctrines, is an entitycreated by an act of imagination,rather like the fictionalcharacters of a novelist,exceptthattulpas are notwrittendown.MadameDavid-Neelbecame so interested in theconcept of the tulpathat she decided to try to createone. The methodsinvolved are not a millionmilesawayfrom the Body of Light technique in thatthey are essentially a matter of prolonged,regularconcentra tion and visualization. But whereas with the Body of Light you are merely creating a shell self which you plan to animate at a later stage, the tulpa is conceived as a completepersonalitytotallyseparateanddistinctfromyourself. MadameDavid-Neel’s tulpa began its existence as a plump,benign little monk,somewhatsimilar to thepopularpicture of FriarTuck.Thevisionwas at firstentirelysubjective, a visualizationthatexistedpurelywithinhermind. But gradually,withpractice,MadameDavid-Neelwasable to visualizethe tulpaout there, like an imaginaryghostflittingabout the real world. In time the vision grew in clarity and substance until she came to see the tulpa as solid and objectivelyreal - whatWesternpsychologywouldcall a self-inducedhallucina tion.Whenever she wished to switch it on, there it would be. However, the day camewhen the hallucinationdeclined to remainunder consciouscontrol. She discovered that the monkwouldappearfromtime to timewhenshehad notwilled it. Thiswasdisturbing in itself.Evenmore so was the fact that her friendly little figure was slimmingdown and taking on a distinctlysinisteraspect.Eventuallyhercompanions,whowereunaware of the mentaldisciplines she was practising,began to ask about the ‘stranger’ who hadturned up in theircamp — a clearindicationthat a creaturewhichwas no morethansolidifiedimaginationhaddefiniteobjectivereality. Butthe onlydifferencebetweenthe tulpaseen by othersandthecreaturefirst formed in MadameDavid-Neel’shead, was the length and intensity of her concentration.Rationally we have to admit that if the tulpa was visible and objective in thelatterstages of theexercises, it musthavebeenequallyobjective

- if invisible - at the beginning.Thismeansthat the Body of Lightyoucreated wasobjectivelyreal as well. But if thisbodyhadsubstance, it wasthesubstance of imagination — astralsubstance in otherwords.Consequently it is reasonable to refer to thisbody as an astralbody.(Youmayfeelinclined to takeissuewith this reasoning since the Body of Light is entirelyartificial,something you literally‘dreamedup’ in thecourse of theexercise.And I havealreadysaidthat yourastralbody is one of a series of subtlebodieswhichform a naturalpart of youresotericanatomy. But I havereason to believe the distinctionbetween a home-grown‘natural’astralbodyand a home-made‘artificial’ one is a lot less than clearcut youmightthink: I didwarnyoutheastralbodywasweird. In the circumstances, youmightperhapshumour me enough to suspendjudgement for a while.) When you created that body and imaginedyourselflooking at the world through its eyes, there is an excellentchance that the experience was at first littledifferentfromtheearlierpart of theexercise in whichyousimplyimagined yourselfwalkingaround the roomwithoutreference to any particularastral That is body. to say, youfelt as if youwereday-dreaming.And at firstyoumay

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actuallyhavebeenday-dreaming — i.e. engaged in a purelysubjectiveexercise — since it is extremelydifficult to differentiatebetweensubjectivevision and actualprojection in theseearlystages. Whatyou wereattempting to do in this part of the Body of Lighttechnique was not to project a subtle body at all, but rather to project yourfocus of consciousness. Youwere, if I mayput it thisway,trying to floatyourmindout of yourphysicalbody in orderthat it mightanimate the astralshell you created. With a lot of experience, it is possible to sense the precisepoint at which you succeed in doingthis, but the sensation is extremelysubtle. For mostpeople, the only sure way to tell if you are successfullyanimating an astralshell (as distinctfromday-dreaming) is if youcanusethe shell to bringbackinformation you did not previouslyknow - to walkinto a strangeroom, for example, and accuratelydetermine its contents. Although an animated astral shell is a valid projection, the subjective experience of this artificial astral body varies very little from an act of imagination.Yourbodyandenvironmentlackrealitytone.There is a tendency for the experience to shift, dim and break up altogether, leaving your consciousnessfirmlyback in yourphysicalbody. If youhavealreadymanaged an ethericprojection,youwillseethe difference at once. Ethericprojections are characterized by their sensation of absolute normality.Mostinexperiencedprojectorsassumethey are stifi in the physical body until something (like my experience of the unco-operativedoorknob) forcesthem to acceptthey are not. But if you continue to practiseprojecting yourconsciousnessintothis astralshell, the timecomeswhensomethingvery excitinghappens. The experiencetakes on the samerealitytone as an etheric projection.There is no longer any questionaboutwhether or not you may be day-dreaming - youknowperfectlywellyou are not. At thatpoint, so long as youremainalone in a familiar,physicalenvironment, there is not much to distinguishbetween this experience and a true etheric projection. What has happened is that as well as projecting your focus of consciousness, you managed to project your naturalastralbody as well. It coincidedwith the createdastralshellandmergedwith it. Butnotethatword ‘alone’ in the sentence about distinguishingbetween the two types of projection.Whenyouprojectyourastralbody to mimicethericprojection,your range of perception is greaterthanwhenyou are lockedinto yourethericbody.

Specifically, you are able to see entities at yourownlevel of being — i.e. astral entities. As a result,astralbodyprojections of this sort sometimes end up in confusion as the projectordiscovers he can see people — and sometimes creatures - who he knows are notthere. I had an example of this phenomenon with the same ArthurGibson I mentioned in the first section of this workbook. On what was obviously an astral body projectionmimicking an etheric projection, he successfully describedportion of theinterior of a strangehousebutmet(andtalked to!) an individual he assumed to be the owner. Subsequentinvestigation soon indicated the individual didnotexist. at least on the . . physicalplane. Less often, yourextendedperception wifi create a sort of overlayeffect in

86 IntroducingyourAstralBody

whichyourpotentialawareness of theAstralPlane is, sotospeak,superimposed on the physical. Theresultcan be veryconfusing as familiarsurroundingstake on an unfamiliaraspect.Several of RobertMonroe’sprojectiondescriptions readsuspiciously as if he was experiencing this effect. It is incidentally,quite possible to obtain a verysimilarexperiencewithinthecontext of an astralplane

projection. The plane, as we havealreadynoted, is extremelymalleable — so much so thatsomepeopleactuallyseemable to mould its shapesunconsciously. If you are one of them, andparticularly if you are unfamiliarwithastralplane projection, you may find yourselfcreating a familiarphysicalscene in such detailthatyoumistake it for the realthing. But it is not the real thing, so that astralentitiesmayenter or leaveyourconstruct at wifi. Themerging of yourtrueastralbodywith the shellyoucreated is a painless experiencewithoneinterestingaspect: youwifinormallytake on the shape of theartificialbody.Obviously, if youcreatedthisbody to looklikeyourown, the mergingproducesnothing of note. But if you created a distinctlydifferent

shape — the sinisterhoodedfigure, for example — thenthat, for the duration of the projection, will be the form of yourastralbody.Fromthis, youwillreadily deducethatyourastralbodyshares the peculiarfluiditycommon to the plane itself. If you have everwonderedwhat it was like to be a werewolf, then an astralbodyprojection is an excellenttime to findout, foronceyourecognizethe possibility, you can shape-shift at wifi. In one of his occultromances,DennisWheatleydescribedhow the villain chased the hero(each in his respectiveastralbody)through the billows of the AstralLight.Bothshape-shiftedshamelessly as the chaseproceeded: the hero became a to a net. the vfflainbecame a bird to eat the the fly escape . . fly. . . herobecame a snake to killthebird.. and so on. All stufffor a thriller . sterling and if the descriptionwas a little bit overthetop, thebasicprinciplewassound

- on theAstralPlane or, moreaccurately,withinyourastralbody,youcantake on anyshapeyouwish.Thismightleadyou to believeyourastralbodyhas no

essentialshape of its own — andindeedthere are reportsfromsomeprojectors of tripsthrough the AstralPlane in bodies so bereft of distinguishingfeatures that they appeared as balls of light. Yet my ownexperienceclearlysuggests yourastralbodydoeshave a specificshape to which it willnaturallyrevert if you leave it alone. Whiletheastralremainscoincidentwiththephysical,ethericandothersubtle vehicles,there is no problem at all. Eachone is — more or less — themirrorimage of the other. The qualification in parenthesesarises out of a long-standing suspicionthatbodyimagemay be morecloselyassociatedwith the astralbody than the physical. It is by no meansunusual for individuals to retain a subjectivepicture of theirownbodieswhichdiffers — and sometimesdiffers susbtantially - from the reality. Thisbodyimage has actuallybeenmeasured. Volunteers in a series of ingeniousexperimentswereinvited to studythemselv es in a variety of distortingmirrors and indicatewhichimagelooked most life-like.

The investigatorsdiscovered that with somesubjects, there was a marked differencebetweenthe selectedimageandthereality of theirphysicalbodies. It

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is a findingmyownexperience as one-timedirector of a weight-lossclinicbears out. At that time, I was well accustomed to clientswhoseperception of their physicalweight,shapeandbulkwasoftengrosslyinaccurate. Ononeoccasion, a youngprofessionalwoman so thin she mighthavebeen a faminevictimtold me seriously she was ‘like an elephant.’ It may be that somedistortion of the astralbodyproducesimagerylikethis.Alternatively,imagerylikethis is almost certain to producesomedistortion of the astralbody.Eitherway, it leaves a subtlevehiclewhich is not a double of the physical. Onceyousucceed in projectingintotheAstralPlane, myexperiencehasbeen thatyourastralbodynevermirrors the physical.Whythis should be I have no idea, but it is borne out by directobservation. Thevariation is extremeandcouldnotbe described as anysort of body-image distortion. In one case that comes to mind, the projector was a small, blonde-haired,blue-eyedwoman with a squarishbuild and clearly-defined features. Herastralbodywasblack-haired,brown-eyed, of averageheightand slightlyplumpishbuild. It also gave the appearance of a youngerwoman by perhaps as much as 20 years. Myownastralbodydiffersjust as substantiallyfromthephysical in that it too gives a youngerappearance, is clean-shaven(where I havebeenbeardedsince the age of 17) marginallytaller and definitelyplumperthan I am, withsofter features. Nordoes it wearglasses, as I havebeenforced to do since the age of 12, although I cannot, I suppose,ruleoutthepossibility of astralcontactlenses. How or why the differencesarise I have no idea, but the position is further confused by the surprisingfactor of instantrecognizability.During an astral planeprojectionanyfriendsyoumeetmaylookverydifferent to the waythey do in theirphysicalbodies, butyouwillrecognizetheminstantly.Onceagain, I do not know how or why, although the phenomenonobviouslyraises the suspicionthat we may all be far morefamiliarwiththissort of experiencethan we think.This is by no means an outlandishsuggestion.There is at leastsome evidence to suggest we may be capable of simultaneousfunction on astraland physicalplaneswitheach of thetwobodiesgivingeveryindication of conscious mentationandneither,apparently,aware of theactivities of theother.Thissort of unconsciousinter-dimensionalbi-locationstrikes me as a promisingfield for investigation, butyouwill be relieved to hear I do notpropose to investigate it here. Anotherschool of thoughtsuggeststhatdreaming is astralplaneprojection whileunconscious; a theorydifficulteither to disprove or prove. As we have seen in SectionOne, someprojectors, like SylvanMuldoon,considercertain dreams to be muddledrecollections of ethericprojections.Thetwoideasarenot, of course,mutuallyexclusive;and if dreamsreallyareexamples of regularastral planeprojections, it wouldcertainlyexplainwhywerecognizefriends so easily on the astrallevels,eventhoughtheirappearancecandiffersubstantiallyfrom what we are used to on the physical. Curiously,sincetheliterature of occultism is vastandtheconcept of theastral bodyancient,there are remarkablyfew reallydetailedaccountseither of this subtlebody or of thephysics of the AstralPlane. Butperhapsyouwillnotneed

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them,sincethere is a wealth of availableinformation on the mechanics of astral planeprojection - somethingwhich,hopefully, you will soon be trying for yourself.

89 5.

LucidDreams

In the introduction to a short,usefulbookentitledLucidDreaming,Gregory ScottSparrow has this to say:

‘For decades Western and occultliterature has been . . . metaphysical discussing astralprojection and out-of-bodyexperience.However, the one-sidedapproachwhichcharacterizedtheseearlywritingswas one of trying to determinewhere the soul or entity was going.Underlying this approach was an emphasis on physicallyleaving one’s present cir cumstances in the body and the world. In these writings there was a tendency to regard the environment of the out-of-bodyexperience as actuallyexistingsomewhere in timeandspace. ‘Theterm‘luciddreaming’represents an entirelydifferentorientation to the same experience.Instead of implying that a person is physically escaping the confines of the body, this orientationfocusesupon the fact that self-reflectingconsciousness is functioningwithout the apparent mediation of thebody;thus it leavesopenthe possibilitythatthe dreamer hastranscendedtimeandspace.Consequently, all that is left to reallytalk about is the dreamer’sownstate of self-consciousawarenessduring the experience,whichhasbeentermed“lucidity.” ‘Ofcourse, the luciddreamerthentends to makecondusionsaboutwhere he may be (e.g. out of thebody, on the astralplane). Buttheseconclusions are mere speculations and can lead to all kinds of intricatesystems describing the physicalprocess of the soul’sleaving and re-entering the body. Thisavoids the possibilitythat the ‘projector’ is withinhimselfand that this otherworldwhich he sees is an outgrowth of his own past attitudesandexperiences.’

I hardly need tell you I disagree with most of this. Sinceetheric and astral phantomshavebeenseen by others and the sameastralplaneenvironments visited by differentvoyagers, it seemsquiteclearthat‘physicallyleavingone’s presentcircumstances in thebodyandthe world’ is exactlywhat is happening. Norwould I agreethisavoidsthepossibilitythatthe world a projectorsees is an outgrowth of his ownpastattitudes and experiences. The structure of the

90 _____ LucidDreams —______

AstralPlane is suchthat it mightverywell be. The AstralLight is sufficiently malleable to take on any shape unconsciouslyimposed on it by creative projectors and in that sense is certainly an outgrowth of the projector’s past attitudesandexperiences.Thisdoes not make it a subjectiveworld,merely an objective world oddlyreflective of subjective states. But for all this, lucid dreaming is a goodplace to startexperimentingwith the AstralPlane. If the pundits are right - and I haveeveryreason to believetheymight be - thenyou are already an astralplaneprojectorwhotravelsunconsciously to the strange Otherworid at night. The catch-22keyword is, of course, the termunconsciously.Dreams can be great fun whilethey are going on, but they are thingsthathappen to you. You have no (conscious)control of your(astral)environment in a dream. It shifts andchangesfitfully,creatingthatfluidity so characteristic of dreams.Andthe experience is one of deception.During a dream, you are nottypicallyaware of the fact that you are dreaming, not typicallyaware of the fact that you have projectedinto a newworld.Instead, you thoughtlesslypresume the action is takingplace somewhere in the physicalworld you lived in duringdaylight hours - howeverunlikelythismightbe. Afterthe event, on waking, the dream is, of course,recognized for what it was. But the memory of its detailquickly fades. Most dreams are lost within minutes of waking. In many cases, post-wakingamnesia is so profoundthat the individual is convinced shenever dreams at all. If dreams of this sort do representastralplaneprojection, then they are projectionswhichdifferonlytechnicallyfromsubjectivevisions. In them, the astralenvironment is shapedentirely by yourunconsciousmind, the events whichoccur are dramatizations of yourunconsciousconcerns, the peopleyou meet are personifications of yourownpsychicprocesses. The fact thatyou are manipulating an astral environment is irrelevant. In practical terms, the dreamscapemighthavebeencreated by the firing of electricalimpulseswithin yourbrain.Luciddreaming is somethingelse. ScottSparrowdefinesluciddreamingquitesimply as a dream in which the dreamerbecomesconscious.Thissounds a littlelikeSylvanMuldoon’setheric projectiontechnique in whichself-suggestiontriggers a wake-upprocess at a predeterminedpoint in a projectiondream. But the two things are, in fact, entirelydifferent.Muldoon’stechniquewasaimed at breaking the dreamand making you conscious of your projection in the physicalworld.Sparrow’s definitionmeansonlythatyoubecomeconsciousyou are dreaming. Thedream itselfremainsintactandyou do not wake up. Because of yourgeneralfamiliaritywiththedreamstate,becomingconscious within a dream is an excellentintroduction to theAstralPlane.Almostyourfirst thought is likely to be the recognitionthatyou are now in totalcontrol of your environment and can go anywhere, do anything you wish. The sense of freedom is dramatic. Since the Astral Plane is both extensive and objective, the sensation of omnipotencewhichusuallyfollows is ultimately an illusion, but it does at least allow you to start out learningabout the planewithoutpanic.Panic on the

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AstralPlane is a greaterproblemthan it is on the physicalplane — and it can cause quite enoughtrouble even there! Because of its reflectivenature, the

plane will all too easilyallowyou to confrontyourfearsobjectively - something which can be extremelyunpleasant at the best of times; and absolutely terrifying if you are unprepared or, worse, do notrealizewhat is happening. In AstralDoorways I remarkedthat if youmeetanythingnasty onthe astral, it is becausethere is somethingnastyinsideyou.Thiswas a slightoverstatement, sincethereareobjectivenasties on theplanewhichexist in theirownright or are generated by others. But as a generalrule of thumb,anythingyoumeet is either self-created or self-attracted. That latter point is important. A self-created environment will not only reflect your unconsciousneeds, fear and desires directly, butwillalsoattractobjectiveentities of a like nature. To functionreally effectively on the AstralPlane, youwillneed to takeresponsibilitynotonly for youractions, but for yourcharacterandemotions as well. EdgarCayce,America’sfamoussleepingprophet, was once asked‘What governs the experiences of the astralbodywhile in the fourthdimensional planeduringsleep?’ His reply,althoughconfusing in its phraseology,under lines the point I havebeenmaking:

‘This is, as hasbeengiven, thatuponwhich it has fed. Thatwhich it has builded;thatwhich it seeks;thatwhichthementalmind, thesubconscious the subliminal seeks!That mind, mind, governs. .

In otherwords, on the astral, youwillfindeverythingyou are unconsciously seeking,good or bad.Perhapsfortunately, totalcontrol of yourastralenviron ment is unusual(indeed, may not actually be possible) and environmental reflection of yourunconsciousstatedoes not alwayshappen,except in a very generalway. Butbeforeany of thesethingsbecome a realconcern to you,there is the obviousproblem of becomingconsciouswithin a dream.Mostpeople, sooner or later, will experience a dream in which the possibility that they are dreamingoccurs to them by accident.Unfortunatelysuch a realizationalmost invariablybreaks the dreamandcausesthem to awaken. Thetrick is to trigger such a realizationwithoutbreaking the dream.There are quite a number of techniquesavailable for doing so. Yourfirstmajorstep is to paymoreattention to yourdreams. Ourculturehas convinced most of us that dreaming is a waste activity of no importance whatsoever, a sort of side-show put on by the brain as it seeks to clearitself of toxinsaccumulatedduring the day. Older,perhapswiser,cultures paid far moreattention to dreams,believingthattheymight be vehicles of prophecy or messagesfromdivinities.Whateveraboutthesebeliefs,dreamshave a definite importance to anyonewithambitions to become an astralplaneprojectorand are consequentlywellworth the effort of study. Oneway of studyingyourdreams is to keep a notebook or cassetterecorder next to yourbedandrecordtheircontentimmediately on waking. It is noteasy to do. Formostpeople, thelastthingtheyneed is mentaleffortfirstthing in the morning. But if you are strong-willedand if youpersevere, it eventuallygets to

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be a habit,henceeasier.Failing the notebookapproach, it is still useful to set aside a fewminuteseachmorning — as early as possible — to make a conscious effort at recallingyourdreams of the nightbefore.Whatyou are lookingfor, in the earlystages, is anyindication of pre-luciddreaming. A pre-luciddream is one in which you dream that you are waking up, without,however,actuallydoing so. I want to be clearaboutthis: in a pre-lucid dream, you dream that you wake up out of a dream, but do not awaken in actuality, nor do you becomeconscious that you are dreaming.Mostpeople have such dreams from time to time, but having one in the present cir cumstances is notentirely a matter of luck. As youbegin to activelystudyyour dreamswith the intention of experiencingluciddreaming, you automatically increase the chances of such an experience. (Thepsychologicalmechanics are clear enough: by broodingabout lucid dreams, you give your unconscious mind an automaticsuggestionthat it shouldproduce a few.) Pre-luciddreamsare a movealongtheroadtowardsluciddreamingandoften have a remarkableclarityandrealitytone in theirownright. But they are still not lucid dreams: they do not permit you to realize you are dreaming. Nonetheless,theirappearance is a clearindicationthatyou arebeginning to get results. You can speed the process in a couple of ways.Sparrowdiscovered therewas a relationshipbetweenluciddreamingandmeditation:

‘Whenluciditybegan to arisewithincreasingregularity in the following months, I soon noticed that it emergedpredictably after a deep and fuifihingmeditation. It became clear that when my devotional life was intense, lucid dreamswould arise as a concomitant. This relationship becamemorepronouncedwhen I beganmeditating for 15 or 20 minutes duringthe earlymorninghours(from2:00 to 5:00a.m.)’

He concluded that diligentmeditation in the earlymorninghours for the purpose of attunementwouldresult in luciddreaming, butwarnsthatmeditat ing for the purpose of obtaining a luciddream is unlikely to succeed. His own attempts to do so consistentlyended in failure and he frequentlyhad dreams whichtoldhim not to do it. The point is subtleenough to warrantrepeating. Earlymorningmeditationforthepurpose of, say, spiritualadvancement,tends to be followed by lucid dreaming as a sort of side-effect. Early morning meditation for the purpose of triggering a luciddreamdoes not work. I should, I suppose, make the pointthat, to judgefrom his writtenwork, ScottSparrow is an individualdeeplyconcernedwithspiritualityandChristian

— ideals. He clearlybelievedinitially and possibly still believes — that lucid dreamswere in the nature of a ‘gift’. ‘I rememberlying in mybedbewildered, wonderingwhy the experiencehadbeengiven to me andwhat I had done to deserve it,’ he wrote in LucidDreaming. He concluded on this occasion that it had followed on an unselfish act towards his brother and that ‘unselfish acts hadbeen a rarity in my life.’Following on his earlyexperience, he notedthat lucidityoftenarose after an experience of love or deeprapportwithanother person.

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Since I amnot a particularlyspiritualindividual, I find it personallydifficult to judge the validity of thisrelationship, but mention it in the hopethat it may be of use to some readers. The effect of meditation is, however,extremely interesting and has a far moreuniversalapplicationsincealmost any form of meditation,properlyperformed, tends to put you in closetouch with your essential self — which I suspect is the triggerfactor in producing the lucid dreams. Meditation for the purpose of lucid dreamingwouldautomatically set up barrierssince it is, in itself, a superficialgoal. Theresult is a little like trying to relax.Relaxation is a question of letting go. So long as youkeeptryingyouwill never let go completely. Onlywhen you learnhow to stop tryingdoestotal relaxationfollow.Anothertrigger is the one put forward in a differentcontext by SylvanMuldoon - self suggestion. You can apply this immediatelybefore sleepwhen you are pleasantlyrelaxed and yourunconscious is amenable to doingwhat it is told. Simplyrepeat to yourself, overandover, thatnexttime youdream, youwillbecomeaware of the factyou are dreaming. You might try to link this suggestionwith a typicaldreamscenario. This is where yourstudy of your dreamscomes into its own, for by this stage you should be wellable to isolaterecurring — or at leasttypical — themes.Youmight, for example, find a greatnumber of yourdreamsinvolvewalkingdown a city street. If so, thenyoushouldsuggestthat the nexttimeyoudream of walking down a city street, you willbecomeaware that you are dreaming.Since you have a visualimage (the street) to work on, it could be useful to make the suggestion in visualform,imaginingyourselfdreaming, thenbecomingaware thatyou are dreaming.Keepusingthe suggestionnightafternightandsooner or lateryourtypical city streetpatternwillrecur,triggering the suggestion. A somewhatdifferenttechniquewaits until you are in the dreamitselfbefore trying to triggerawareness. This is done by the oddlysimpleexpedient of examiningyourhands or someotherpart of your(dream)body. Sleepresearchhas indicatedthat the mostpredictableelement of anydream is the presenceyourownbody. Anyexamination of it tends to reinforceyour sense of personalidentity,since it forcesyourattentionawayfrom the swiftly changingastralelementswhichmake up most of the remainder of the dream. Another useful point of focus is the groundbeneath your feet, another unchangingelement in an otherwisefluidenvironment.

The problemwithboththesetechniques is quiteobvious - the difficulty in remembering to examineyourhands or the groundwhen the dreamstarts. Hereagain, a clear,consciousdeterminationprior to fallingasleepwillhelp, as will the specificself-suggestion that in any dream from now on you will examineyourhands, or the groundbeneathyourfeet.Oncemore, youhave a visualreference, so the self-suggestioncan be madevisually. I wouldstronglysuggestyou try theseapproaches for severalweeksbefore giving up on any of them, but if you do find yourselfgettingnowhere with them, you might be prepared to attempt some rather more complex and difficultapproachesdevelopedmanycenturiesago in Tibet. As a result of these methods,says DrW. Y. Evans-Wentz in his TibetanYogaandSecretDoctrines, the

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yoginenjoys as vivid a consciousness in the dreamstate as in thewakingstate — precisely the conditionyou are trying to bringabout.

The first - and probably least useful - of these methodsinvolves your development of a determination to recognize the ultimateunreality of all things. ‘In otherwords,’quotesEvans-Wentz,‘under all conditionsduringthe day or wakingstate]hold to the conceptthat all things are of the substance of dreams and that thoumustrealizetheir true nature.’ At night,when on the point of sleep, pray that you will be able to understand the dreamstate and resolvethatyouwill be able to do so. The initialconcept (that everything is a dream) is heavier going for the products of a Westernculture than it is for Tibetans with a centuries-long

Buddhisttradition — whichteaches as a centralarticle of faiththat all is maya or illusion. But it mayhaveintellectual or emotionalappeal to you, in whichcase both the nightlyprayer (to yourguru, according to the Tibetantext, but any divinitytends to be just as effective)andthedetermination to succeedwifiact as a powerfulself-suggestion. The secondpractice is rathermoremechanical. The textinsist it relies on the ‘power of breath’ although no breath control is actuallyinvolved. The translationmay be in error to the extentthatthe ‘breath’referred to may be the ‘universalbreath’, or what the Chinese call ch ‘i. Ch ‘i is a subtleenergyfound, among other places, in the humanbody and capable of regulation by the techniques of acupuncture,acupressure, and various yogas and physical fitnesssystemslike Tai Ch ‘i. Theinstructionsgiven to stimulatedreamunderstandingbyregulation of this energy are fairlystraightforward:

1. Sleeplying on yourrightside. 2. Use the thumbandring-finger of yourrighthand to press on the arteries of yourthroat.(You can tell these by the factthattheyhave a pulse.) 3. Stop the nostrilswith the fingers of the left hand, thusforcingyourself to breathethroughyourmouth. 4. Allowsaliva to collect in the throat.

ThelastTibetanpractice I plan to discusshere is themostcomplex of themall, and in someways the mostinteresting. You wifi have to bear with me for a moment as I quotedirectlyfromEvans-Wentztranslation of the texts:

‘Thinking that thou art thyself the deity Vajra-Yogini,visualize in the throatpsychiccentre the syllableAH, red of colourandvividlyradiant, as being the realembodiment of DivineSpeech. ‘By mentally concentrating upon the radiance of the AH, and recognizingeveryphenomenalthing to be in essence like formsreflected in a mirror,which,thoughapparent,have no realexistence of themselves, one comprehendeth the dream. ‘At nightfall, strive to comprehend the nature of the dream-state by m~ans of the visualization just describedabove. At dawn,practise ‘pot

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shaped’breathing seven times. Resolve 11 times to comprehend the nature of the dream-state. Thenconcentrate the mindupon a dot, like unto a bonysubstance,white of colour,situatedbetween the eyebrows. ‘If one be of plethorictemperament, the dot is to be visualized as being red of colour; if one be of nervoustemperament, the dot is to be visualized as beinggreen of colour. 1Jf by thismeans the dream-state be notcomprehended,thenproceed as followeth: ‘At nightfallmeditateupon the dot. In the morning,practise 21 ‘pot- shaped’breathings.Make 21 resolves to comprehend the nature of the dream-state.Then, by concentratingthe mind on a blackdotthe size of an ordinary pifi, situated at the base of the generativeorgan, one will be enabled to comprehend the nature of the dream-state.’

Unlessyouhavehadthebenefit of esoterictraining,parts of that are likely to makeverylittle sense to you. But between us we mightmanage to extract a usefultechnique. The first problem is that phase ‘throatpsychiccentre,’ which refers to somethingusuallycalled a chakra or chakram. Chakra is usuallytranslated as ‘lotus’ andchakras are believed to be subtlecentreswithineveryhumanbody which act as transformerstations forthe universalpower of prana or ch ‘i. There is no need to go intoanydepthexamination of thechakras,buttake a look at the diagrambelow:

Five of the majorchakras are shown as glowingspheres.Thesecondfromthe top is the ‘throatpsychiccentre’mentioned in the Tibetanyogatext. My own experiencesuggests that if it is stronglystimulated, a combinedetheric/astral projectionresults.Milderstimulation, as youmayhavegatheredfromthetext, is useful in dreamcontrol. One of the simplest, safest, and in many ways most effective ways of stimulating any chakra is visualization. The text requirespractitioners to imaginethemselves to be the deityVajra-Yogini, an identificationwhichwould

96 LucidDreams

certainlyboost a Tibetan’sconfidence in success, but is meaningless for most Westerners. It is an instruction you maysafelyignore, as is the bit about the syllable AH and the ‘real embodiment of DivineSpeech’ - more religious associationswhich are generallymeaningless to Westerners. The use of the colourredandvisualizationconcentrated on the throatcentre is something else again.Beforeretiring to bed, take 10 minutes to visualize a glowingblood-redspherewithinyourthroat, its mellowlightilluminatingthat whole area of your body. Do not spend more than 10 minutes since any concentration on a singlechakra (in isolation)leads to an unbalancedenergy flow and healthproblems if continued too long. As you visualize,determine thatyou are going to becomeaware of dreaming as youdream;andthink of the reflectivestructure of the AstralPlane as outlinedearlier in thisworkbook.

Red is an energizingcolourandthere is an excellentchancetheaboveexercise is all youwillneed to getresults.But if youcarry it outdiligentlyfor a week to 10 dayswithoutachievingyourgoal,move on to the secondstage. At night,beforefallingasleep,proceedexactly as before. But nextmorning, immediatelyafteryou awaken (the reference to dawn, you will be relieved to hear,may be taken as symbolic)taketheseven‘pot-shaped’breathsreferred to in the text. Mostpeoplebreathewith a movement of thechestandrib-cage:observeyour ownbreathing for a moment and noteexactlywhathappens.‘Pot-breathing’ occurswhen you take in air by using the abdomen(which, on a full breath, sticksoutandgrowsroundedlike a pot). By usingthe abdomentyoutake in far more air thanusual. On the outbreath, pull the abdomen in so that it becomes concave, a motionwhichwifiexpell all stagnant air from the lungs. Do not be tempted to try this morethan the seventimesmentioned,especially if you are unused to breathingexercises, or youmayfindyourselfgrowingdizzy. Carry out the eleverifoldresolve as instructed in the text, thenmove on to concentration on the ‘dot situatedbetween the eyebrows.’ This is, of course, the location of the fabulousThirdEye, associatedwith the pinealgland, and widelyassumed by occultists to be the seat of psychicpowers. It is also, although not shown on our diagram, a chakra or energycentre and thus capable of stimulationthroughvisualization.Whenfirstvisualized,youshould see it as a smallwhitesphere, the colour of bone. Onceestablished in your mind’s eye, imagine it glowing either red, if you are by nature a calm individual, or green if you are nervous. Followthisregimefor 10 daysbeforemoving on to thefinalstage if results are notforthcoming.Most of thethirdstageinstructionswifibe clearenough to you by now,sincetheyreallyonlyrepresentmore of the same. Theimportantnew element is theappearance of the ‘blackdot’ at thebase of thegenerativeorgans. This new visualizationstimulates the mudrachakrawhich lies between the root of the~penisandthe anus in a manandbetweentheback of thevaginaand the anus in a woman. It is the trigger for verypowerfulenergiesindeed and requires to be manipulatedwithextremecaution. Donotvisualizethischakra in any colour other than black; and do not visualize it larger than the pill suggested in the text. A smallstimulation is quiteenough to get results.

97 6.

AstralDoorways

Luciddreamingwifiintroduceyou to the AstralPlane, butthere is no doubt at all that the astral environment in which you find yourself will have been self-created - that is, it will tend to reflect your own unconsciousneeds, obsessionsanddesires.This is becausehoweverquicklyyoumanage to become awarethatyou are dreaming, youbegin to dreamfirst;whichmeansthatyour environment is createdwhileyouare unconscious.Oncecreated, it willtend to retain its form for the remainder of that particularastraladventure.There is always the possibility of non-createdelementsintruding, of course, butoverall the experience wifi usually tell you far moreaboutyourselfthan the Other- world. Youalreadyknow,from the theoreticalsections of thisworkbook, thatthere are vastpre-formedareas of the AstralPlane,permanent, or semi-permanent, reflections of variousenergiesandinfluences. It wouldobviouslybeveryuseful to findsomesort of doorwayintotheserealms so thatyoumightvisitthem at wifi, more or less uncontaminated by the flickeringinfluence of youruncon sciousmind.(There is a point to be madehere, in passing. It seems to me that whenyoufindyourself in whatonemightcall a virginarea of theAstralPlane, such as one does in dreams, the onlyinfluence on the billows of astrallight is your unconsciousmind. Consequently, your environment will mirror your personalconcernsautomaticallyandcontinuously. Butwhenyoufindyourself in an astral districtwhich is alreadyreflecting a physicalterrain or long- establishedthought-form, it requires a consciouseffort on yourpart to change yoursurroundings in anyway.Sometimes it requiresconsiderableconcentra tionandskill.) Doorwaysintoestablishedastralareasactuallyexist; andhavebeenused by Orientalmagicians for centuries.Certain of themwereimported intoBritain during the Victorian era and the techniquesassociatedwith their use distri buted to members of the HermeticOrder of the GoldenDawn. The notion of a doorway into anotherdimension has beenpopularized in sciencefictionwhere it is usuallydescribed as a shimmeringportalhanging mysteriously in mid-airthroughwhich the hero steps, usually to vanish altogetherfromthe view of mortalmen. Youwill be disappointed to learnthat realastraldoorways are not a bit likethat, althoughtheirusage is every bit as

98 ______Astral Do

fascinating.There is, in thisrespect, an interestingstoryabout an earlymeeting between the IrishpoetWffliamButlerYeatsand the magicianS.L. MacGregor Mathers,whowas at the timehead of the newly-formedGoldenDawn. YeatshadheardhowFlorenceFarr, theactress,visitedMatherswhoplaced a square of cardboard on her foreheadwhichinstantlytriggered a vision of herselfwalking on a clifftopwithscreamingseagullsoverhead.Yeats too was given a piece of cardboard by Mathers and when he pressed it against his forehead he foundhimself in thegrip of vividmentalimagesoverwhich he had no control. He was in a desertwith a blackTitanrising up out of ancientruins. In his Autobiography, Yeatsexplained that Mathers told him he had seen a being of the ‘Order of Salamanders’because he hadbeenshowntheirsymbol. But Mathersmaintained the physicalsymbol(depicted on card) was not actuallynecessary - it wouldhavebeenenough if he hadsimplyimagined it. Yeatswasunderstandablyimpressedandlaterjoined the Order. Thesymbolshown to FlorenceFarralmostcertainlylookedlike this:

Theoneplaced on Yeats’foreheadwas:

Thecolouring of MsFarr’ssymbolwasblue.Yeats’wasred.Theyweretwo of a set known as tattwasymbolsdeveloped by Hinduphilosophers,associated with the ancientalchemicalelements of earth, air, fire, water and ether and usedwithinthe GoldenDawn in a veryspecialway. Tattwasymbolswifi, if placedontheforehead as described,frequentlytrigger the sort of visions Farr and Yeats experienced. But manipulatedslightly differently,theybecome an important aid to astralplaneprojection.Andsince theywifidirectthe projector to a specificarea of the AstralPlane,they are very rightlyseen as astraldoorways. Themajortattwasymbolslooklikethis:

Air Fire Water

Yellow Blue Red Silver Black! Indigo

99 TheAstralProjectionWorkbook

Each one givesaccess to a specific area of the AstralPlane, but manyother elementaldoorwaysmay be constructedthroughtheuse of compositesymbols - superimposing the silvercrescent of Water on the yellowsquare of earth, for example, or theredtriangle of Fire onthebluedisc of air. Experimentationwith compositedoorways can giveintriguingresults andyoumaylike to try it at a laterdate, but for the moment, I propose to stickwith the fivemajorelemental doorwayssincetheyare a littleeasierforbeginners.Thetechniquesyouneed to use compositedoorways are exactly the same as the one I wifi be giving for these.

In the GoldenDawn, thetattwaswereused as thebasis of theOrder’searliest experiments in clairvoyance and scrying — the latter term more or less synonymouswithwhat I havecalledastralplaneprojection.Thetheorybehind theiruse wasquitecomplex. I havealreadymentioned the universalenergy ch ‘i which is usuallycalled pranawithin the schools of Indianyoga. Thisenergy,associatedwith the air, but distinctfrom it, is believed to originate in a steadystreamfrom the sun — although it is not of any of the radiationswhichscientistshave yet measured. Thisradiation has a fivefoldaspect,respectivelyreferred to by the Hindus as akasa(ether or spirit), vayu (air) tejas(fire)apas(water)andprithivi(earth.) The Englishtranslationshave little enough to do with the sort of air, fire, wateretcthatyouwouldrecognize,butreferinstead to theaichemicalelements of thosenames.Alchemiststried to distinguishbetweentheirelements and theirmoremundanecounterparts by usingphraseslike air of the wise, fire of the wise and so on, but this franklysorted out nobody’sconfusion. The problem was that while the alchemistsspentmuchtime in mustylaboratoriesmixing chemicalreagents,theirrealwork — wellhiddenbehind the appallingmass of

(sometimescoded)verbiagewhichcomprisesthebulk of aichemicalliterature — waswith the basicsubstance of the AstralPlane. To understand what this meansrequires a brief sortie into the world of Qabalah, that body of ancientdoctrinewhichunderpins much of modern occultism.Central to the Qabalahwas a glyph,which we shall be examining in moredetail in a laterchapter,called the Tree of Life. From one viewpoint, this glyphpurports to be a sort of map of reality,showing its ultimatestructure as it emerged out of the Great Unmanifest. The glyph has 10 spheres, the bottom-most of which, called Malkuth,represents the physicaluniverse. Directlyabove the Malkuth is a sphereentitledYesod, whichrepresents the

AstralPlane. But ‘Yesod’does not mean‘AstralPlane’ — it meansFoundation.

BecauseQabalists — and mostotheroccultists — believe the AstralPlane is the foundation of physicalmatter. Given the easewithwhich the AstralLight is influenced, this seems on the face of it unlikely, but the notionthat the astralunderlies the physical is at the root of mostWesternmagicalpractice. All rituals and mostspellshavetheir inner,astral,aspect; and it is the stresseswhichtheseoperations set up in the astralwhicheventually‘earth’themselves to produce‘magical’results on the physicallevel. Alchemicalexperimentswere (and are) unusual in that they seek to mani

100 AstralDoorways

pulate and understand two levels simultaneously. The categorization of physicalmatter into five ‘elements’quicklyshows the limitationswhichhave persuadedmodernscientists to dismissalchemy as ‘proto-chemistry’. But while the art of alchemycertainly gave rise to the science of chemistry, the dismissalindicates a basic lack of understanding.Alchemy is not proto anything,but a workablesystem in its ownright, fortheelementalsub-division seems to remainvalid for the ‘mind-stuff’ of the AstralLight. Theforce of theelements is notconstantwithintheAstralLight,butfollows a sun-drivenrhythm.Akasa - ether or spirit - is strongest at dawnwhenthe sun risesandholds its power for twohourswhen it blendsinto an ascendingVayu, or air. Thispersists for twohoursbeforeblendingintoTejas, fire,which in turn blendsintoApas,water,with the cyclefinishing in Prithivi,earth. Thisrhythm of the Universalprana or ch ‘i is mirrored by therhythmicflow of personal ch ‘i withinthe acupuncturemeridians of the humanbody,whichalso follows a diurnalrhythmandhas its own‘Law of the FiveElements’. Noelementactuallyreplacesanyother in thisuniversalcycle, for ch ‘i is always a mixture of the five. What the cyclesignifies is the dominance of a particular element at a giventime. How all thismanifests on the AstralPlane is a matter of experience.And to gainthatexperience,yourfirstjob is to make for yourself a set of tattwacards. Use squares of whitecardboardsufficientlylarge to allow a symbol two to two-and-a-halfinches in height. If you decide to make a compositecard, this size refers to the primarysymbol. The secondarysymbol,which is superim posed, can — andshould - be a littlesmaller. Leave the back of the cardsplainwhite andblank. The diagram on page 99 shows you the five primarysymbols and the colourassociated with each of them. (Thesymbol for ethershould be colouredeitherindigo or black, but not both: and for what it is worth, I have alwaysfoundindigoworksslightly better.) In eachcase, the colourshould be as strong andbrilliant as possible. Watercolours are quite useless for thesecards. Oils are only a little better. Acrylicsgive the strength andbrilliance you need; or you can take the advice contained in the originalGoldenDawndocuments,whichsuggestedcutting andpastingcolouredpapers.Certainly foil makes a bettersilvercrescenteven than a metallic-basedpaint. Compositecardsshould be made by superimposing a smallerversion of the secondarysymbol on the primarysymbol. As a workingexample, the tattwa cardsignifyingFire of Earthwouldshow the primaryearthsymbol as a yellow squarewith 2 ~“ sides,while the red, equilateralfiretrianglewouldhavesides about ~“ long.Othercompositecards can be madekeepingtheseproportions in mind,althoughwhatlooksgood to the eye shouldalwaystakeprecedence overanyslavishattempt to duplicatetheproportionsexactly.Moreimportant is clarity and purity of colour, whichshould be as close to the primaries as possible. The GoldenDawninstructionssuggestwriting the appropriatedivine and angelicnames on the back, but this is purely as an aid to memoryandthere is goodreason for leaving the back of the cardblank.

101 The AstralProjectionWorkbook

Whenyou havecreatedyoursymbolcards to yoursatisfaction,coverthem with transparentartist’s film or, better still, give them a coat of clear gloss varnish to enhance the coloursandpreserve the symbols. There are two ways to use the cards, one of which(holding one to your forehead) you havealreadylearned. This method, in my experiencetriggers subjectivevisions — subjective, that is, in the sensethatyouwillperceivethem as exercises of the visualimagination. But as we have already seen, even subjectivity is relativeandthisform of symbolandmanipulation is an excellent way of trainingyourimagination to become a periscopewhichwillenableyou to lookintoastrallevels,even if you are notactuallytravellingthere. Thetalent is by no meanstrivial.Developing it wasone of the mainreasons I was forced to conclude the AstralPlane wasessentiallyobjective.Whenyou grow accustomed to obseving the AstralPlane in this way, it is perfectly possible to watchtheantics of actualtravellersandcomparenotesafterwards to establishthe accuracy of yourvision. At first, there is nothing to distinguishbetween this form of scrying and normalimagination - indeed, for a longtime I assumedtheabilitywas no more than the discovery that imagination itself can peer into astral realms. But eventually you wifi notice a very subtle difference. This is a lot easier to experiencethandescribe, but essentiallyastralvisionseems to have a greater stability.Untilyoulearnthefeel of astralvision, thebestway to differentiate is to practisewith a partnerwho has proficiency in the doorways and compare notes. Use of yourcards to triggerprojection is a littlemorecomplicated.One set of GoldenDawninstructionssuggestspreliminarymeditationontheelementyou aregoing to use,saturatingyourselfwith it until, in thecase of fireyouactually feelhot, in thecase of wateryoufeelwetand so on. This is not a badidea if your mainthrust is simply to provideyourselfwiththe mosteffectiveroutethrough the doorway. But if you are approaching the experienceexperimentally, it is probably best to forgo preliminarymeditation since it obviously acts as a powerfulself-suggestion,thusconfusingyourresults. Thedoorwaysequenceitself is as follows: Find a quietroomand a comfortablechair.Selectyoursymbolcard, sit back andrelax as deeply as possible.Gazeintently at the colouredsymbol for about half a minute,thenturnthecardoverandgaze at its blankback. As you do so, an opticalreflexwificausethe symbolyouhavebeenstudying to appear on the back of the card. Theprocess is quiteautomatic, so there is no need for you to try to force or wifi it - simplywait a second or twoand it wifihappen. Thesymbolitselfwifi be quiteclearlydefined, but in the directcomplement ary colour to the originalandoddlyluminescent. Theyellowearthsquare, for example,wouldappear as lavender or mauve,dependingon theexactshade of yellowused.(There is no need,incidentally, to usetheback of thecard if you do not want to. A sheet of whitepaperwill do just as well, as will a blankwall or even the ceiling. But the cardback is veryconvenientand if you do decide, to use somethingelse, makesure the surface is whiteand notcream or anyother colour,otherwise the toneswill be slightlyoff.)

102 AstralDoorways

Onceyouhaveseenyourcomplementary-colouredsymbol,closeyoureyes and interiorize it. What you are trying to do is visualizewhat you have just seen, but the visualizationworks best if you imagineyourselfdrawing in the glowingsymbol until it is establishedinside your head. At this point, you shouldmentallyenlarge the symbol until it is big enough for you to pass through.Thenimagineyourselfsteppingthrough the enlargedsymbol as if it were an actualdoor. Peopledifferconsiderably in theirabi1it~ to takethisstep,although I haveyet to meetanyonewhocouldnotmanage it eventuallywithpractice. In the GoldenDawn, students were encouraged to use the Sign of the Enterer, a ‘gropingforthelight’which!statederroneously inAstralDoorways to be more or lessidentical to thestraight-armedNazisalute. In fact, thissignuses both hands and has a projectiveinfluence. You are instructed to take a small, slidingstepforward,whilesimultaneouslyraisingbotharmsaboveyourhead. As you complete the step, bring your hands over your headforwards and thrustthem out horizontally,fingers out, palmsdownwards, at the level of youreyes.Sinkyourheaduntilyoureyes arelookingoutdirectlybetweenyour thumbs. If you can get the hang of all this; you are instructed to stand up, stifi visualizingtheenlargeddoorway,makethesignphysicallyandsimultaneously imagineyourselfmovingthrough,thentakeyourseatagainandcontinuewith the vision. Onceyouhavereachedthisstage,youshouldstronglyimagine the doorway behind you, hangingluminous in the air like one of those sciencefiction doorways we mentionedearlier. Then look around and take note of your surroundings. At this point, if youwere a member of the GoldenDawn, you would be urged to vibrate the DivineNamesassociatedwith the elementyou hadchosen. This is a difficult area for anyone who has not been trained in Qabalah. Briefly,certainentities,ranked all the way from deities to elemeritals, are believed to be associatedwithparticularastralareas.Fromoneviewpoint, the use of theirnames is similar to religioussupplication or prayer - a calling on their aid in yourendeavours.From a slightlydifferentviewpoint, the use of theirnames is a courtesy, a greeting to the moreimportantinhabitants of a countryyou are about to enter.

- But the names are to be vibrated i.e. pronounced in a specialway - which suggeststheymaybe more in the nature of a passwordor, evenmorecorrectly, a directmanipulation of the essence of the plane in its particularelemental aspect. Theireffect is to make the experiencemorevivid and (according to GoldenDawntheory)safer.Whetheryouwish to usethenames at thispoint is a personaldecision — certainly it is perfectlypossible to carry through an elementalprojectionwithoutthem. But assuming that you do propose to use them, a littlepractice in vibration is recommended. Magicalvibration of a name is a technique by which it is halfchantedback in the throat in such a way that it buzzes, thus creating a literal and physical vibrationwhich can be felt quiteclearly by yourself and by anyone else whO

103 TheAstralProjectionWorkbook

happened to be nearby.Vibration is an art in itself. With practice you can persuade it to triggeralmostanywherewithinyourownbody or outside it, like a ventriloquistthrowing his voice. For the purpose of the presentexercise, however, it will be enough to practiseuntilyouhaveachieved the distinctive buzzingpronunciation of the names. Thenamesthemselves areHebrewandarespelledoutphoneticallyforyou in the tablebelow. The pronunciation is somewhatdifferent in magicalusage to normalusage, so pleasestickwith the pronunciationgiven. All namesshould be vibratedslowlyandaudibly. The recommendedsequence is 1) Deity Name, three to four times; 2) ArchangelicName; 3) AngelicName; 4) ElementName; 5) CardinalQuarter Name. The fulltable is as follows:

Earth DeityName:Ah-doh-nayhah-Ahr-retz ArchangelicName:Or-eee-ell AngelicName:Four-lack ElementName:Oh-fire CardinalName:Zah-fawn

Air DeityName:Shah-day eli chay ArchangelicName:Rah-fai-ell AngelicName:Cha-san ElementName:Rue-ach. CardinalName:Miz-rack

Water DeityName:Aye-low-eemZah-bah-oth ArchangelicName:Gah-brah-ell AngelicName:Tah-iee-ah-had ElementName:Maim CardinalName:Mah-rab

Fire DeityName:Yod-heh-vav-hehZah-bah-oth ArchangelicName:Me-kay-eli AngelicName:Ah-ral ElementName:Ash CardinalName:Dah-rom

Once youhaveusedthesenames,GoldenDawnteachingsuggeststhat:

‘Variouschangesmaynow be perceived to occur in the landscape; it will becomealive,vivified and dynamicand the sense of the elementshould becomeevenmoreclearlyandvividlydefined.

104 AstralDoorways

Also, a being may appear, one whosecharacteristicspertain to the Element, andhis garments,theircolours, and his otherornamentsshould be in the appropriatecolours. ‘Under no circumstancesshouldthe Seerwanderfromhis doorwayalone: he shouldalways wait until one of these elementalbeings or ‘guides’ appears and he shouldcontinuevibrating the names until one does appear, or until he obtains the sensethatone is present. ‘Sometimes, and with some students, there is no clearvision of these occurrences or beings, but only a sense of intuition or powerfulinstinct thatsuchandsuch a thing is happening, andthatsuch a type of beinghas appeared. This often is moretrustworthythan the use of sight or other sense.’

Weirdthough it sounds, my ownexperienceindicates all of this is excellent advice,although I do have to admit to variousuneventfultripswithout the aid of a guide. If, whenyouhaveexperience of the AstralPlane, youdecide to go solo,remember to make a carefulnote of the roadyou are travelling,sinceyou willobviouslywant to return to the doorway to getback to the physicalworld. GoldenDawnmagicians, whowereextremelycautiousindividuals,would typically test any guide who appeared by giving the sign of the grade appropriate to the elementvisited. (Forearth, thiswas the ZelatorSign,which really is identical to the Nazisalute.)Theywouldthendecide on his bonafides depending on whatsign he gaveback. I am an extremelycautiousindividual myself, but the exchange of signs is meaningless to anyoneoutside a magical

Order - andevenwithin an Order, the signshave to be related to one’sown training. In the absence of formaltraining,therefore, I can onlysuggest you judge astral guides in exactly the same way you judge physical plane acquaintances — by theirappearance and actions.There is no need to become paranoid: the AstralPlane is no moredangerousthan the physical,although there is certainly a tendency to attractentitieswhich are sympathetic to your personalitycharacteristics.

105 7.

TheAstral I Ching

Whiledriving to work in a slow-movingline of trafficseveralyearsago. I saw an approachinglorryswingabruptlyonto the wrongside of the road.Therewas thesound of a coffisionsomewhereaheadandtheline oftrafficstopped at once. I got out of myvehicleandranforward to find the lorryhadstruck a Minicar. The driver, a heavilypregnantwoman, and her companion,anotherwoman, werebothshocked but unhurt. I ran to the driver of the lorry, whowasbent over the steeringwheel, andasked if he was all right. He too seemedshocked andtold me vaguely he hadbruised his wrist. At this point, it appeared to be one of thelessseriousroadaccidentswith no badinjuriesandminimaldamage to eithervehicle.Butthen!walkedpastthelorryanddiscovered a secondMini. Two of its occupantswerealreadydead.Thethirddied in an ambulance on the way to hospital. I felt compelled to inflictthislittlehorrorstory on youbecause of something whichhadhappenedearlierthatmorning.Sometimebeforeeighta.m.when I leftforwork, I consulted an oracleandrequired it to giveme an indication of the influences onthedayahead. Heshall see a wagonfull ofcorpses, theoraclereplied. If thiswascoincidence, it was the sort of coincidencewhichhadoccurred far too often in the past and was to occuragain far too often in the future.Each morning for morethantwoyears, I consulted the oraclewithexactly the same question:Whatare the influences on thecomingday?Eachevening, I reviewedthe day and attempted to determine how far, if at all, the pronouncements I receivedmatched what had actuallyhappened. Over and over again, I discovered they matcheduncannily well, especially after regularpractice enabled me to determineexactlywhatsome of the moreobscurepronounce mentsactuallymeant. I was not the only one to be impressed. The psychiatrist Carl Jung once experimentedwith the sameoracle and decided that had it beenhuman, he wouldhavebeenforced, on thebasis of the answers he received, to pronounce it of soundmind. The oracle we usedwas Chinese I Ching,claimed to be the oldestbook in the world. and the wisest. . . possibly Theprinciple of the I Ching, the subdivision of phenomenaintonegativeand positiveforcescalled yin and yang, was an aspect of Chinesethoughtdating fromthefurthestreaches of prehistory.Technically, theoracleprofesses to read

106 TheAstral I Ching

The I ChingHexagrams

Creative Receptive Difficulty at — Youthful Beginning Folly

Waiting for Conflict TheArmy — Holding = Nourishment Together

TamingPower Treading Peace Standstill of the Small

Fellowship Possession in Modesty Enthusiasm withMen = Greatmeasure

Following Work on what Approach Contemplation — hasbeen spoiled

Biting Grace Splitting Turning Through Apart -- Point

Unexpected — TamingPower Providing Preponderance = of the Great Nourishment —- of the Great

Abysmal Clinging Influence Duration Fire

Retreat = Power of Progress Darkening the Great of the Light

TheFamily Opposition Obstruction Deliverance

Decrease Increase Breakthrough Coming to Meet

Gathering Pushing Exhaustion TheWell Together Upward

Revolution TheCauldron The Keeping Arousing Still

Gradual Marrying Abundance The Progress = Maiden Wanderer

= The The Dispersion Limitation Gentle Joyous

InnerTruth Preponderance After Before of the Small Completion Completion

107 The AstralProjectionWorkbook

the currentstate of yin andyangthrough the development of six-linedfigures known as hexagrams. The hexagramsthemselves have a long, if somewhat disreputable,history in thattheysprangfrom a veryancientform of fortune telling in whichtortoiseshellswereheateduntiltheycrackedand the patterns interpreted by experts. In time, so our ownhistoricalexpertsinsist, the cracks becamestylized into three-linedfigures(trigramsfeaturingbroken (yin) and unbroken(yang)lines. Sometimeprior to 1150B.C., a provincialnoblenamedWenprovedvirtue is not its ownrewardbybehaving in such an upright,honourableanddecentway that the Emperor had him thrown into prison. The problem was Wen’s popularity,whichthe Emperor(correctly)believedoutshone his own. Withnothingbetter to do to fill his days,Wenturned to intellectualpursuits andbegan to assigndefinitivemeanings to the trigramswhichwerealready in use as fortune-tellingdevices. He combinedtheminto the six-linedhexagrams andadded his ownbriefcommentary,called a Judgement, to each. The Emperoreventuallyreleased him and Wen showed his gratitude by leading a rebellionwhichoverthrew the dynasty.Wenhimselfdiedbefore he couldseize the throne, butscholarshaveawardedhimthe posthumoustitle of King.Wen’sson, the Duke of Chou,consolidated the victoryandfinished his father’s work, adding his own commentaries on the individual lines. The completedworkbecameknown as theChanges ofChou(Chou 1) or, moresimply, the Book of Changes (a literaltranslation of I Ching.) By this time, it had totally outgrown the earlycrudities of fortune-tellingandbecome a tome of profound philosophy,masquerading as a system of divination. At a laterstage,Confu cius, who was already an old man when he cameupon the I Ching,.added furthercommentariesandexplanations. There are, in the I Ching, 64 hexagrams,shownwiththeirtitles on page 107 Not only is each hexagramcapable of interpretation, but each line of each hexagram is alsocapable of interpretation.Linesare,however,onlyinterpreted when it is thoughttheycontainsuchtensionthatthey are about to changeinto their opposites. Once they do so, they produce a new hexagramwhich is interpreted in contextwith the original. This soundscomplicated if you are unfamiliar with the system, but only meansthatthe oracle is capable of deliveringmorethanfourthousandanswers withoutrepeatingitself. You can get an idea of the sort of answer it delivers fromthisexample.

Ting/TheCauldron above Li TheClinging, Fire belowSunTheGentle,Wind,Wood

TheJudgement TheCauldron.Supremegoodfortune. Success.

108 The Astral I Ching

TheImage Fireoverwood. Theimages of TheCauldron. Thus the superiormanconsolidates his fate By making his positioncorrect.

TheLines Six at the beginningmeans: A tingwithlegsupturned. Furthersremoval of stagnatingstuff.

Onetakes a concubine for the sake of her son. Noblame.

Nine in the secondplacemeans: There is food in the ting. Mycomrades are envious. Buttheycannotharmme. Goodfortune.

Nine in the thirdplacemeans: Thehandle of the ting is altered. One is impeded in his way of life. The fat of the pheasant is not eaten. Oncerainfalls,remorse is spent. Goodfortunecomes in the end.

Nine in the fourthplacemeans: Thelegs of the ting are broken. Theprince’smeal is spified And his person is soiled. Misfortune.

Six in the fifthplacemeans: The tinghasyellowhandles,goldencarryingrings. Perserverencefurthers.

Nine at the top means: The tinghas rings of jade. Greatgoodfortune. Nothingthatwouldnot act to further.

This is not the mostaccessible of answers. But in quoting it (fromtheBaynes translationpublished by Routledge & KeganPaul) I decidednot to troubleyou with the extensivecommentarieswhichmake it a littleeasier to understand.

Thosecuriousphrasesunder the headingLines - ‘Six at the beginning. ..‘,

‘Nine in the second ‘and so on — refer to the a is built place. . . way hexagram

109 TheAstralProjectionWorkbook

up during a consultation. This is quiteeasilydoneusingthreecoins. Youcan stillbuyreproductions of the sort of antiqueChinesecoins(with a hole in the middle)traditionally used to consult the I Ching, but modern coins of any countryworkperfectlywell. Decidewhich is the front and which the back, if this is not alreadyobvious, then toss all threesimultaneously and notehow theyfall. Thefrontside of eachcoincounts as a yin with a value of 2. Thereverse is a yangwith a value of 3. Thisproduces the followingvalues for anygiventoss of the coins:

All heads or fronts (yin + yin + yin) = 6

All tails or reversesides(yang + yang + yang) = 9

Twoheads, one tail (yin + yin + yang) = 7 Twotails, onehead(yang + yang + yin) = 8 Yourfirsttoss of the coinsgivesyouthebottomline of yourhexagram. If you scored an 8 (twotailsand a head)theline is known as a youngyin andshown as

If youscored a 7 (twoheads, onetail) the line is a youngyangshown as

If youscored a 9 (all tails) the line is known as an old yangand is shown as —0— If youscored a 6 (all heads) the linebecomes an old yin and is shown as —x—

Tossthecoinsagain to findthenextline up of yourhexagram - hexagramsare alwaysbuiltfromthebottomupwards - andkeepgoing for a total of six tosses untilyouhavethewholefigure. Oldyinsand oldyangs are thelines I mentioned earlierwhichhavetheproperty of reversingthemselves(yinintoyang,yanginto yin). If any appear in yourhexagram,reversethem and draw a secondfigure beside the first. If, for example,yourfirstfigurelookedlikethis... —x—

it wouldchangeintothishexagram...

andyouwouldwrite the wholethinglikethis: Six at the top ~ Six in the thirdplace ~ Changes to: Nine in the firstplace ~

If you do not alreadyown a copy of the I Ching, this maysoundlike a lot of work to no realpurpose,sinceyoucannotevenasktheoracle a questionandget a properanswer. But it is not, in fact, quitetrue to saythis, for properanswers arepossiblewithoutrecourse to any of thetraditionalinterpretations at all. This is due to the fact that,unsuspected by a majority of its users, the I Ching is an astralmachine.Theoraclehastwoastralaspects, thefirst of whicharisesduring a ritualconsultation.

110 TheAstral I Ching

Ritualconsultations of the I Ching are quitecomplex. To undertakeone, you willrequireyourthreecoins, a box to keepthemin, a silkcloth, a blackdivining cloth,incenseandburner,paperandpen or pencil, a bowl of waterand a towel. You would also normallyneed a copy of the I Chingitself, but since, in this instance,you are edgingtowards an astraloperation, youcansubstitute a copy of the hexagramsandtheirtitlesshown on page 107. Drawthese out carefully andwrite the titlesbesidethem on goodqualitypaper or card. Thecopy of the I Ching or yourcopy of thehexagramsshould be wrapped in the silkclothandstored on a shelfaboveshoulderheightuntilyoubeginyour ritualconsultation.Eitherone is the ‘earthingpoint’ for certainactivitiesgoing on in the AstralPlane. Before you start, polishyourthreecoinsuntilthey are bright and shining, then boil them in salted water to leave them free of any subtle energy impressions. Keepthem in a special box you have bought or made for the purpose.Thisbox, like everythingelseassociatedwith the rituals,should not be usedforanyotherpurpose; norshouldanyitem - andespeciallythecoins - be handled by anyoneotherthanyourself. Beginthe ritual in a quietroomwhereyou are unlikely to be disturbed. Sit or kneelfacingsouth (if youare in thenorthernhemisphere:otherwisefacenorth) andspreadyourblackdivinationcloth on the table or floorbeforeyou. Laythe book (oryourcopy of thehexagrams) in front of you at the far side of thecloth. Take time to go through a process of consciousrelaxation until you are completelycalm.Washyourhands in thebowl of wateranddrythemwith the towel.Nowbegin to visualize a figurestandingjustbeyondthe book. Thefigureshouldbe imagined as a slim,robedChinese.male,veryold,with a wisp of whitebeard. He is a littleoveraverageheight,dressed in whiterobes andholds a rolledscroll in onehand. Thetechnique of visualization is verysimilar to the Body of Lighttechnique you practisedearlier,except that you are not, of course,creating any sort of projectionvehicle.Thefigureyouestablish is, in fact, an astralshellsuitable for the spirit of the I Ching. Thisspiritactuallyexists,inhabiting a levelbeyond the AstralPlane. It is linked in ways I do not pretend to understand with the hexagrams. This linkagemeans, in part, that if you create a suitableastral vehicle - that is, if youvisualizethefigureproperly - the spiritwifi, so to speak, comedown to animate it. Givenpractice, the visualization wifi producesomething very similar to MadameDavid-Neel’stulpa,exceptthat in theclearly-definedcircumstances of theritual,there is littlepossibility of it changing its nature or wanderingaway.

But it wifi - rightfromthestart if you do a goodjob - be completelyindependent of yourmind,evenwhile the visualization is stifiinternal. Youmayfindthis a little weird at first, although the process is very similar to the way fictional charactersbreakfree of theirauthors. Onceyouhaveestablishedthe Chinesesage,youshouldkow-towthreetimes towardshim,knockingyourforeheadagainst the floor or table-top.Although this is no morethan a mark of respect, you may, as a product of a Western culture,find it demeaning, in whichcaseyoushouldsubstitutewhateverother

111 The AstralProjectionWorkbook

mark of respectyoubelieve to be moreappropriate. Withtheastralfigure in place, askyourquestionaloud,thenwrite it downon a piece of paper to ‘earth’ it. Takeyourthreecoinsfromthespecialbox,lightthe incenseburner and pass the coinsclockwisethrough the smoke.When you havedone so, shakethem in yourcuppedhandswhileconcentrating on the question,thenthrowthem on yourdivinationcloth to build up yourhexagram in the waypreviouslygiven. Drawyourhexagram on a separatesheet of paper, one line at a time. If the completedfigurecontains any old yin or old yanglines, changethem to their opposite and draw a secondhexagrambeside the first. Check the title of the hexagram(s)fromthe list on page 107 andwritethatdowntoo. At this point, if you are workingwith a full I Chingtext, youcanconsult the Wen/Chou/Confuciusinterpretations. But if not, or if you can make no sense out of the interpretations, you can consult the spirit of the I Chingdirectly. Simply ask the astralfigure to explain the meaning of the answer and listen (mentally) to his answer. Finally, it is always a good idea to write the explanationdown. Consultingthe I Ching in thisway is an operation of astralmagicwhich, if you have a talent for it, brings far moredetailed and interestingresults than the moreconventionalapproach. But it is not the only astraloperation you can carry out with the I Ching. Thehexagramsthemselvesmayactually be used as astraldoorways. The techniqueemployed is a little similar to that used to open the tattwa doorways, but does not involve any opticalreflex or complementarycolours. Whileyou are seatedquietlyandtotallyrelaxed in a placewhereyouwillnot be disturbed,visualizeyourchosenhexagram on a stout,closed,woodendoor. Work on this untilyou can see it clearly in yourmind’seye, thencontinue to observe the door and wait. After a time the door wifi swingopen of its own accord, at whichpointyoushouldimagineyourselfrisingfromyourchairand walkingthrough the doorway.Oncethrough, youshouldtakecare to imagine the doorbehindyou, exactly as you did with the tattwadoors.Andhereagain, youshouldtakecarefulnote of whereyou go withinthe astralenvironment so thatyou canfindyourwaybackwheneveryouwish. There is nothing to stop you selecting a hexagram at random in order to practise this sort of projection, but you will find it a far moresatisfying — and potentially a more useful - experience, if you first engage on a full, ritual consultation of the oracleexactly as outlinedearlier. In thisinstance,onceyouhavedrawnyourhexagram,visualize it onthedoor as before. Youwillfindthat the Chinesesagewillthenopen the doorandwill oftenaccompanyyouthrough. Theanswer to yourquestionwill be contained in yourexperiencesafteryoupassthrough the doorway. If thereweremoving lines in youroriginalhexagram, it is possible to visualizeboththe originaland the secondhexagrams on the door side by side, or you can undertake two sequentialastraltripsusingfirstandsecondhexagramsrespectively.

112 8.

Workingthe QabalisticTree

At twentypasteight on the morning of Sunday, 1 June, 1930,VioletFirth sat down to begin a fascinatingoccultexperiment.Betterknown by her pseudo nym, Dion Fortune, she was a trainedInitiate of the GoldenDawn and a founder of her ownmagicalOrder, the Society of the InnerLight.Thus she seatedherself in an Egyptiangodformpositionfacingsouth-east and rapidly

drew an astralcircle. As a naturalpsychic, she was aware not only of her subtlebodies, but of a small, semi-permanent kink in the silver cord whichattachedetheric and physical. She turnedquickly to the north-east to smooth this out, then projectedher astralbody to the centre of the circle. Although the onlyextantaccount of herexperimenttakesgreatcare to avoid any technicalinformation(which was still secretwhen the account was first published in 1932) it seemslikelythat she usedsomevariation of the Body of Lighttechnique to triggerthe projection. In all probability, shewassufficiently experienced for anyformulation of the Body of Light to call out herownastral bodyautomatically. She turned the phantom to face east, the direction of the rising sun, and invoked the Godnames of the middlePillar, an exercisedesigned to energize five majorchakraslocatedalong the centre of the body. Thesenames are (phonetically)Yeck-id-ahEh-heh-yeh,Yeh-~hoh-vohEh-loh-eem,Yeh-hoh-vohEl-oh ah vey-Da-as,Shah-dayEl-cahy, andAh-doh-nayhah-arh-retz. * When they are vibrated during an out-of-bodyexperience, they cause a dramaticstrengthening of the astralvehicle. Dion Fortunereported, ‘Clear projection.Consciousnessverydefinitelycentred in astralbody.’ At thispoint, she ‘formulated a path to a certainastraltemple.’Everymagical the organizationthat goesbeyondemptyritual has its ownlinkedtemple on AstralPlane and carefullyconstructedways to reach it. DionFortunewould havebeenfamiliarwith the astraltemples of both the GoldenDawn and her the she referred to was ownesotericorganization, but in thisinstance, temple the QabalisticTemple of Malkuth,frequently used by magicians with a Qabalisticbackground.

*For a fullexposition of thisexercise see TheMiddlePillar by IsraelRegardie.

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In therobingroom, sheput on a whiterobeand a stripedhead-dress,passed through a bright,cheeryastralenvironment, thenentered the templewhere she sat down,facingeast, on a largestoneblock. By now shehadlost all sense of her physicalbody. To understand what happened next requires a little knowledge of Qabalah. Tree of Life

Take a close look at the diagram. It shows the centralglyph of modern,

esotericQabalism — the Tree of Life. To Qabalists, it is a diagram of reality, showing the relationshipsbetweenvarious of its major aspects. The 10 numberedcircles,known as Sephiroth(singular:Sephirah) are usuallyperceived as energies or states on the physicallevel, but exist as definedplaces on the AstralPlane. So, as we shall see later, do the tracksbetweenthem. WhileDionFortune sat on the stoneblock, her astralbody(which she had previouslynoted was full of vitality)began to rise upwards. She allowed it to rise until it passedthrough the roof of the buildingandintobrightsunlight. It continued to rise rapidlyuntil it passedbeyond a layer of cloud so that she lookeddown on thebright,sunlit,cottonwoolfloor so familiar to air travellers. The sky itselfbegan to darken to indigo and she saw a very large, bright crescentmoon. ‘I knew,’ she notedafterwards, ‘I wasentering the sphere of Yesod.’ Malkuth,where the temple was, is marked as sphere 10 on the diagram. Yesod,marked 9, is immediatelyabove it. It is the sphere most intimately associatedwith the AstralPlaneitselfand, as such, one of its majorsymbols is the moon. By entering the Temple of Malkuth, then proceedingdirectly upwards,DionFortunewasmakinggooduse of herocculttraining. Shewas, in effect,using the Tree of Life not exactly as a doorway, but as a map of astral

territory.Once shefoundherself in oneknowndistrict of the map - as she did

114 — Working the Qabalistic Tree

whensheenteredMalkuth - shecouldusethe glyph to findherway to others. She decided her trip was goingwell.Furtheraboveher, she saw the sun of Tiphareth(numbered 6 onthediagram) set in an area of goldensky,butlooking morelike a theatricalbackdropthan a realsun.‘Continued to rise to theCentral Pillar,’ she wrote,‘with no sense of strain but a feeling of breathlessrapidity, wonderingwhere I wasgoingnext.’ It didnottakeherlong to decidethatwhere shewasgoingnextwasKether, the topmostsphere of the Tree,numbered 1 on the diagram,symbol of unity andgodhead. En route, she ‘passedthrough a sphere in which I sawshadowy angelformswith the traditionalharpssitting on clouds all aroundme.’ This sphere, it seemscertain, was Daath,which is not actuallynumbered on our diagrambecauseQabalistsbelieve that whileintimatelyassociated with the Tree, it exists in a differentdimension. It is shownastride a dottedlinemarking the area of the abyss, the demarcationzonebetween the rarefiedSupernals — topmostthreeSephiroth - and the remainder of the Tree. With all this talk of glyphs and symbols, it is tempting to think of Dion Fortune’sexperience as inward andpersonal, but whiletherewereundoubt edly personalelements in her perceptions, the overalljourney was entirely objective, a ‘Rising on the Planes’, the details of which a traveller with no Qabalisticknowledgeconfirmed for me severalyearsago. In this context, my travelleralsofound the angels of the Daathspheredifficult to see clearly, but remained long enough to describe them as powerful,urn-directional and (emotionally)cold. Stifirising,DionFortuneentered a sphere of blindingwhitelight,whichshe believed to be Kether (1 on the diagram). As she had earlier lost touch with her physicalbody, she nowfound she could no longersenseeven her astral vehicle. Shehadbecome a point of consciousnesswithoutqualities,retaining herindividualityonly as a singlespark of essentiallife. Shehad an awareness of the veils of NegativeExistencebehindKether ‘as the darkness of a starless night, stretching to infinity.’ (This last reference is to an area of Qabalistic doctrinewhichresembles the Hindu‘Breath of Brahma’theories.According to thisdoctrine, theuniverseexisted in unmanifestformbeforecomingintobeing; and will eventuallyreturn to unmanifest form as part of an eternal cycle. Qabalistssymbolize the unmanifest‘background’ of the universe by means of threeveilsknown as the Am; Negativity, Am Soph, the Limitlessand Am Soph Aur, LimitlessLight.) Suddenly, in thisstate of Light,DionFortunewasturnedabout, so thather backwas, so to speak,towards the Tree. Shefoundherselfbackedinto it andchanged. Shehadbecome a toweringcosmicfigure,nude,hermaphrodite andpowerful. Thisfigure was the full size of the Tree, its feetplanted on the bluishEarthsphere, the SupernalSephirothabout its head. She felt, so she admittedlater, like a greatangelicbeing,risingthrough the entirecosmos, not merely the solarsystem,against a sweffingundertone of music. The experienceended and she was reabsorbed into the Malkuthsphere, droppingthrough the roof to find herselfseated,normalsized, on the stone block. But the toweringfigureremained,overshadowing the temple, and she

115 TheAstralProjectionWorkbook

hadnowdeveloped a bizarredoubleconsciousness: shewasaware of herself in the greatfigureandsimultaneously in the smallerfigure in the temple. At that point, there was a mundaneinterruption.Dogsbegan to bark and childrenwereshouting in the (physical)streetoutside her window. The Dion Fortunewithin the smallerfigureordered the largerfigure to stop the noise in thestreet.AndtheDionFortunewithinthelargerfigurestretchedoutherhand overthe the noise. butwithout noticeableresult. youngstersmaking . . any Her occulttrainingcame again to her rescue and she used a mystic sign instead. Herpublishedaccountblanks out the actualsign, but it wasprobably no morethanthe Sign of Harpocrates, the Sign of Silencelearned in theGolden Dawn.Whateverthesign, it workedandthenoiseceased.‘Consciousnessnow centredagain in the largefigure,’wroteDionFortune. ‘I did not knowquite what to do with it as I had neverexpectedsuch a manifestation and did not know its possibilities.’ Eventuallyshe decided to tryprojectingenergyfromthetoweringfigureand this she didverysuccessfully in the form of a down-pouring of goldenlight. It rushedlikewaterfrom a hydrant, full of diamondsparkles,firstfromthepalms of herhands,thenfrom the solarplexusandfinallyfromherforehead as well. The altar of the Malkuthtempletransformeditselfinto a hollowstonetank to receive the energy,whichceased to flow as the tankfified. DionFortune felt strongly that the experiment was over and madehaste to return to her physicalbody. She noted that her breathingwas veryslow and shallow and waited for it to becomenormalbeforere-entering the physical. Whenshe did so, sheearthedherselfwithyetanothermysticsignand a strong stamp of the foot. Thetimewas8.45a.m. This is a remarkableexperience by anystandards,evenallowing for the fact that DionFortune was a naturalpsychic and highly-trainedoccultist, and it indicates one way in which the Qabalistic Tree can be used to considerable

TreeandPaths

116 Working the Qabalistic Tree

effect. It is not, however, the way it is normallyusedby Qabalistsinterested in astralprojection.Whathappens far moreoften is that the travellerwillwalk the paths. There are 22 paths on the Tree of Life. If you refer to our diagram, you can actuallycountthem - they are the linesjoining the Sephiroth.Eachpath is a specificastraltrack and leads to a Sephirah just as surely as DionFortune’s technique of Rising onthePlanes.Thedoorwayintoeachpath is a Tarottrump. Chances are I do not need to explain the Tarot to you. It is a special 78 card deckwhich can be used for gaming, but is moreoften put to fortune-telling. Alongside the 56 suit cards are 22 trumps, very curiouspictorialcards long thought to be repositories of arcanesymbolism. In modernQabalah, each trump is associatedwith a TreePath.

Thevariouspaths of the tree are numbered in the diagramabove. The associatedtrumps are shown in thistable:

Path From No. To No. Trump

32 Malkuth 10 Yesod 9 TheWorld 31 Malkuth 10 Hod 8 Judgement 30 Yesod 9 Hod 8 TheSun 29 Malkuth 10 Netzach 7 TheMoon 28 Yesod 9 Netzach 7 TheEmperor 27 Hod 8 Netzach 7 Lightning-struckTower 26 Hod 8 Tiphareth 6 TheDevil 25 Yesod 9 Tiphareth 6 Temperance 24 Netzach 7 Tiphareth 6 Death 23 Hod 8 Geburah 5 TheHangedMan 22 Tiphareth 6 Geburah 5 Justice 21 Netzach 7 Chesed 4 TheWheel of Fortune 20 Tiphareth 6 Chesed 4 TheHermit 19 Geburah 5 Chesed 4 Strength 18 Geburah 5 Binah 3 TheChariot 17 Tiphareth 6 Binah 3 TheLovers 16 Chesed 4 Chokmah 2 TheHierophant 15 Tiphareth 6 Chokmah 2 The Star 14 Binah 3 Chokmah 2 TheEmpress 13 Tiphareth 6 Kether 1 TheHighPriestess 12 Binah 3 Kether 1 TheMagician 11 Chokmah 2 Kether I TheFool

To walkthePaths,youwillobviouslyneed a Tarotdeck, or at least a full set of Tarottrumps.There are a greatmanyTarotdecks on the marketnowandmore seem to be publishedeveryday. Fordivination,youcanuseanydeckthatsuits you, since the variation in symbolism has the positive effect of triggering psychism in differentpeople. But for astralwork, I wouldstronglyrecommend the MarsefflesTarot. This deck is graphicallycrude and lacks the detailed

117 TheAstralProjectionWorkbook

symbolism of manyothers - which is why it is so useful for this work: your mindtends to fill in the missinglinks.

I do notthink I wouldsuggestyouworkthetreefully - that is, walkeachpath

- unless you have had Qabalistictraining. But there is no reason why you should not try one of the lowerpaths as an experiment. In AstralDoorways, I gavebriefinstructions for entering the thirty-secondpath,linkingMalkuth to

Yesod. It was selectedbecause its centralexperience is self-knowledge — an excellentstartingpoint for anyoneinterested in astralQabalah. Thethirty-first path,Malkuth to Hod, is also quitesuited to beginners. It bringsinsight into yourrelationshipswithothersandindicateswhattheycanteachyou. The methodwhichfollows is in the nature of a visualmeditation with no attemptmade to project the astralbody (as, for example,DionFortune did in the experimentdescribedearlier). All the same, youmayfind a fullprojection

follows on automatically - especially if you have been using any of the techniquesgivenearlier in the workbook. Like all QabalisticPaths, thethirty-firsthasclearlydefinedsymbolism,almost all of it centredaround the element of fire. If you find differentelemental symbolismcreeping into your experience, the chances are that you have wandered off the pathandneed to backtrack.

You will meet with two great archetypalfigures on this exercise — the ArchangelSandalphon,whowifihelpyouleavethesphere of Malkuth,andthe ArchangelMichael, who wifi greet you when you reach the sphere of Hod. Roughlymidway,youarequitelikely to comeacrosssomerepresentation of the Hebrewletterassociatedwith the path. It is calledshin, whichmeans‘tooth’ andlookslikethis

Thefire symbolism is fairlyevidentfrom its appearance. With the twoArchangels and the Hebrewsymbolfirmly in mind, youhave the beginning,middle and end of the path, so you are unlikely to go too far astray.Before youbegin, youwillneed a smalltable, a lightedcandleand, as always, thatquietroomwhere you will not be disturbed. The first stage is to makecontactwiththatTemple of MalkuthfromwhichDionFortunebeganher remarkablejourney.Although the technique is internal, the resultshould be objective.TheTempleitselfhasbeenburnedintotheAstralLightby theefforts of thousands of trainedQabalistsoverhundreds of yearsandhas permanence andstability in its ownright.Yourvisualizationscreate a linkagewhichensures that, at veryleast, you are observing the astraland, at best, are drawninto it completely.This is whatyou do: Setup yourcandlesecurelyonthetablebeforeyou to theeast, sit comfortably and go through a consciousrelaxationprocess.Whenyou are totallyrelaxed, looktowards the candleflame andallow it to holdyourattention.Relaxeven moredeeply and imagine that the roomaround you is slowlychanging. The walls are beingreplaced by colonnades of strong,black,marblepillars,flecked withgoldandhighlypolished.Whenyou can see thesepifiarsclearly in your mind’seye,turnyourattention to thefloor,which is alsochanging to become a

118 Working the Qabalistic Tree

black and whitechequer-board of inlaidmarble, like the floor of a Masonic Temple. At this point you shouldcloseyoureyes and absorb the after-image of the candleintoyourvision. See it nowflickeringabove the blackdrapeddouble- cubealtarwhichhas replaced the table.Allowthe flame to grow(much as you didwith the tattwasymbolswhentheytransformedintodoorways)andmove towards it untilyou can see standingwithin the flame a giantfigure,growing steadilyuntil it towersaboveyou,reachingalmost to the roof.

Thefigure is robed in a mixture of olive,citrine,russetandblack - theautumn colours of nature. Take time to allow the figure to solidify, for this is Sandaiphon,Archangel of the Sphere of EarthandGuardian of the Temple of Malkuth.Beyond the Archangeland the altar, to the east, youcannowclearly seethreedoors,eachonecoveredby a tapestrycurtain,eachcurtaindepicting a hugerepresentation of a Tarottrump. On the central door, you can see the oval of a massive laurel wreath, intertwinedwithliliesandrosesandsurrounded(anti-clockwise,frombottom left) by the elementalsymbols of a bull, a lion, an eagleand a man, one to each corner.Withintheoval,pale in theindigodarkness is anhermaphroditicfigure, nakedbut for a wisp of veilwhichdrapesacross its bodyandcarrying a golden spiral in onehand, a silverspiral in the other.This is the Tarottrumpnumber 21, the World or Universe. Onthedoor to yourright, thecurtaindepicts a verydifferentscene.Twodogs standbaying on a riverbank,whilefrom the watercrawls a giantlobster, its clawsalmosttouching a scrap of parchment on which is written the syllable MA. Beyond the dogs, in the background, rise two stone-builttowers.Above them,dominating the scene is a full moon, low to the horizon. This is Tarot trumpnumber 18, the Moon. Thethirddoorway, to yourleft, bears the followingrepresentation:

This is Tarottrumpnumber 20, the Judgement or LastJudgementand as you absorb its symbolism,Sandaiphonmoveseastwardsfrom the altartowards it, indicatingwith a gesturethatyoumaypassthrough it. Imagineclearly that you rise fromyourchair(which has nowtransformed into the stone block on which Dion Fortune sat) and move towards this doorway.Part the curtainandstepthrough.Yourtriphasbegun.

119 9.

GuidedTours

All the doorways so far describedhavebeenvisual - and manymorevisual doorwayscertainly exist. But the HermeticLodges long ago developed a differenttechniquedesigned not so much for astral exploration as astral instruction.Thiswasthetechnique of a guidedpathworking in whichparticipants joined an experiencedmagician/guide to walk a veryclearly-definedarea of the astralandtakepart in pre-plannedexperiences. Suchworkingsserved a variety of purposes,frominitiation to the channel ling of power.Sometookadvantage of thesort of visualsymbolsyouhavebeen using, butmanyothers did not. Instead,verydetailedverbalinstructionswere used to paintpictures in themind. It wasbelieved,withsomejustification,that suchbeginningswerecloser to thereality of the astralexperiencethaneventhe bestconstructedgraphicsymbol. Verbaldoorwaysremainedtheexclusiveprerogative of initiateoccultistsuntil theearly1980swhentheBritishritualist,DoloresAshcroft-Nowicki,decided to go publicwiththetechnique.DoloresAshcroft-Nowickiwas an Initiate of Dion Fortune’sSociety of the InnerLightand a disciple of thatremarkablemagician W. E. Butlerwho,withGarethKnight,foundedthe highly-respectedServants of the Light School of Occult Science. After Mr Butler’s death, Dolores Ashcroft-Nowickibecame, on his express instruction, head of the SOL organizationandremains so to this day. Despitetheseimpressivecredentials, her decision to unveildetails of the guidedpathworkingtechniquesoutside the esotericLodgeroomscreated a furoreamongherfellow-occultists,many of whomdisapproveddeeply of what she wasdoing. But she felt the timewasright for the method to reach a wider audienceandperseveredwithhercontroversialapproach.Frompublicexposi tions of pathworkingsbeforelarge, butnecessarilylimited,audiences,Dolores Ashcroft-Nowickiwentintoprint to reach a largerpublic. Her first book on the subject was The ShiningPaths, a collection of verbal pathworkingscentred on the QabalisticTree of Life. Theworkwas published by the AquarianPress in 1983. Fouryearslater, she was in printagainwith Highways oftheMind, an evenmoredetailedexposition of the art andonewhich contains a fascinatinghistory of its development. DoloresAshcroft-Nowickicontinued to expandhersphere of influencewith a

120 GuidedTours marriage of ancienttechniques andmoderntechnology. In 1988 she launched the first of a series of Invitation to Magicvideotapesdesigned to bringesoteric methodologyinto the homes of students via theirtelevisionsets. Thefirsttape producedwas An Introduction to the WesternMysteryTradition.Perhapspredic tably, it contained,amongstmuchothermaterial, a full-scaleguidedpathwork ingrun by Doloresherself. Although the ideal is obviously the physicalpresence of an experienced teacher, theuse of video is a veryclosesubstitute.But if you do nothave a copy, you can still experience the use of a verbaldoorway by constructing one yourself. Forthisyouwifineed no morethan a taperecorderand a littletime. Prepareyourdoorway by recording,verbatim, the scriptwhichfollows. It is taken directly from DoloresAshcroft-Nowicki’sIntroduction to the Western MysteryTradition and represents one element out of the total pathworking included in her video.Howeverinteresting you find the experience, I would suggestyou do notuseyourrecordingmorethanonce or twice,otherwiseyou runthedanger of unbalancedresults. Take the trouble to record the scriptcorrectly. If youstumbleoverwords or findthe overallflowinterrupted for anyreason, go backand do it again. Try to useemphasisandinflection to create as visual an impression as possible.This is yourscript:

Makeyourselfcomfortableandstartrelaxingyourbodysectionby section.

Whenthis is doneyoumaystart the 4-2-4-2rhythmicbreathing.

Whenreadybegin to build the Doorwayinto the InnerWorldsthenwalk over to the Doorandopen it.

Beforeyoustands a tallfigurerobed in blackandyellow,with a graveand sorrowfulface. Theeyeshold us so that we feelunable to move.

This is UrielArchangel of the planetEarth. He hascome to take us upon a journeythatwillhavefar-reachingeffectsupon us in the future.

The brilliant eyes draw the consciousnessfrom us and we seem to fall throughspace for a longtimebeforesuddenlystopping.

Opening our eyes we findourselves on a highplateau, the winds are so strongthattheythreaten to send us tumblinginto the valley far below.

Urielstandswith us andpoints to the east.There we see comingtowards us a billowingcloudmade up of slender,etherealcreatures. In theirmidst is anotherandlargerform.

Theyflutteraroundthe archangelstriving to getclose to him as if his very presence is a joy to them.

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Thetallerfiguremighthavesteppedfrom a fairytale, tallandslenderwith a pointedelfinfacewithslantingsilvereyesandpointedears.

His hair is long and fair and movesconstantly as if blown by an unfelt wind. He is wrapped in a cloak of mistyblue.

Hebows to Urielandspeaks, butwe cannotunderstandhimforhis words are likegreatwindsandsoftbreezes.Urieltouches ourforeheadwith his fingerand we findthatsuddenly we CANunderstandwhatParalda, the ElementalKing of Air is saying, and we are able to speak in return.

He spreadshisbluecloakover us and,withthesylphsfollowing, he leaves the mountain,taking to the air.

The suddenmovementoutwards is frighteningbut this soonpasses, and we knowfrom his laughter that Paralda has enjoyedteasing us. Like all elementalcreatures he canbe mischieveous,but as theKing of his element he alone is endowedwith an immortalsoulandthisgiveshimtheability to love,laughandunderstand.

We are carriedoverhighmountainsanddownintodeepvalleys.

We sweepthroughforestsand set the branchestossinglike ships at sea.

We feel more at easenow for our humanshape has changedand we are nowlike the sylphs.Thismakes us free of the need for Paralda’scloak.

Wefollowourcompanionsswoopinganddiving as they do andfor a while Paraldaallows us thisfreedom.

We playlikechildren,tossingnewly-washedclothesabout on theirlines, ringingsmallbells in churchbelfries. We skimalong the ground and lift fallenleaves high into the air, and pull scarves,umbrellas, and papers fromclutchinghands.

ThenParalda calls us to join him and we rest on a stormcloud that is headingout to sea.

Paraldatells us that not all his work is like this. Part of his domain is the weather, for movement of air is the basis of earthweather. The sylphs work closely with the element of water in order to keep the patterns flowing.

He tells us of the TradeWindsthatblow in a precisepatternaround the earth,andtheway in whichwater-filledcloudsaremovedaround to bring rain.

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We learnthat he is bound by the way in which the earth is tilted to bring more rain to someparts than others. He tells us that somepeople can influenceweatherpatterns to a certainextentanddelayrain or storm or, causethem to occur.While this is sometimesharmless it can also cause greatdamage.

He himself can be influenced by suchpeoplesince he is subordinate to mankind in his power. He mayunderstandthatwhat is beingdemanded of him is wrong, but he cannotalwaysdisobey.

If rain is divertedfromwhere it was supposed to be, then it must fall elsewhere,maybe on a ripeningcornfield.Theprice of a sunnydayforyou canspellruin for a farmer.

We askaboutstormsandhurricanesthatcausedamageanddeath.

Paraldaexplainsthat he is bound by the naturallaws of cause andeffect andby the forcefieldsthatsurroundearth.When a combination of events occurs he cannotevade the result.Whenthe earthtiltsawayfromthe sun his elementmustcrossareas that make the air cold. He cannotunmake winter, and a mixture of warmandcoldtogethermeans fogthat is natural law.

He tells us that the sylphsalsoexistwithin us, co-workerswith us in life. Withoutthemwecouldnotbreathe or speak or sing, yetwegivelittle or no thanks for this.Onlysometimeswhen we take a breath of cleansweet air we feelgladandtheyknowthenthat we are aware of them.

But sylphs are changed by pollution and not happily.Through it they becomeotherforms of existencethat are neitherbeautifulnoruseful, and which is againsttheirprimalpattern,degradingandcripplingthem.

Paraldarisesandplaces his cloakabout us andtakes us back to Uriel to be madeready for the nextpart of ourjourney. He bids us farewell,bows to Urielandwith his followersreturns to his work.

Urielasks if wefeelwehavelearnedsomethingfromourtalkwithParalda and we mustanswer as we feel. .

Urielfolds us withinthesoftness of hisauricwingsandtherewecryonthe heart of an archangel as we are takenback to ourownplace.

Urielleaves us at the Door and beforeleavingblesses us, and with his hands on ourheadbids us REMEMBER.

We go through the Door and return to the physicalbody, awakening

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slowly and gently,lookingaround and noting the familiarthings then graduallybecomingfullyawareoncemore.

Onceyouhavemadeyourrecording(and are fullysatisfiedwith the quality) youcanproceed as youdidwithanyotherdoorway.Findyourquietroomand arrangethatyouwifinot be disturbed for the duration of the experiment. Sit in a comfortablechairandrunthroughyourconsciousrelaxationprocess. This is, of course, an elementalpathworking and the fragment given is obviouslyassociatedwiththeelementair. Youmightusethe air tattwa(theblue circle) to enterthiselement; or, alternatively,youmightseek to meetwithUriel in the Temple of Malkuth, where he has the right of access. In practice, however,neither of theseapproaches is particularlysatisfactory. The problem, of course, is that I haveextractedonly one section out of a far morebalancedelementalworking. Any attempt to use the air doorway will tend to unbalance it evenfurther,while the Qabalistictemple — for reasons I do not entirelyunderstand — is not entirelysympathetic to purelyelemental experiences. In hertrainingvideotape,DoloresAshcroft-Nowickicreates a sort of general purpose astral doorway — a technique I had not come acrossbefore. This involves no morethan the visualization of a stoutdoorway in the (physically blank)wallbeforeyou,opening it and, in yourimagination,walkingthrough. Whenyou are totallyrelaxed,switch on the tape,closeyoureyesandfollow the instructions,allowing the images to arise.Since this is a guidedworking, and consequentlysomewhatsaferthan the morefree-wheelingexperience of the previousdoorways, you might like to attempt a full projectionusing, for example, theBody of Lighttechnique,beforethetapedjourneybegins. Forthis to be effective, you need to leave an introductoryportion of the tapeblank so thatyouhavetime to switch on, createandprojectinto the Body of Lightbefore the commentarybegins.

124 PartThree Projection In Practice

125 1.

Techniques of Projection

I began this workbook by remarking that the term astralprojection is often loosely used to describe two experienceswhich are, in fact, separate and distinct:ethericprojectionandastralplaneprojection.Sinceyou areunlikely to confusethetwoagain at thisstage, thetimehascome to admitthereareactually importantlinksbetweenthem. Asyoualreadyknow,variousprojectorshaveshown a tendency to slidefrom one form of projectioninto another.RobertMonroe,whocertainlyseemed to leave his body in the etheric,oftenfoundhimself in a different(astral)world. AndtheBody of Lighttechnique, an entirelyastraloperation,mimics an etheric projection so wellthat the two are oftenindistinguishable. To useyourastral (as distinctfrometheric)body to explorethephysicalworld requires you to breakfree of the astralenvironment. This is bestachieved, as the Tibetanlamascontinuallystressed, by recognizingthat the astralenviron mentultimatelyspringsfrom the mind - if not your own mind, then some other.Eventhosestableastralareaswhichreflectphysicalplaneformations are amenable to mentalinfluence. On the Astral Plane, mind is always the overridingfactor. On thisbasis,movingfrom an astralenvironmentback to the physicalplane is reallyonly a matter of will. Butthis is a littlelikesayingthatclimbingMount Everest is only a matter of wifi. The statementmay be true, but it does not do most of us a lot of good. In thesecircumstances, I can onlyadvise you to workdiligentlytowards a degree of insight,expertise andunderstandingthatallowsyou to manipulate anyastralenvironment at will, so thatyoumaypassthroughtheessentialAstral Light to reachthephysicalplaneanytimeyouwish. But in theinterim,youcan alwaysachieve the sameresultsfrom a state of ignorance by a) trackingback from the MalkuthTemple or b) sinkingdown from the Sphere of Yesod. Althoughboththesetechniques are Qabalistic-based, you do not need to be a Qabalist to usethem.

TheMalkuthTemple is not somethingyouestablish - it existspermanently on theAstralPlane,thanks to theefforts of generations of Qabalistswhobuilt it there.Remember,out-of-bodytravel is largely a question of thinkingyourself to a specificplace, so the importantfactor is knowingwhereyou are going.

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Onceyouhave a workingknowledge of theMalkuthTemple,youcanalways returntherequicklyfrom any area of the AstralPlane. Andsince the Temple itself has intimate links with the physicalplane(which it represents on the astral)returning to thephysicalplanefromtheTemple is veryeasyindeed.You can either create your own (imaginary) path between your body and the Temple, or, evenmoresimply,allow the pillars of the Temple to dissolveinto the walls of yourroom. Eventhesmallamount of informationgiven in thisbookabouttheTree of Life is enough to allowyou to use it. Theglyphclaims to be a map of reality,andon a purelyempiricalbasisyouwifiquicklydiscover it is an accuratemap so far as the relationshipbetween the astral and physicalplanes are concerned. The (astral)Sphere of Yesod is shown as lying above the (physical)Sphere of Malkuthandthis is correct. so as do nottake it placement . . long you literally. Whichbrings me to something you will only really understand after you experience it. When you achieve a full, conscious,ethericprojection, you will discover(once you start to look for it) that you havebecomeaware of a new direction.Subjectively, thisdirectionlooksandfeelslikeupwards, but it is notthe sameupwardsyouexperiencewhile in the physicalbody. (To confusematters further, this physicalupwardsremainsavailable to you, so that you can take out-of-bodytripsthrough the solarsystemandintoOuterSpace.)

- Thenewupwardstakesyoudirectly andrecognizably - to the AstralPlane: it is the tripbetweenMalkuthandYesod, the Qabalisticthirty-secondPath, the routetaken by DionFortune in herdramaticexperiment.Conversely, a peculiar sort of downwardssensedontheastral willallowyou to floatback to thephysical world,where you can always reel in the silvercord in order to return to your body. While I stand by myearlierstatementthat it is notnecessary to studyoneform of projection in order to experience the other, the linkagesbetween the two experiencesmakecross-fertilizationdesirable. For that reason, you may wel come the followingintegratedtrainingprogramme,culledfrom the wealth of materialpreviouslygiven and designed to transformyouinto an experienced projector(ethericandastralplane) in the shortestpossibletime. AstralProjectionWorkbookIntegratedTrainingProgramme

Step 1: ConsciousRelaxation Beforeattemptinganythingelse, work to achieveconsciousrelaxation. This is the absolutefoundation of so muchwork on projection that it is difficult to imagineyourmaking any real progresswithout it. Relaxation is discussed in depth in the section of theworkbookconcernedwithethericprojection.Read it now if you have not alreadydone so. As a convenientreference, the useful technique given in that section, whichincludesbreathcontrol, is repeated below.

Beginby regulatingyourbreathing.Relaxation is a physicalfunction.Your muscles use oxygenextractedfromyourbloodstream.Yourbloodstream,

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in turn,extractsthatoxygenfrom the air youbreathe. By regulatingyour breathing, youincrease the oxygenavailable in yourblood,yourmuscles extractthe optimumamountand are far happier to relax for youthanthey mightotherwise be. If you havestudiedyoga, you will knowthere are all sorts of complex breath-regulationtechniques. Butthe one I wantyou to try is verysimple. It is called 2/4breathing. What it comesdown to is thatyou 1. Breathe in to the mentalcount of four... 2. Holdyourbreath in to the mentalcount of two... 3. Breathe out to the mentalcount of four. 4. Holdyourbreathout to the mentalcount of two. Therate at whichyoushouldcountvariesfromindividual to individual. Start by synchronizing it withyourheartbeat. If this doesn’twork, play arounduntilyou hit on the rhythmthat is mostcomfortable for you. Getyourbreathingcomfortablebeforeyou go on to thesecondpart of the exercise. Once youhaveestablished a comfortablerhythm of 2/4 breathing, let it runforaboutthreeminutes,thenstartthefollowingrelaxationsequence. (If you can hold the 2/4 rhythmwhileyou do it, that’sgreat, but chances are youwillnot be able to do so at first. In thislattercase,juststartyoursession withthreeminutes of 2/4breathing,then go back to normalbreathingwhile you carry out the mainrelaxationsequence, then take up 2/4 breathing againwhenyou are nicelyrelaxed.) Concentrate on your feet. Wigglethemabout; curl them to tense the muscles,thenallowthem to relax. Concentratenext on your calf muscles.Tighten and relaxthem. Concentrate on yourthighmuscles.Tighten and relaxthem. Concentrate on yourbuttockmuscles.Tightenyourbuttocks and anus, thenrelaxthem.

Concentrate on yourstomachmuscles, a very commontensionfocus. Tightenthenrelaxthem. Concentrate on yourhands. Curlthem into fists, thenrelaxthem. Concentrate on yourarms.Tightenthemrigidly, thenrelaxthem. Concentrate on yourback.Tighten the muscles, thenrelaxthem. Concentrate on yourchest.Tighten the muscles, thenrelaxthem. Concentrate on your shoulders,another very commontensionfocus. Hunchyourshoulders to tighten the muscles, thenrelaxthem. Concentrate on yourneck.Tighten the musclesthenrelaxthem. Concentrate on yourface. Grit yourteeth and contortyourfeatures to tense up the facialmusclesthenrelaxthem. Concentrate onyourscalp.Frown to tightenthescalpmuscles,thenrelax them.

Nowtighten up everymuscle in yourbody,holdingyourentirebody momentarilyrigid,thenrelax,letting go as completely as you are able. Do this finalwholebodysequenceagain,thenagain — threetimes in all. On

129 The AstralProjectionWorkbook

the thirdtime, take a reallydeepbreathwhenyoutense the musclesand sighdeeplyaloud as you let the tension go. Youshould be feelingnicelyrelaxed by now. If youabandonedyour 2/4 breathing at the start of the relaxationsequence, pick it up again at this point. Closeyoureyesand try to imagineyourwholebodygettingheavierand heavier, as if it were turning to lead. You will find your visualization increasesyourlevel of relaxationstillfurther. Enjoy the sensation of relaxation for the remainder of yoursession. But stay vigilant.Should you find tensioncreeping in anywhere (and you certainlywill in the earlydays)don’t let it worryyou.Justtighten up the tensemuscles a littlemore,thenrelaxthem. Usethetechniqueregularlyuntilyouhavetrainedyourself to relaxtotally anytimeyouwant to.

Followingtheadvice in thatfinalsentencemaytakequite a lot of time,but do pleasepersevere.Spend at leasttwo weeks on dailyrelaxationpracticebefore youmove on to the nextstage; andcontinue to set aside a periodeach day to practiserelaxationthereafter. You can speedyourprogress by addingsmall ‘catch-exercises’outsideyourformalrelaxationperiod. If at anytimeduringthe dayyounoticeyourselftense,taketime to let go for a moment so thatrelaxation eventuallybecomes a reflex.

Step 2: Visualization Practisevisualization. I havenever had the slightesttroublecreatingmental pictures and I tend to underestimate the problemsthey can causeothers. On one occasion I actually met a graphicartistwhocould not visualize. I would havethoughtthisimpossible, yetsheassuredme it was so. Shecoulddrawand paintrepresentationally, and do so extremelywell, but pictures in the mind werebeyondher.Fortunatelythisability,like so manyotherthings, is as much practice as talent. If you find yournaturaldegree of visualizationfuzzy, thensimply add 10 minutesvisualizationpractice to yourregularrelaxationsessions. Pick your scene or object and work at ‘seeing’ it moreclearly. It is a good idea to test yourselfby forcingyourattentionontodetails.Countthenumber of buttons on a coat, for example, or the number of blades of grass in a tuft.

If yournaturaldegree of visualization is non-existant - likethat of myfriend the graphicartist - a goodplace to start is by staring at a simplepicturelong enough to develop an after-imagewhenyoulookaway.(Experimentuntilyou findonethatsuitsyou.)Thencloseyoureyesandexamine the after-image on yourdarkenedvisualfield.Thisimage is verysimilar to visualizationand can usuallybe interiorizedwithouttoomuchdifficulty.Variations onthetechnique are, of course,used in several of the astraldoorwaysmentionedearlier. Whateveryournaturaldegree of ability to beginwith,youwificertainlyfind it improveswithpractice. But do not stopwithdevelopingyourvisualimagina tion.Imaginehow an objectfeels to the touch. See if youcanmentallypick up

130 Techniques of Projection

scents.Listen to imaginarysounds.Ideally, youshouldtrainyourinnervision to a pitchwhereyoucaneasilyimagineanything.Sometimesthisleads to odd

situations.Physically, I havealmost no sense of smell - theolfactoryequivalent of colourblindness. But I stillhave no difficultyimaginingsmells - eventhose I can no longerpick up physically. It is difficult to sayhowlongyou are going to need to bringyourpowers of visualization to a working peak but, as with relaxation, regularpractice is important. As a minimum,devote two weeks to improvingnaturalvisualiza tion or as long as it takes to developvisualization if nonecomesnaturally to you. But youcan, as I mentionedearlier,combinethesepreliminaryexercises withyourrelaxationpractice.

Step 3: Looseningthe SubtleBodies SylvanMuldoon’schronicifinessseems to haveblessed (or perhapscursed) himwith a naturallylooseethericbody. I suspect,from the easewithwhich I took to innerplaneoperations, the samemight be said about my ownastral vehicle.Whateverthenaturalstate of yoursubtlebodies,theycan be loosened before you embark on any projectionexperiments. The method of doing so formspart of a broaderesoterictechniqueknown as the ChristosExperience.

Youwifineedthreepeople to carry it through - the subject,whomay be you, andtwohelpers. Therelevantsteps are as follows: 1. Begin by havingyoursubject lie flat on his back on the floor. Put a small cushion or pillowunder his head so his neck is straight and he can lie comfortably.Havehimremove his shoes.Socks,stockings or tightsmay be left on. In thisposition, the subjectcloses his eyes. 2. Haveyourhelperbegingently to massage the subject’sankles. A light, circularmotionontheanidebones is what is requiredhere.Untilyouactually experience it, youwillfind it difficult to imaginehowextraordinarilyrelaxing this is. 3. Afterabout a minute, andwhile the anidemassage is stillgoing on, place the edge of your curved hand on the subject’sforehead so that it rests betweentheeyes,fittingsnuglyintothehollow at theroot of thenose. In this position, it covers the traditional site of the ThirdEye. This location is the spothighlighted by the Hinducastemark. Onceyourhand is in positionandwiththeanklemassagecontinuing,begin a vigorouscircularrubbingmovementwhichshould be continueduntilyour subjectreportsthat his head is buzzing.Makesure he remainsfullyrelaxed. If tensionhas crept in, havehimtakeseveraldeepbreathsand go limp. Thisconcludes the physicalaspect of the method,althoughanidemassage continued very gentlythroughout the remainder of the sessionhelps the subject to stayrelaxed. 4. Thementalaspect of themethodnowbegins.Instructyoursubject to keep his eyes shut and visualize his feet. He should try to make this (and all subsequentvisualizations) as vivid as possible, so long as the effort to do so does not spoil his relaxation. 5. Havehimtellyouwhen he hasmanaged to visualize his feetsuccessfully,

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then instruct him to imaginehimselfgrowing two inches (about five centimetres)longerthrough the soles of his feet. He should try to feel the sensation of growingand see the result in his mind’seye. 6. Waituntil the subjecttells you he has managed to achieveStage 5, then instructhim to return to his usuallength. He should try to imagine the sight andfeel of his feetreturningtowardshim in theirnormalposition.

7. Repeatthisprocess at leastthreetimes — andmore if necessary — untilyour subject is fullyaccustomed to it andcanvisualize the peculiar‘growth’with practisedease. Don’thurry this: it is a very important part of the overall processandonethatlaysthe foundation of muchthat is to follow.Waiteach timeuntilyoursubjecttellsyou he hasbeensuccessful.Yourpatience at this pointwill be amplyrewardedlater. 8. Nowrepeat the wholeprocess, but this time yoursubject is required to growthrough the top of his headthenreturn to his normalsize. If youhave taken the time to runhimproperlythrough the footprocess, this should be fairlyeasy.Onceagain,repeat it at leastthreetimes. 9. Returnyoursubject’sattention to his feet and ask him to ‘grow’ out 12 inches (30 centimetres) this time and return to his normallength. Make certain he has donethis successfullybeforemoving on. 10. Repeat the 12 inchgrowthandshrinkagethrough the top of the head. 11. Returnyourattention to thefeetandnowaskyoursubject to growout 24 inches (60 centimetres).Interestingly, the factthatsomeonecansuccessfully make a mentaltwoinchstretchdoes not automaticallyguarantee he will be able to go further.Havehimkeeptryinguntil he managesthe 24 inchstretch (whichshould be accomplished in under a minute) but do not havehim return to normalsize. 12. Whileyoursubjectfeels he has stretched 24 inchesthrough the soles of his feet, have him simultaneouslystretch 24 inchesthrough the top of his head.Weirdthough it maysound, somesubjects findthat as theystart to stretchthrough their heads at this point, their extended feet begin to withdraw.Persevereuntil the two-waystretch is achievedandhereagain do not haveyoursubjectreturn to normalsize. 13. While at fullstretchthroughheadandfeet, askyoursubject to expand all over, as if he was blowing up like a balloon.Keeptryinguntil he can feel himselfextendedbeyondthe limits of his physicalbody. Wetend to think of swelling as associatedwith malaise or discomfort, but in this instance the sensation is verypleasantonce the extensionhasbeenachieved. 14. With Stage 13, the looseningprocess is complete. The subject may proceeddirectly to an attempt at etheric or astral plane projection. If projection is not to be attemptedrightaway,makeabsolutelysure to instruct the subject to imaginehimselfreturning to his normalsize. Failure to do so canlead to problems.

Step 4: DreamAwareness Althoughthere are manyotheroptionsopen, you can use the mind-awake! body-asleepstate as the key to bothetheric and astralplaneprojections. The

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mostdirectroute to this state is dreamcontrol. And the first stage of dream control is heightenedawareness of yourdreams.Buyyourselfthatnotebook or tape recordersuggested in the text and develop the habit of recordingyour night’sdreamsimmediately on waking. Dreamanalysis is a useful andimportant art on its own, but one which lies wellbeyond the scope of this book. For the purpose of projection, youronly interest is to increaseyourconsciousawareness of yourworld of dreamsand to takenote of anyflyingdreamsthatmayarise.Continuetheprocessuntil a habit is wellestablished,probablyover the course of a month.

Step 5: DreamControl Now the time has come to seizecontrol of yournight-life. Thetime to do so is whenyouenterthatpleasant,drifting,hypnogogicstatebetweenwakingand sleep. Theway to do so is self-suggestion. At this point, of course, you will have to decidewhether you wish first to developethericprojection,astralplaneprojection or, possibly, bothmore or less simultaneously. But whateveryourchoice, I wouldrecommendthatyour initialeffort in dreamcontrol is aimedtowardsbecomingconsciousthatyou are dreaming. This step takes you directly into a subjectiveastralplaneenviron ment, but is also makes it a great deal easier for you to construct the sort of flyingdreamsMuldoonhasrecommended as an ethericprojectiontrigger. Onceyoubecomeself-aware in a dream, youhave the choice of going on to develop your astralplaneskills, or, havingconstructed your flyingdream, in the world in awakeningyourself physical . . . hopefully your projected ethericbody. Sincedreamcontrol is the key to so much, you can afford to make a heavy investment of time and energy into its development. It is not easy and some peoplenevermanage it, but I wouldrecommendthree to six months of effort before you even considerabandoning the attempt. This is a worst-case scenario, of course; youmay get luckyanddevelopdreamcontrol in a week. If, after giving it your best shot, you still find dreamcontrolbeyondyou, move on to the othertechniquesgiven in thisworkbook.

Step 6: Body of Light Howeverwellyou do withdreamcontrol, I wouldsuggestyoutakethetrouble to perfecttheBody of Lighttechnique. It is yourlinkbetweenethericandastral planeprojections,since the Body of Lightmay be used for either. Two to threeweekspreliminaryvisualizationpracticewillprepareyouforthe experiment, a furtherone to twoweeksshould be enough to establishtheBody of Light, and a finalweek or so of dailypracticeshouldgiveyou the knack of transferringconsciousness to it.

133 2.

TheUltimateProjection

What good is all this? Is out-of-bodyexperience just an appealing self- indulgence, or can it be developed into something so important that the Governmentwillsomedayfeelcompelled to tax it? A variety of possibifitiesarise out of the techniquesgiven in this book. The chapter on the I Ching, for example, gives all the informationnecessary for practisingthe ancient art of magicalevocation.Combinethosetechniqueswith an extension of the tulpacreationessential to the Body of Lightandyoucould even end up withevocation to visibleappearance - a highlyadvancedmagical operation. Perhapsyourinterests lie in alchemy, thatmostobscure of occultarts. If so, you might like to find out what wouldhappen if the physicalaspects of alchemicalexperimentswerecombinedwith the astraloperationsgiven in the old textbooks. If thesepathwaysseem a littleweird, youmightfindmore of interest in the possibility that an out-of-bodyphysician could do more to heal certain conditions than his counterpartburdened by all-too-solid flesh. Or, more immediately, youcouldfollow the example of oneprojectormentionedearlier in thisbook,whoslipsout of herbodywhenshe is required to undergopainful medicaltreatment. Sheremainscloseenough to monitorwhat is going on and caninfluenceherbody to answeranynecessaryquestions, butthe painitself is removedfromher. Manipulation of the AstralPlane(whether or notyou are actuallyprojected) canproduce a host of benefits, as everypractisingmagicianknows.Thesevary fromspiritualdevelopment to makingmoney. Forsomereason a greatmanyoccultists are tooembarrassed to talkaboutthe lattertechniques, so you will have to search for themamongthosefrenzied bookswhichseem to promiseinstantricheswhileyoucat-nap.Theirauthors seldomrealizetheyare engaged in astraloperations, buttheyare. If you prefer to makeyourliving by the sweat of yourbrow, youcould do worse than study the life of NikolaTesla, the prolificYugoslav-American inventor of, amongotherthings,alternatingcurrent.Tesla has such a natural grasp of astralmanipulationthat he couldbuild an entiremachine in the vivid world of his imagination, set it running in his mind, go about his business for

134 The Ultimate ______Projection

threeweeks, thenbreakdown the astralmachine and inspect its component partsforwear.Thisenabledhim to predictpreciselyhowsuch a machinewould behave if it werebuiltphysically. I could go on and on, butthere is onearea in whichexperiencegainedout of the body wifi prove absolutelyinvaluable to you. Please forgive me for mentioning it, but evenyou wifi die one day. Whenyou do, this is whatwifi happen: First,barringaccident or murder,youwifidieslowly.Theprocessstarts at the cellularlevelandgoes on to embrace the organs. For the first 20 years of your life, your cells are engaged in growth.Thereafter they begin a very gentle backslide.Thoseyoulose in wearandtear of dailyliving are replacedlessand less efficiently.Eventuallythey are not replaced at all. The end resulttakes a long time - anything up to a maximum of a hundredyears or so - but is absolutelypredictablejust the same.Ourculturelikes to callthe processaging. Thereality is thatyou are engaged in dying. For much of the time, the process is not particularlynoticeable,even if you look very, very closely. An opticalmicroscope shows nothing until your problemsbecomegross.With an electronmicroscope,however, it is easier to see what is going on. The fine structures of the cell becomenoticeably disrupted.Swellingoftenappears,followedby rupture of cellcontentsintothe surrounding tissue. Alternatively, the cell nucleus alone may swell and rupture,fragment, or evenshrink.Eitherway, thebottomline is celldeath.You will, of course, be unaware of what is happening to yourindividualcells. But the mirrorwill tell youthatyou are growingold. Insurancecompanies do notacceptoldage as a cause of death.Theylook for even more immediatefactors like heart failure, as if to insist that death is actually an illnessratherthan a naturalprocess. But whileterminalifiness is often a feature of death, it is not a necessaryprerequisite.Nor is discomfort or terror. It is a curiousfactthat the closeryou get to deathfromextreme old age, the lessfearyouhave of it. Ofcourse,manyoldpeoplesufferfromsenilityandsinkintosemi-conscious conditionswhere fear of death is avoided by living in the past. But where extreme old age is accompanied by lucidity, a calmacceptanceseems to be the psychologicalnorm. By thenyouwillalreadyhavelostmany,perhapsmost, of yourfriendsandrelatives, so the finalloss of life itselfmaynotseemtoobad. Whateverthereason,there are clearindicationsthat in thisstageyouretain a certainamount of control.Youwifibe able,withinreason, to selectthemoment of yourdeath.Youcanpostpone it for a fewhours or days in order to complete unfinishedbusiness. Or you can embrace it willinglywhen you decideyour timehas come. Yourtime will not come,however, all at once. Just as you are destined to die slowly, so you are also destined to die piecemeal. The humanorganism does not breakdown all at once. You might, for example,survive for hours, perhaps even days, after the demise of your liver or kidneys. Even the cessation of your heart - that old medicaldeterminant of death - is not definitive: your brain wifi continue to function for a further four minutes

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beforedamagecaused by lack of oxygenbecomesirreversible. Because of this,youwill be trouble to theverylast. At a timewhenyourheart has stopped, youreyes dimmed, yourbreathinghalted and the woes of the worldceased to concernyou, those by yourbedside may still havedifficulty determiningwhetheryouhaveactuallyleftthem.Theirproblem is thatseveral

conditions - coma is onewell-knownexample - closelymimicdeath.Toomany breathless,pulselesspeoplehavesubsequentlyawakenedforthedoctors to get cocky. But if yourharassedphysicians areprepared to wait, theproblemwillbecome self-solving.There are certainsignswhichonlyoccur in the presence of death. Thus,yourfinalmedicalexamination willbeginwith a search for a peripheral pulse at wrist or throat.Failing to find any, the doctors wifi check for a heartbeat.Finding this too is absent, theymaynownote thatyourbreathing has stoppedandyourmouth, lipsandextremities are turningblue. If youhappen to be wired up to an electroencephalograph, the tracewhich previouslyfeatured a livelyseries of peaksandvalleyswillflattenoutwithinthe nextfive minutes,indicatingbraindeath. The doctors will test for certain eye reflexes. whichwifi be found . . missing. Even now, though no one would bet on it, there is a slim chance your conditionmay not be terminal. But then will come the signswhichbrook no argument, the indelibleimprint of the Reaper’shand. Thefirst is algormoths:yourbodytemperaturefalls to that of yourimmediate environment. Next comes rigor mortis, a temporaryrigidity of the skeletal muscles.Thenlivormortisrears its uglyhead as parts of yourbodyexhibit the discolouration of blood And if retains the purple-red settling. . . anyone slightestdoubt, that too will soon be laid to rest as indications of microbial attackbecomeevident.There is no delicateway to put it. Youwillbegin to rot. At thispoint, youmay be certainyouarecompletely,utterly,irreversiblydead. Youmaynothavefoundtheprocesspleasant,but at leastwhathappensnext is interesting. I have information to suggest that if you die of old age in full health, the fundamentalsensation is one of unmitigatedrelief — a relaxationand a letting go. If you are terminally ifi, however, the immediatelead-up to deathtends to be a progression of physicaldiscomfort. This is not necessarily - indeed not usually - pain. Thebodyhas severalmechanismswhichsupressterminalpain veryeffectively. Butdiscomfortremainsandpeaks at the point of death. Yourexactexperience of the momentdepends on a variety of factors,among themyourlevel of bodyawareness, thetype of illness (if any)yousuffered,and whether or notyouhavebeengivenconsciousness-dimmingdrugs. Manymedicalpreparations and certaintypes of illness(notablythose of a feverish or comatosenature)blockyourawareness of the process of transition, as, of course,doesdying in yoursleep. Oryoumaybe thetype of personwhose bodyawareness is low, whosimplydoes not notice the finerdetail of what is happening to you. But assuming your perceptions are keen, awake and undistracted, you will notice a peculiarbuzzing or ringingsound,sometimes followed by a metallicclang. For a brief,disorientingmoment,youwififeelyou

136 The UltimateProjection

are rushingthrough a darkenedtunnel. Thetunnel is realenough,although it is notactually a tunnel at all. At death, your centre of consciousnessmoves from its usual seat behind your eyes, upwardsandbackwards to vacatethebodyvia one of twopredictablelocations onthe skull.Thismovement is swift.When it happens, it createstheillusion of rushingthrough a tunnel. Buteverything is happeningwithsuchspeedyoumaynot notice the tunnel effect at all. At much the sametime this is going on, yourcollection of subtle bodies — etheric,astral,mental,spiritual — are separating as a unit from the physical.Yourconsciousnesshomes in on themlike a racingpigeon. For those ignorant of things like subtle bodies, this can be a time of considerableconfusion for as younowknow, you do notfeelverydifferent in theethericthanyou do in thephysical. Forthisreason,manypeople do not - at least at first — realizethey are dead. In fact, theygenerallyfeelverywell,since the symptoms of illness do notcarryover. In thisstatethey tryvainly to attract the attention of mournersandgenerallygivethemselves a veryhardtimeuntil the truthdawns. In yourcase,however,thingswill be a lot easier. As an ethericprojector, the experience of deathwill be veryfamiliar to you - the onlyimmediatedifference beingthatthesilvercord no longerattachesyou to thephysicalbody. Butthat is an importantdifference, forwithoutthephysicallinkage,yourethericbodywifi eventuallybegin to disintegrate as well,releasingtheastralvehicleonto its own plane of operation, the AstralPlane. Hereagain,yourskill as a projectorwill be of considerablebenefit to you. As you are nowaware, the AstralPlanereflectsyourunconsciousexpectations — and at notime so powerfully as whenyouvisitafterdeath. Forthisreason,your culturalconditioning(andpoorself-image)mightwellhavelandedyou in one of theastralhells. But it wouldhavebeen a hell of yourownmaking,just as the manyastralheavens are no morethanexternalreflections of the individual’s ownpsychicstate. As a projectorwithexperience of the AstralPlane, you can avoidbothtraps and...what?The answer to thattrickylittlequestionreallydoesdepend on quitehow far youpushedyourexperience of the InnerPlaneswhileyouwere stifi in incarnation. You may have used your astral trips to investigate the possibility of reincarnation. Or you mayhavefollowedDionFortune up the planes to realms of CosmicLight. Whateverinformationyougathered as an astralprojector, I suspect it will be of considerableimportance to you in the post-mortem state. And that’s somethingyoucan’t say of verymanyotheroccupations.

137 Appendix

QuestionsandAnswers

Theidea of projection - howeverdefined - worriespeople.Leavingyourbody, for whateverdestination, is too closelyassociatedwithdeath for comfort. But what, if anything, can go wrong?Over the years, I havefieldedquite a few questionsposed by nervousprojectors,actual and prospective. Some of the morecommon - andtheiranswers - are appendedbelow.

Whathappens if I can’t getbackinto mybody? Failure to backinto would be trouble. if get yourphysicalbody obviously big . . it happened.Fortunately,mostprojectorsfind the realproblem is stayingout, not gettingback in. In years of work in the field, I have yet to find a single projector - astralplane or etheric - who reported the slightestdifficulty in gettingbackinto the physicalbody. Interestingly, I have worked with one or two projectors who were in considerablephysical pain due to injury or ifiness. Since they were usually unaware of theirpain in the projectedstate,theyhadconsiderablemotivation to stay out of the physical for as long as possible. Even in theseconditions, re-entryinto the physicalproved all to easy.

Is it possible to loseawareness of the physicalbody? Yes, easily.Withbothforms of projection,awareness of the physicalbody is usually lost quitequickly. This is nothing to worryabout.Indeed,successful projectionsseems to requireloss of awareness of the physicalbody.

Whathappens if I can’tfind my wayback to myphysicalbody? This is an altogethermoreimportantquestion and one whichrequires two differentanswers,depending on whetheryou are engaged in etheric or astral planeprojection. In ethericprojection,closeproximity to thephysicalbodysetsup a pullwhich tends to snap the (projected)ethericbodyback into the physical.Once you move six to tenfeetawayfromthephysicalbody,however, thispulllessens to thepointwhere it is unnoticeable.Andsince it is extremelyeasy to travelwhile projected,there are a fewproblems in findingyourself a considerablegeogra phicaldistancefromwhere yourphysicalbody is lying. At suchtimes, it is

139 ~ TheAstralProjectionWorkbook

possible to becomeconfusedabout the directionyouneed to travel in order to return to the physical. Butconfusion,howeverextreme,willnotchangetwofundamentalfacts.The first is that however far you move away, you still remainattached to the physicalbody by the ‘silver cord’ mentionedfrequently in the text of the workbook. Thesecond is thatwhile in the projectedstate, it is enough to think of a destination in order to go there - in otherwords,thought and travel are closelyinterlinked. Giventhesetwofacts,findingyourwayback to yourphysicalbodyduring an ethericprojection is fairlystraightforward. If you are aware of the silvercord, youcanuse it to haulyourself in, so to speak, like a fish. If you are notaware of the cord(andsomeprojectorsaren’t)thenyoursimplestapproach is to think aboutreturning to yourbodyandyouwillfindyouautomatically do so. Forthe fastestpossiblereturn, you can adoptRobertMonroe’ssuggestion that you attempt to movesomepart of yourphysicalbody, such as a finger or toe. This has the effect of drawingthe ethencbackinto the physicalveryquickly. If the problem of findingyourwaybacktroublesyou a lot, then it is a good idea to practisethesereturntechniqueswhileyou are stillcomparativelyclose to yourphysicalbodyandknowperfectlywellhow to return to it anyway.Once you get the hang of returning by willing it, or signallingyourphysicalbody to movefrom a distance,youcanprojectfurtheroutwithgreaterconfidence.And just as I haveneverpersonallyfoundanyonewhohadtroublegettingbackinto theirbody, so I haveneverfoundanyonewho had anyreal difficultyfinding theirbodyduring an ethericprojection. Someexpertsbelieve the sameholds true of astralplaneprojection. One occultist of my acquaintance with considerableastralplaneexperience is on recordwiththe statementthat it is quiteimpossible to becomelost on theAstral Planesince the (physical)bodypull is too strong to allow it to happen.

I suspectthismay be trueeventually - if youremain on the AstralPlanelong enough for yourphysicalbody to becomehungry, for example,therewill be a growing call for you to return.Shortterm,however, my experience has been that it is perfectlypossible to get lost on the AstralPlane; and the experience is oftenfrightening. Prevention is always a lot easierthancure; andprevention in thiscontext is verysimple.Takecarefulnote of yourastralsurroundingsand do notmoveinto newareasuntilyou are familiarwithyourimmediateenvironment.Sinceastral planeprojectionofteninvolves the use of a doorway,makecertain it is firmly established in the AstralPlane before you move away and watch out for landmarks.

Should you plan an extensive astral plane journey, you can solve the orienteeringproblemscompletely by leaving a trail. Sinceastralmatter is so easilymanipulated by thoughtandvisualization,youcanspin a threadbehind you like a spider, or simplyleave a trail of glowingarrowspointing the way back to yourdoorway. Anotherusefulapproach(and one which I adopted in my earlyastralplane experiments) is. to makecertain you do not projectunlessthere is someone

140 Appendix

present to lookafteryourphysicalbody. Yourcompanion can talk you back home if you are away too long or if youshowsigns of discomfort. Finally, to reinforce the earlierpoint, if all else fails, makeyourselfcomfort able on the astral and wait. Sooner or later the call of hunger or evenmore urgent bodyfunctions will draw you back in. It may be a nerve-wracking adventure, but at least it willhave a happyending.

Is it possible to meetdangerous or threatingentitieswhile in the projectedstate? Thetruthfulanswerseems to be yes, withreservations. First, I may as well say that this has neverhappened to any subject I have workedwithduring an ethericprojection.Ethericprojectors, in my experience, are alwaysaware of people(animalsandplaces) on the physicalandsometimes aware of people who are, like themselves,operating out of their physical bodies. I have no reports of alien (i.e. non-human)entities in this state, nor of any threat or dangerposed by the disembodiedpeoplewho did occasionally make an appearance. Havingsaidthis, a reading of the literature on the subjectwill soonindicate not everyone has shared this placidexperience of ethericprojection.Monroe, for example,writes of a variety of threateningexperienceswhileprojected. To saytheremay be someconfusionbetweenethericandastralplaneprojection in reports of this type is really of littlehelp to anyonecaught up in a frightening situation. ButMonroehimselfhas made the importantpointthatafterdecades of regularprojections, he is stillhere to tell thetale — whichsuggeststhatout of bodythreatsmay be morefrighteningthandangerous. Astralplaneprojectioncan, in my experience,leadmuchmorefrequently to the appearance of non-humanentitiesandsome of theseencounters are likely to appearthreatening, or evendangerous.Howdangeroustheymayactually be, I do notreallyknow — except to say I haveneverlost an astralplaneprojector yet. Buttheycancertainly be frightening. Perhaps the easiest way of coping with them is to keep calm, remember where you are and remember the peculiar laws of the AstralPlane. One projector I worked with was approached on the Astral Plane by a very threateningentity with all the unpleasantcharacteristics of a fairy tale ogre, including a hefty club. I have no idea whatmight have transpired had she panicked, but in the event she keptcalm,waiteduntil he wasquiteclose,then leapedoverhis headandwentherway.Sinceyoucan do comic-bookstufflike this on the AstralPlane, and evenshape-shift if you need to, it seemsquite unlikelythat you will meetanythingwhich can do you real harm if youkeep yourhead. Twofurtherpointsneed to be made. Thefirst is that in an extremesituation, youalwayshave the option of fleeing to yourphysicalbody - a returntripthat can be made instantaneously. The second is a reminder that your astral environmentmirrors your own interests. In Astral Doorways I made this much-quotedpointthat if youmet anythingnasty on the AstralPlane, it was becausetherewassomethingnasty in yourhead to beginwith.This is perhaps

141 TheAstralProjectionWorkbook

a little simplistic, but importantnonetheless.Anyonewith a knowledge of a majorcityknowsperfectlywellthat if you go walkingalone at night in certain districts, you are asking for trouble. The sameholdstrue for the AstralPlane, exceptthat the districts can be creations of yourownmind.

Canprojectionsover a longperiodmake me ill? Thebottomlineanswerseems to be no, so long as you are talkingaboutphysical ifiness. Butevenhere the situation is a littlecomplicated. As youhavealreadynoted,physicalillness or accidentcanactually be an aid to projection.SylvanMuldoonsufferedchronicillness overmanyyears and clearlybelieved his infirmityhelpedhimslip out of hisbody at will.Accidents, such as a carcrash, cansometimescatapulttheethericbodyout of thephysical. Acuteillnesses can alsoforce a projection, as Jung’sheartattack did when he foundhimself in orbitaround the planet.Near-deathexperiences are almost invariablyaccompanied by projection,astralplane or etheric(andsometimes both.) From all this, it is clear that there is a solidconnectionbetweenillness or injury and out-of-bodyexperience. But the connection does seem to be one-way.That is to say, physicalillness or accidentmaylead to projection, but projectiondoes not appear to lead to physicalillness. There is someindication that repeatedprojections may ‘loosen’ the subtle bodies.Certainlythe moreoftenyouproject, the easier it becomes. Butthere is no evidence that the looseningeffect (if it reallyoccurs) is actuallyharmful to yourhealth. None of this is to say that there are no healthproblemsassociated with projection. Too abrupt a return to your physicalbody can causeheadache, jarringsensations,musclespasmand, in rarecases,bonefracture.(Thelatter is similar to coughfracturesandjust as unusual.) It is alsotrue to say that if you

have a pre-existentcondition — such as a weakheart — the stresses of projection mayproveharmful, as maystress of anysort. Butthese are peripheralreactions andeveryindication is that if youtreatprojectionsensibly,avoiding the more obvious risk areas,then it is as safe as mostoccupations and saferthanmany whereyourphysicalwell-being is concerned. A word of warning may, however, be appropriate in relation to your psychologicalhealth.Astralplaneprojection is sometimesseizeduponby certain types of personality as an escapefromthe ‘real’ (i.e. physical)world.Typically, suchpersonalitiestend to be misfits in theirsociety, or at leastunsuccessful in terms of their career, and/orhumanrelationships, but the excitement and glamour of astralexperiencepresents a riskforalmostanyone.Theliterature of occultism is repletewithwarningsabout the dangers of astralglamour, a clear indicationthatmultitudes of occultistshavefallenprey to it. Thosewhosuccumb to the fascinationbecome, to a greater or lesserextent, astraljunkies,soakingthemselves in the glitteringfantasies of the plane as often as possible.Since the resurgence of interest in occultismwhichaccom panied the hippymovement of the Sixties, the astraljunkie has oftenbeen a drugjunkie as well,usingpsychedelics to gainentryinto the plane.

142 Appendix

Avoidance of psychologicaldamage is largely a matter of commonsense prevention. No one whorefusesabsolutely to sampledrugs(evenonce)ever becomesaddicted to them. And since drugs are absolutelyunnecessary for astralplane (or, indeed,etheric)projectionthere can be no excusewhatsoever for theiruse. Freedomfromfascination is, admittedly, a littlemoredifficult, for the Astral Plane is a fascinatingplace. (It hascertainlydrawnmebacktimeandtimeagain over the years.) But acceptance of its fascination is one thing: being over whelmed by that fascination is quiteanother. The trick is to keep a sense of proportion.Yourinvestigations of the astral are no moreimportantthan the workyou do to earn a living. The planeitself is a dimensionwith no more to teachthan the physicaldimension in which we live. Astraltravellers are not supermen or superwomen. At mostthey are researchstudents in a neglected field.

Is projectionsinful? Apparentlynot. Although few churchesadmit to an officalpolicy on the subject,esoteric practice is generallyfrowned upon by the religiousestablishment, on the groundsthat it canlead to interest or dabbling in the ‘black’arts, or become a substitute for the individual’sreligion.Clearly, this blanketdisapprovalmust extend to the techniques of projection, yet projection per se is too closely interwovenwithreligiousexperience to be brandedsinful. This is particularlyevident in the projectionsassociated with near-death experience. As we have seen in the body of the workbook, suchprojections oftenhavereligiousovertones:reports of meetingswithluminous,Christ-like figures are almostcommonplace. But even leaving aside such overt expe riences, there is little argument that successfulprojectionstronglyreinforces the (religious)doctrine of postmortemsurvival. Forthisreason, I suspect, the phenomenonhas attracted the attention of manyclerics. Anotherfactorarisesfrom a study of the lives of saints.Onepointertowards sainthood is a talentforsomethingcalledbilocation.Biocation, as theworditself suggests, is defined as the ability to be in twodifferentplaces at the sametime. A number of historicalsaintshaveexhibitedthiscurioustalent.Typically,such saintshavebeenmonasticsandtheirabilitiestend to come to lightwhenthey areseen in distantplaces(such as thebedside of a dyingPope)whilemeditating in the solitude of theircells. Oftenenough, thesaintsthemselveshavebeenunable to explainthiscurious phenomenon, but to anyone who has studiedprojection, the mechanics are quiteclear. Anindividual in solitary,silentmeditation is wellplaced to project. If, at thetime of projection, theindividual’sthoughts are fixed on somedistant event - such as a battle or the death of a religioussuperior - the movement of the secondbody to the site of thatevent is automatic. Thefirst(physical)body remains in meditationposture in the cell. Thesecond(astral or etheric)flies to the distantdestination. Against this background, it seems safe to suggest that while no amount of

143 The AstralProjectionWorkbook

projectionwillmakeyou a saint, no onecanreasonablyclaim it wifimakeyou a sinnereither.

Can I be seenwhen I am in a projectedstate? Generally no, but there are exceptions. This questionrelatesalmostexclusively to ethericprojection, since astral planeprojectiondoes not normallybringyouintocontactwithanyoneoutside of the planeitself. During an ethericprojection, youwill be invisibleandintangible to almost all of thosewhoremainwithinthe physicalbody.This is a factorwhichcancause considerabledistressduring the ultimateethericprojection at the point of death.Spiritualistcommunication is full of descriptions of individualswho, havingdiedwithoutrealizing, trydesperately to reassuresorrowingrelatives at the bedside,only to findtheirbestefforts are ignored. But if mostpeopleareunable to seeyou, a surprisingnumberareable to sense yourpresence to somedegree. Thismanifests (for the individualvisited) as a feeling of unease, of ‘being watched’ or threatened, or, less often, as a perception of chifi.Thesamesensations,perhapsnottoosurprisingly, areoften associatedwithvisitations by ghosts.

Certaintalentedindividuals - commonlyreferred to as psychics - will be aware of yourpresence at once and there is considerableevidence to suggest that shouldyouvisitsomeonewithwhomyou are emotionallyintimate, such as a bloodrelative,spouse or lover, the chances of yourbeingseenincrease. It seems too that your intent will influence the situation. If it is yourdesire to communicateand be seen, the likeithood of beingseenincreases. Most animals are far more sensitive to projectivevisitations than human beings. Cats, in particular, seem to be able to see projectedbodieswithout muchdifficulty,althoughtheyare as likely to ignoreyou in yourprojectedstate as they are while you occupy a physicalbody. Dogs too will oftensense a projectionandare, in general,moredisturbed by the experiencethancats.

Can I go anywhere I wantwhileprojected? Not entirely.Projectioncertainlyopens up far wider (and cheaper!) travel opportunities than you enjoy in the physicalbody. As you have seen in~ the workbook,ArthurGibsonwasquitecapable of travellingfromIreland to India almostinstantaneouslyand a surprisinglylargenumber of projectorsclaim to have left not only the planet, but the actual solar system and journeyed to worlds in distantgalaxies. Such trips suggest that projection not only over comestheneedforsupportsystemslikeair, heatandatmosphericpressure, but mayactuallyallow you to travelfasterthan the speed of light - a theoretical absolute in the physicaluniverse. Despite all this, experience wifi eventuallyindicatethere are certainplaces yousimplycannot go. Elsewhere, I mentioned the experience of mywifewho visited the home of friendswhile in a projectedstate and tried to entertheir bedroom to givethemtheexcitingnews. Shefoundherselfunable to do so and laterdiscoveredtheywereengaged in sexualintercourse at the timeshecalled,

144 Appendix

hence the need of privacy. Theinterestingthinghere is thatthe needseems to have set up some sort of invisiblebarrierthroughwhich my wife, in her projectedstate, wasquiteunable to pass. Suchbarriers may be morecommonplacethan we imagine.Projection has been a fact of humanlifethroughouthistoryandpresumablybefore, but I have yet to find a singleinstance of informationgatheredduringprojectionbeing used, for example, as an aid to blackmail. It may be thatwhen we embark on thoseactivities of which we are ashamed, or which we simplywish to remain private, wethrowup instinctivesafeguardsagainstsubtlevisitations.Although this is, perhaps, a naturalmechnism, there are suggestions from a strange quarter that it may have been tamed and put to use as an artifact. These suggestions are embodied in the techniques of ritualmagic. Thisworkbook is eccentricenoughwithoutwishing to delve too deeplyinto the realms of ritual.Suffice to say that almosteveryritualmagicaloperation begins with a ‘preparation of the place’,analogous to the sterilization of the theatrebefore a surgicaloperationbegins. Typical of the meansused to prepare for a majorceremonial is the subsidiary ritual of the banishingpentagram. For those of youinterested in suchthings, the pentagramritual is carriedout as follows:

Preparation Room

Clear a room. If youcan’t do thisfully,push the furnitureaside so youhave a largeclearspace in thecentre.Begin by learningthe sub-ritual of the Qabalistic Cross.

QabalisticCrosssub-ritual:

OuterWorking 1. Raiseyourrighthand to a pointaboutthreeinchesaboveyourhead. 2. Bringyourhanddown to touchyourforehead. 3. As youtouchyourforeheadvibrate the wordAh-Teh. 4. Bringthe handdown to touchyourbreastbone. 5. VibrateMal-Kuth. 6. Touchyourrightshoulder. 7. VibrateVeh-Geb-Your-Ah. 8. Bring the handacross to touchyourleft shoulder. 9. VibrateVeh-Ged-You-Lah. 10. Claspyourhandstogether in the form of a cup at a levelwithyourchest. 11. VibrateLay-Oh-Eem. 12. Vibrate Ah-Men.

InnerWorking Standingupright,arms by sides,relaxed as possible,visualize a glowingsphere of luminouswhitelight(aboutthesize of a child’sfootball)floating a fewinches above the crown of yourhead.

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At 1. touchthis spherewithyourupraisedhand. As youdrawyourhanddownwards to touchyourforehead,visualize a shaft of brilliantwhitelightemergingfrom the sphere to pierceyourbody. As you touch your chest as 4. the shaft of light should be visualized as extending all the waythroughyourbody to endbetweenyourfeet, so thatyou are nowtotallytransfixed by a pifiar of glowingwhitelight. At 6. visualize a second,somewhatsmallersphere on a levelwithyourright shoulder, partly interpenetrating the shoulder. Think of this sphere as a reservoir of energy. As youbringyourhandacross at 8. visualizeyourselfdrawing a secondshaft of brilliant white light from the right shoulder(Geburah)sphere across and throughyourbody to link up with a similarsphere at yourleft shoulder. At this point, if you have visualizedcorrectly, you wifi be transfixed by a massivecross of brilliantlight. At 10. visualize a small,steadyblueflamebetweenyourcuppedhands. This completes the Ritual of the QabalisticCross. A magicalpentagram is drawn in the followingmanner:

Hand: Make a fist.Pointwithyourforefinger.Nowpointsimultaneouslywiththenext finger. Your hand is now as it should be for drawing and stabbing the pentagram.

Starthere

Draw the pentagram as shown,using the outstretchedfingers of yourright hand. Start at about the level of your left hip. Carry the upwardsweepabove yourhead,comedown to yourright hip level andcontinueuntil the figure is complete.Don’tdraw it in anyothersequence. Thefullbanishingritual of the pentagram is as follows:

OuterWorking 1. Walk to the easternquarter of the roomandfaceeast. 2. PerformtheentireQabalisticCrossritual,innerandouterworkings. 3. Trace a pentagram in the air beforeyou. 4. Stab the pentagramthrough the centrewithyouroutstretchedfingers. 5. As you do so, vibrateYod-Heh-Vav-Heh. 6. Withyourarmoutstretched,moveclockwise to the south. 7. Trace a secondpentagram, stab it andvibrateAh-Doh-Nay.

146 Appendix

8. Witharmoutstetched,moveclockwise to the west. 9. Trace a thirdpentagram, stab it andvibrateEh-Heh-Yeh. 10. Witharmoutstetched,moveclockwise to the north. 11. Trace a fourthpentagram, stab it andvibrateAye-Geh-Lah. 12. Return to the east and complete the circle by bringingyouroutstetched fingers to the centre of the firstpentagram. 13. Stretchyourarms outsideways to youstand in the form of a cross. 14. VibrateBefore me Rah-Fi-El. 15. VibrateBehind me Gah-Brah-El. 16. Vibrate At my righthandMe-Kah-El. 17. Vibrate At my left handOr-Eye-El. 18. VibrateAround meflame the pentagrams.Above me shines the six-rayedstar. 19. Repeat the QabalisticCrossRitual.

InnerWorking At 3. visualize the lines of the pentagrambeing draw in blue fire, which emerges from your fingertips. The flame you get fromburningmethylated spirit is exactly the visualizationyouneedhere. At 5. as you vibrate the name,imagine the soundrushingawayfrom you eastward.(This is repeated at the otherquarters.) At 6. you shouldvisualize the blue fire emergingfromyourfingertips as you move. This wifithendescribe a quarter arc of a circlefromeast to south. The same visualization, carriedthrough at the other quarters, wifi leave you surrounded by a closedcirclemarkedbyflamingpentagrams at each of thefour quarters. At 14. visualize a vast telesmaticfigure of the archangelRaphaelbefore you wearingshimmeringrobes of shot silk in yellow and mauve.Imagine cool breezescomingfromthisquarter. At 15. visualize a vasttelesmaticfigure of the archangelGabrielbehindyou, robed in blueoffset by orange,holding a bluechaliceandstanding in a stream of swiftly-flowingwaterwhichpoursinto the room. At 16. visualize a vasttelesmaticfigure of the archangelMichaelrobed in flame red fleckedwith emerald. He stands on scorchedearth withsmallflickering flames at his feet andcarries a steelsword. Try to feel the intenseheatwhich emanatesfromthisquarter. At 17. visualize a vasttelesmaticfigure of thearchangelAuriel,whoserobes are a mixture of olive, citron, russet and black. He holds sheaves of corn in outstrechedhandsandstandswithin a veryfertilelandscape. At 18. visualize(alongwith the ring of fire and pentagrams) a hexagram of interlacedtriangles (like the Star of David)floatingabove your head. The ascendingtriangle(pointingupwards) is red in colour, the descendingtriangle is blue. Thiscompletes the innerandouterworkings of the pentagramritual. I have goneintoboth in considerabledetailbecausetheyseem to me to be relevant to the question of where you can go whileprojected andwhycertainplaces are barred to you.

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The pentagram ritual is both an astral and a physicaloperation. The visualizationactivitieswouldtend to createstresses in the AstralLight,acting as fierybarriersandfierce‘angelic’guardiansagainsttheintrusion of anyastral entity. But conducting the ritual on the physicalplane as well,linksastraland physicalstructures.Thusthe (physical)room in whichyouwork is guardedtoo

- not, of course,againstphysicalintrusion, but quitepossiblyagainstetheric entry. Any experiencedastralplaneprojector will quicklyconfirm that the pen tagramritualworks; at least in so far as establishingcertainastralstructuresand cleansingthe spacewithinthecircle.Whether it works at ethericlevels is a little morespeculative, but the odds are that it does.Empiricalexperienceshows there are certainareas you cannotvisit in a projectedstate and the suspicion arisesthatsuchplacesare in somewayprotectedperhapsbystructuressimilar to those set up in the pentagramritual. It is a fieldripe for experimentalresearch anddetails of thepentagramritualhavebeengiven in thatspirit.

Do climatic or weatherconditionsinfluenceprojection? There is somesuggestionthat it may be unwise to attemptprojectionduring electricalstorms or thunderyweatherwhenthere is a highdegree of positive ionization in the atmosphere.Otherwise,weatherconditions do not appear to haveanyinfluenceoneway or another.

Do certaintypes of peopleprojectmoreeasilythanothers? While I have carried out no formalexperimentation on this question, my experience has beenthatpsychics,includingmediums, tend to projecteasily and achievedeep-levelhypnotictranceseasily. Given that deep (hypnotic) trancesubjectsmakegoodprojectors, I havelittledoubt a three-wayconnection exists. Outside of this, I have frequentlynoted that personalitytypes prone to rationalquestioningfrequentlyfindprojectiondifficult, if not impossible. The same holds true for rigid personalitystructuresoverlaying a lack of self- confidence. The best projectors seem to be those with a high degree of self-confidence,risk-takersunafraid of newexperience, withintelligence and an ability to concentratedeeplyandvisualizeclearly.

Couldprojectionreplacerocketry as humanity’smostpromisingform of spacetravel? I shouldverymuchlike to believethat it could, butexistingevidence is against it. Despite myreferences to projectorsleaving the planet,almost all projective trips to otherworldswithin andbeyond our solarsystem,havebroughtback descriptions of environmentsverymuch at odds withwhat we know of the structure of the universe.

Someearlyprojectors, for example,describedadvancedcivilizations on the Moon,MarsandVenus.Scientistshavelongconsideredthis to be nonsenseand spaceprobeshavesinceconfirmedabsolutelythat the scientistswereright.

148 Appendix

WhenCarlJung ‘left the planet’ in his near-deathprojection, he arrived at a rockfloating in space.There are indeedrocksfloating in space(they are called asteroids) butJungwent on to describemeetinghuman, or at leasthumanoid, entitiesliving on it, without,apparently,benefit of water,food or air. Clearly,visions of this sort are astralplane in nature and bearlittle or no relation to physicalreality.Ethericprojectionsbeyond the planetaryatmos pheremay be possible, but I have yet to findconvincingproofthattheyhave beenachieved. The one accountwhichcameclosestwas, curiouslyenough, that penned by the muchdiscreditedGeorgeAdamski, whoclaimed, in the Fifties, to have met a Venusianfollowing a flyingsaucerlanding. Adamskilater insisted that he had beentaken on a flight in a saucer and circledthemoon,givinghumanity its firstglimpse of thefar side of thesatellite. (Themoon’s axialrotation is so freakishlysynchronizedwith its orbit that it alwayspresents the sameface to the earth.) His description of the hiddenside was so naivelybizarre - he spoke of roadsandriversand a thoroughlyfantastic landscape - thateven his followersfound it difficult to takeseriously. Circumlunarprobessubsequentlyshowedthe far side of themoon to be very similar to the near side: a crateredlandscape. But these same probes also showedthatwhenphotographedfrom a certainheight,lightingconditions on the far side of the mooncreate a peculiaropticalillusion, so that the surface takes on an appearancestrikinglysimilar to whatAdamskidescribed.Adamski was also the first to recount the peculiar‘firefly’effectnotedlater by several lunarastronauts.

If this is not all an extendedcoincidence, the questionobviouslyarises as to whereAdamski got his information. For many of his followers, there is no problem: he met a Venusianandwassubsequentlytaken on a saucerflight. For those of us whofind it difficult to acceptVenusianswhosebodystructureseems to havebeenformed by precisely the sameevolutionaryforces as shaped our own (or to acceptVenusians at all, for that matter,givenwhat we nowknow aboutthesurfaceconditions of thathorridplanet)thewholething is muchmore difficult.Adamskicertainlydidseem to havediscoveredthingsaboutthemoon andspaceflightwhichwereonlyconfirmedmorethan a decadelater. If he did not findthem out as a passenger on a Venusianspaceshipthenperhaps - just perhaps — he was an unusuallytalentedprojector.

Cananimalsproject? So far, availableevidenceseems to suggesthumanity is the onlyanimalwith the ability to project an ethericbody. But the AstralPlane is somethingelse. Projectorshavebroughtbackmanyaccounts of meetingwith cats there and someinsisttheirfavouritedogswififollowthemthere. Although it strainscredulity, I havealso to reportastralplanesightings of cats whichhadpreviouslydied (on the physical at least.)Whencontactwasmade, theseanimalsfound it eveneasier to communicatewiththeirhumancompa nionsthantheyhaddoneduringtheirlifetime.

149 TheAstralProjectionWorkbook

Is the AstralPlane the samething as the BardoThodol of Tibetan Buddhism? Yes. The mostpopularcanon of TibetanBuddhism in the West is the Tibetan Book of the Dead,whichtends to give the impressionthat theBardoPlane is a post-mortemstate.OtherTibetanscriptures,however,make it quiteclearthat yogadisciplines wifi enable the adept to visit the Bardowhile stifi verymuch alive. This, the ready equation of the Bardo with the dream state and descriptionsbroughtback by Tibetanvisitors to the Bardo all point to the fact thatBardoandAstralPlanes are identical.

Aretheremechanicalaids to projection? Apart fromthose alreadymentioned in the workbook, there are intriguing suggestions that one of the greateststructures of antiquity was, in fact, a machine to induceseparation of the subtlebodies from the physical. This structure is the GreatPyramid of Cheops. By anycriterion, the GreatPyramid is an impressivebuilding. It is situatedon an artificiallylevelledmile-squareplateau at Giza,about 10 mileswest of Cairo, and set on a base that covers 13 acres. An estimated two and a half million blocks of limestone and granite went into its construction, some of them weighing as much as 70 tons - enoughstone to buildeverycathedral,church and raised in sincethetime of Christ. andstillhavesomeleft chapel England . . over! There are morethanenoughmysteriesassociatedwith the GreatPyramid to keeparchaeologists and associatedscientistsbusy well into the next millen nium. Its structureembodiesthevalue pi, forexample,whilethepyramid is set, perhaps not coincidentally, on thelinejoiningthePoleswhichpassesthrough thegreatestlandmass.Theprecision of its buildingandorientation is littleshort of astonishing. In the dry air of Egypt, its peakgeneratessubstantialstatic electricity,giving rise to weirddisplays of ghostlylights in suitableweather conditions.

Conventionalwisdom has it that the pyramidwas originallybuilt as a tomb for the PharaohKhufu(Cheops is the Greekversion of his name)although no mummy or otherindication of a burialhaseverbeenfound.There is, however, a sarcophagus of chocolate-colouredgranite in a chamber set central in the pyramidandroughlyonethirdthewayup frombase to apex.Thesarcophagus

- and the style of roof - has led to the chamberbeingknown as the ‘King’s Chamber’withtheassumptionbeingthatKhufu’sbodyrestedhereuntil it and the treasure trove traditionallyburied with a Pharoah was removed by grave-robberssometime in the distantpast. There are, however,problemswiththis theory, notleast of which is the fact thatEgyptianPharaohstended to worrythemselvessillyaboutgrave-robbers sincedesecration of themummyandcertainstatuaryburiedwith it, putpaid to hopes of survival in the . As a result of this paranoia, mostEgyptian rulers elected to be buried in secret mausoleums rather than tombs so spectacularlypublic as to causeworld-widecomment. But if the pyramid was not intended as a tomb, the puzzle of its actual

150 Appendix

purposeremains.Whatbenefitwouldpersuade anyculture to invest so much time and effort in a singleconstruction?According to a number of writers, includingManly P. Hall, the answerlies in the EgyptianMysteries. Mysteryreligionswere a feature of theancientworld in manycountries.They were characterized by claims to secret knowledgerevealed only after a candidatehadpassedthrough a series of tests in a process of initiation. In some mysteries, theinitiatoryprocesswaslargelysymbolic,likethemodernMasons. In others, the testinvolveddrugs anddangerous,sometimeslife-threatening, experiences. What secrets were eventuallyrevealed is more a matter of speculationthancertainty, butclues canusually be found in the culturewhich gavebirth to the mystery. The Egyptianculture had, of course, one central obsession - survival of physicaldeath. This obsession led to the development of skills of mummificationunparal leled anywhere on earth. Egyptiantechniques of bandaging have yet to be matched,eventoday. Thearistocracyinvestedmuchtimeand a goodlypart of theirfortunes in the construction of elaborate — andsecret — tombs,whichwere as well-stocked as a submarine at the start of a longvoyage. Themummywas accompanied by food,coin,weapons,clothing,ornaments,treasureandeven guards and servants in the shape of speciallycommissionedstatuary.Priests werepaidsubstantialamounts to protect the tombswithmagicalcharms and curses; and some appear to have earned their fees to judge from what happened to members of the expeditionwhichunearthedthe tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamen. Egyptiandoctrineabout the afterlifesoundspeculiar to modernears, for the Egyptiansbelieved each of us is possessed of a number of souls. The ka, or double, wasassociatedcloselywith the physicalmummy. The ba, or birdsoul, flewfromthe corpse at the moment of death, butliked to stickaround so that a perch for it was usuallyprovided in the tomb. The ib, or heart, went to the Judgement Halls of Osiris where it was weighedagainst a feather and condemned if found to be weighteddownwith sin. WhateverabouttheJudgementHalls,students of projectionwififindmuch of interest in the remainder of Egyptiandoctrine. The ka, for example,sounds suspiciously like the ethericbody,while the ib mightwell be thatmoresubtle vehicledestined to function on the AstralPlane. But if the Egyptiansknewaboutsubtlebodies, it seemspossible,perhaps evenlikely,thattheyalsoknewthesebodiesmight be safelyseparatedfromthe physicalbeforedeath. And this is preciselywhatHall and a number of other writershavesuggested. In all this, we are sidlingsidewaystowardswhat is now popularlycalled pyramidpower.Since a Czechinventorwasgranted a patent for a razorblade sharpener in the shape of a miniaturepyramid, the eccentricandcurioushave gone to considerableexperimentallengths to determinewhetherthe geometric shape of a pyramidsomehowattracts,generates or condenses a hitherto unknown form of energy. Certainlypyramids do something. Apart from renewing the edge on a razorblade, a pyramidicalstructure willpreserveand dehydrateorganicmaterialcorrectlyplacedwithin it. Curiously, the correct

151 Offurtherinterest.

THE REINCARNATION WORKBOOK

A CompleteCourse in RecallingPastLives

J. H. BRENNAN

Haveyoueverwonderedwhathappens to us afterdeath?Are we really consigned to an afterlife in Heaven or Hell as manyWesternerschoose to believe? Or is it possiblethatthere is truth in stories of peoplewhohave livedbeforeandthatreincarnation is a fact of life?

THEREINCARNATIONWORKBOOKprovides the readerwith a completehomestudycoursedealingwith all the techniques of reincarnationresearch. In its pages, 1. H. Brennanuses his 30 years’ experience in the field to teach the methodologywithwhichyou can investigateyourownpastlives.Arranged as a programme of background informationandpracticalexercises, thisuniquebookwifi tellyou everythingyouneed to knowaboutpast-liferecall,including:

understandingreincarnationtheory

*

the practice of hypnosis

*

the Christosmethod

*

validatingyourresults

*

an A B C of potentialproblems

*

howpastlivesinfluence the present