|
|
Without the Robe Traveling Without the Body |
First Night Out Anyone who's interested in the out of body experience or astral travel has probably already formed an opinion about what it is and how it happens. It's something that has fascinated me all of my life, even in the days before it began to happen. I know that I had preconceptions of my own, and probably the usual ones, before I began to deal with the real thing and not the stories. I had read about the astral silver cord, and I had read that the out of body experience was an experience of complete freedom. In that other ethereal state, all you had to do was think of being someplace else and you were there. You could instantaneously jump from your beginning point to some other place on the other side of the world, or even the other side of the galaxy, and your astral cord would always guide you home. You could walk through walls, visit mysterious and forbidden places, and even explore the realms of heaven and hell. I've tried many systems that claim to create the out of body ability and most them, including nearly all the methods that you can actually purchase, do not. There are people who think they do this work and don't. Many of them teach. There are also plenty of people who do this work without knowing how and without any training, getting results without even realizing they have actual effects on anybody. I've learned half a dozen different methods that worked, each of them culturally unique, and I've used a few others enough to believe in them. In the pages of this section I want to talk briefly about some and point out some of the common elements. Every approach to the idea is based on the same fundamentals, strange though they are. My first experience was a surprise to me, because it wasn't the sort of thing I had read about. I was in the Army, stationed in Alaska, and I was trying to get some sleep before going on K.P. Duty started about 3 a.m. and it was already midnight. I couldn't sleep because I was angry about the extra duty and I dreaded the long shift. With luck I'd be done before 9 p.m. and if things didn't go well I might be working for hours after that. I tried to relax but my stomach was a ball of nerves, clenching tight with every breath. The knot in my stomach felt physical and cold and as I laid there I drifted deeper and deeper into something that wasn't quite sleep, with my attention on that roiling ball of nervous energy in my gut. Then something strange happened. Without warning, that ball of energy exploded and shot currents of cold electric energy out into my arms and legs. It caused every muscle in my body to fire off at once, but I felt completely relaxed at the same time. It was an ecstatic feeling, almost like a jolt of adrenaline but much more pleasant. Everything around me became white light, and for an instant I was aware of nothing but that light, brilliant and pervasive and powerful. |
Jimmy Two Hats |
As suddenly, I found myself standing in the yard near the house where I grew up. I was close to the well house, a hundred feet away from the back door. I felt as though I had fallen out of the air and landed there on my feet with a physical shock. Though it's tempted to label this as a symptom of homesickness and an hallucination of a return to a peaceful place in my life, real life wasn't like that for me. I didn't want to go back there. Actually where you go has more to do with the details you know than the motives you have. It's easier to directly perceive a place you know well. My first thought was that it must be a dream, and I tried to wake myself up. When I couldn't do that, I thought of the old test where you pinch yourself to see if you're dreaming--the thought behind this is that you can't feel pain in a dream. If you pinch yourself, the flaw in the logic will wake you. The pinch hurt and felt completely real. I was still there. I looked around and everything did seem right, except that it was the wrong season of the year. The grass was green and the air was warm; the sun was hot on my back. So this couldn't be real, I told myself. You can't just jump across time and space. I expected that at any moment I'd simply wake up. Things would get distorted and strange, I thought, and it will dissolve into a dream. The problem with this was that the experience didn't fade. I could feel and see and smell and touch all the right things. I wondered how the company commander was going to react when I turned up missing. I wondered how in the heck I was going to get back to Alaska in time to avoid trouble. Then I decided I really didn't care about that. If I could cross time and space, I probably didn't need to worry about military courts martial any longer. I started walking towards the house, and as I neared the porch I could hear my parents inside the kitchen, talking. |
Very briefly I was able to taste what the immortals knew when they gained the ability to step through time and space and then the white light engulfed everything again, the margins of the objects around me began glowing and blending into the light, and with that same wrenching twisting falling feeling I landed on my back in the barracks in Alaska. While I was washing pots and pans later that day I wondered about what had happened. Anything I had read about out of body travel did not mention the ability to jump across time. Sadly I decided it couldn't have been real. I hadn't read the right things yet. A lot has been written about astral travel that isn't true, unless you want to just play games with illusions. Most of the old traditions speak of it as being something other than magical, something like stepping between physical realities or jumping across timelines. The old shamans talked about it in that sense, as a journey into not just this world but many others equally real. In them you find life on a grand scale, with the same challenges as this one. You don't find heaven or hell on the other side of that strange line--you find powerful beings who engage in war and peace and battle for love and power as people do. You don't become a magical invulnerable being. You're just a person equipped with whatever you know and maybe the things you can carry. You need training to survive out there. You need allies. I didn't know any of that yet. I just knew I wanted to do it again, even if it wasn't real. |