I was asked recently what astral projection (AP) meant, and did my best to explain it. For me, astral projection means allowing your mental or astral body - your consciousness - to leave the body behind. It can happen spontaneously, it can happen deliberately, or it can be associated with a lucid dream. It is also known as an out-of-body experience (OOBE).
I have had a number of spontaneous OOBEs. The first was when I was eight, and needed a tooth extracted because of an abcess. My grandmother arranged for me to have the tooth extracted under gas, but I had had a strange fainting fit a few weeks before, and so, scarily, the dentist was accompanied by a number of dental nurses holding my wrists and ankles to ensure that if I did have any sort of reaction to the gas, I would not interfere with the extraction.
I remember going to a place with a merry-go-round, and very beautiful music, and then being rolled around in a dark warm treacly substance like very soft chewing gum. I believe that rolling around was me coming back into the body.
On the other occasion I found myself suddenly in the air above the market house in my old town, aware that I was in a space where there were other people and other consciousnesses. I had what is called a peak experience, feeling that I was part of everything and everything was a part of me, one with God, sending love to all things, including those things which we consider inanimate and lacking in consciousness. I became aware that God's love extends to everything in the material world and not just the animate things inside it.
I have had a number of lucid dreams where the knowledge that I was dreaming was associated with a shot-out-of-a-cannon effect, and a strange feeling. Michael Raduga believes that lucid dreaming and astral projection are part of the same thing, and doesn't distinguish between the two.
I have had two lucid dreams in which I was aware of leaving the body and deliberately exploring. In the first, I found myself above the north sea, seeing the sea below me churning around. In the second I explored, having left my body in bed in my house, but things were not as they are in the real world, when I went into and out of houses. Eventually I found myself at the door of a house and knocked on it, and it seemed I was expected. I was taken upstairs to sit around the bed of a dying person, and it occurred to me that if I were out of the body I should be able to feel the silver cord which people reported coming from the back of my head.
I felt around the back of my head, and there it was, but the thought of my body made me return immediately to it.
I've tried for years to leave my body deliberately, but hadn't succeeded until I watched the three parts of Michael Raduga's tutorial on Youtube, combined with an idea which I read on the astral projection subreddit. In it someone said that when you are trying to astral project it is helpful to use your imagination to imagine that your head is where your feet are and your feet are where your head is and then to reverse it. I think of it like loosening a piece of metal, it gradually becomes less solid and then breaks free.
I found myself able to sit up away from my body, although it was entirely different from my spontaneous OOBEs, in that everything felt heavy and my sight was smoky. I moved away from my body and through the bedroom door, which was an unusual experience, when I realised that I couldn't open the door myself.
I am inexperienced and don't know much about it from first-hand experience, but it is something which convinces me that it is possible for the consciousness or spirit to exist beyond the human body. If you can separate while alive, why couldn't that spirit continue beyond bodily death?
I am also convinced that the personality and character can be influenced by the brain but isn't created by it. I think I need more experimental data to understand this properly, but I am having difficulty in repeating the experience! I have joined Michael Raduga's Elijah Project to see if I can become more expert at AP. There are also a lot of videos on youtube to help - one which is mentioned over and over on the AP subreddit is
