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_______ Astral Travel

IN HER BOOK, Out-of-Body Experiences: A Handbook, Janet Lee Miterell outlines the methods to access out-of-body experiences (OBEs). They include sleep and dreams which include unconscious OBEs, especially dreams of falling or flying. Lucid dreaming takes dream memory to another level by accessing conscious dreams, where the dreamer remembers details of the experience upon awakening. The experience of extreme fatigue may breakdown the body's conscious and ease the transition into OBE. The astral body may leave the exhausted physical body to recharge with cosmic energy. Shamanic rituals often invoke extreme exhaustion to ease the OBE. Drugs may be a doorway to conscious expansion, yet don't seem to directly engender astral travel. While drugs are often touted as astral-friendly, a test of 247 LSD users who had OBEs showed that under the influence of drugs they were out-of-body only three to four percent of the time. Other tests have shown that LSD and mescaline may promote an increase in body temperature which produces OBE (Miterell 20).

Extreme sensory deprivation through Ganzfeld conditions or meditation and hypnosis decreases the body's motor output and transforms the consciousness to altered states of being. Trauma and psychological stress also trigger altered states of consciousness.

However the method that OBE is achieved, the elasticity of the mind in astral travel corresponds closely with theories of quantum consciousness. In quantum consciousness theory, particles and waves change form when observed, moving forward and backward in time, and occupying two places simultaneously. The physical self remains the anchor as well as the propellant for conscious travel. The legendary silver cord connecting the conscious to the physical body points to the necessity of a continuing healthy flow of physical energy to continue the OBE. Upon death, consciousness departs the body and no propellant remains to call back the conscious craft.

At home in the astral plane, consciousness adapts quickly to a quantum reality beyond the limits of time and space where the will moves the craft. OBE experiencers report the ease of chosen destination movement directing their consciousness. Further, unfamiliar or frightening astral dimensions are easily departed with a mere thought projection to another destination. Throughout the Out-of-Body Experience the physical body, the mother ship, remains the monitor. The traumatized astral traveler can always move back into the safe haven of the physical body.

In 1999 International Academy of Consciousness (IAC) developed a sophisticated online survey and analyzed 98 different aspects of OBE. Well over 7,000 responded. The international survey showed that OBE had many shared characteristics with people around the world irrespective of age, gender, nationality, ethnicity, cultural background, religion and education. The IAC continues its research by refining an investigative instrument to understand the processes by which an individual captures information through OBE and remote viewing. They want to investigate both the capturing of the information and the subsequent transfer of information into the physical brain (Gustus).

Several distinct phenomena are present during an OBE that leads to an expanded awareness of the powers of human consciousness:

• "Self-bilocation" -- in which the person perceives himself to be in two places at once [for example, seeing one's physical body];
• Self-permeability -- in which the projected individual is able to move through physical objects;
• Internal autoscopy -- in which the individual has an internal view of his or her own body and can see bones and organs either with the consciousness inside the brain or outside the physical body;
• Cosmoconsciousness -- a state of highly expanded awareness, in which the individual perceives the order, balance and logic of the universe, simultaneously feeling and celebrating that he or she is part of it; Nirvana, Satori and Samadhi;
• Precognition -- in which the individual, fully projected from the physical body, obtains information relating to events that have not yet occurred;
• Retrocognition -- in which the individual, fully projected from the physical body, obtains information relating to events that have already occurred, in this life or a past life;
• Extraphysical telepathy -- in which the projected individual communicates with others who are in the physical, projected or nonphysical condition through transmission of thought" (Gustus).

The OBE occurs in an astral reality between the physical and extraphysical or consciousness bodies. It is not a dream, although it may be triggered by a dream state. OBE reports indicate active participation during the projection -- making decisions, using mental attributes and creating travel itinerary. The environment encountered, though of another dimension, has a distinct reality. The projector is in a reality separate from the physical body and may observe his or her own body and be aware of both the launch from and the landing back into the physical body. As theories of quantum consciousness take root in culture, individuals will readily open to astral travel or Out-of-Body Experiences. Growing databases of experiences add to the scientific knowledge of our body as mother ship and its consciousness craft. As with knowledge of the automobile engine, individuals will not wait for complete understanding of quantum consciousness, before test-driving their consciousness.