Home 2011 October 27 Myths about astral travel

Myths about astral travel

There are many myths about astral travel and astral projection which I have encountered. All of them mention some sort of “danger” of astral travel, which makes poor seekers weary as to whether they should continue with the spiritual search or not. What I’ve noticed is that most of the misinformation comes from people who don’t have any substantial astral experience. There are also people who deliberately spread misleading information, while knowing that what they spread is misleading. Such people do not want others to search for the truth for various reasons. Often they are just jealous that someone actually has enough courage to search for the important answers of life.

What is sad is that such lies, myths and misinformation can have a detrimental effect on a person who has only just started questioning things and gathering information on astral travel and spirituality in general. Such “newbies” are an easy target because they have no experience of non-physical realities so they are easy to mislead and become diverted from their goal, making them believe that it’s better to drop this entire non-physical venture and to return to the comfort zone of mundane life.

I will mention here some of the myths about astral projection which I have encountered so far, and will explain briefly about each:

The “silver cord” can be cut and you can get lost while far away from the physical body.

This is a classic one. No, it cannot happen. The “silver cord” is a connection between your physical and astral body. It is cut only at the moment of your physical death. That connection can stretch to infinity. You cannot get lost or get stranded from your body. Each time you experience a heightened emotion like fear, elation, anger etc., you return back to the body. Because of this time limit of astral experience, there is the problem of acquiring substantial knowledge. Another way to return back is simply by intending to return.

One needs to be a vegetarian in order to astral project.

I’ve heard a lot of comments about various prerequisites for astral projection, one of them being the above mentioned. This is false. You don’t have to be a vegetarian in order to astral project. Eating quality food is definitely important and beneficial, but it’s not a requirement for astral travel, even though it may yield beneficial, long term results in this field. Generally, the only thing needed for astral projection is to be concentrated on one thing at the moment your physical body falls asleep.

You can astral project only during spring and summer.

This is false too. There are no seasonal restrictions related to astral travel. We actually astral travel every night we go to sleep (unconsciously), and we do that regardless of the seasons.

You can get possessed.

That’s completely untrue. There is a special connection between you and your physical body which makes it impossible for anyone to possess it. Also, astral beings do not really go around looking for other people’s bodies – not even negative entities. Possession is only possible if you deliberately invite an entity into your body and consciously allowing them to use it. That’s a form of channeling, and personally I wouldn’t recommend it.

You could die..

False! Your astral body cannot be destroyed, nor can you (the consciousness/soul) be destroyed. You can, for example, have your leg bitten by a sea creature, but it will be replaced by a new one. Astral body is of totally different substance than the physical body and astral plane has different laws than the physical dimension. In the astral you can fly through hot objects (like the sun) or you can pass through walls etc. without being even slightly harmed.

Astral projection is anti-religious/satanic, and if you do it you will end up in hell.

Religious dogmas and conditionings have left a big psychological imprint on people’s personalities, making them feel fearful to even thought about any other form of spirituality that is outside of orthodox religious thinking. If you want to get to the answers about life and realities beyond this mundane life, you will have to be brave enough to question things, regardless of if you are religious person or not.

Being open for knowledge is a prerequisite for receiving it. As a matter of fact, astral travel is directly and/or indirectly mentioned in many sacred texts, such as Mahabharata, Bible, Nag Hamadi scriptures and many others. Also, all sacred texts describe the process to spiritual awakening, which in a major way consists of destroying inferior inner energies such as fear, anger, jealousy, lust etc., and by doing that you are increasing your consciousness which is trapped within those energies. Increased consciousness further results in spontaneous astral projections and waking up within dreams. The person then eventually stops dreaming altogether and is conscious the entire time their physical body is asleep. Therefore as you can logically deduct, astral travel is a completely natural ability and it occurs spontaneously in the process of spiritual awakening.

So these were just some of the many myths that exist. I may update this post with some more myths. Just bear in mind that nothing can happen to you on your astral travels, you can only gain much.

Author: Dario

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  1. It’s interesting how mch experience determines our understanding. I know what you mean with newbies being misled all the time by information spread by those without real astral experience. it’s extremely sad that these people are searching for an experience to inquire into the nature of reality and are deceived by forces against the spiritual. Personally I began to experience obe before I knew what it was and a lot of these experiences were frightening involving negative entities. I think there is some truth to the ‘idea’ that astral travel is dangerous in terms of being frightened or ‘attacked’ whilst projecting. Perhaps it is not so black and white and there should be an explanation about astral attack and protection because coming from someone who had been attacked before knowing what astral travel was that seems really important if you want people to understand astral travel isn’t dangerous but there are steps to protect yourself if you are afraid of anything. All the best.

  2. Thanks for your comment and suggestion Lex. I agree that people should be made aware about some of situations they may encounter in the astral, one of them being how to deal with negative entities and what they can do. I personally wouldn’t use the word “danger” in this context because there is no physical threat, but then again we all associate different things for each word. I will definitely write about this subject as it is important one to mention.

  3. Just a short comment on the statement that if one experiences hightened emotions, such as fear or anger, one would simply return to the body. I know that for a fact it doesn’t have to be like that, since the only time I myself have had a true astral projection /out of body experience, I was scared half to death. It all happened spontaneously and I couldn’t actually control it at all until I calmed down. It wasn’t until I reached a relaxed state of mind I could manage to lower myself back into my physical body. Now I only have one experience so I don’t in any way claim that this is how it ALWAYS is. Who knows, perhaps it is very rare to have the type of experience I had? Perhaps most people have an easier time getting back? But after my experience, I simply can’t agree to the statement. In other words, i’d change the formulation to “Each time you experience a heightened emotion like fear, elation, anger etc., you USUALLT return back to the body” or something like that. And that thing about getting stranded? Well, for a moment I really couldn’t get back. But as all it took was for me to calm down I wouldn’t say I was really stranded, just temporarily lost. =)

    Other than that, thank you for a great post!
    /JourneyMaid

    • in one of my projection i found myself in a room but i could not get out, and it came to me that i should draw a door, and i did, and that door became a doorway for me to leave

      • Thanks for sharing that tip Mikey. It’s great to hear success stories to different obstacles we may encounter in astral, such as the one you found yourself in. It’s pretty amazing how in the astral state some ideas can dawn on us which otherwise it wouldn’t so easily.

  4. Hm, I just realized that I’m a bit too tired to write, and my last comment was a bit blurry around the edges. To clarify: when I experienced an out of body experience I panicked, and couldn’t actually get back. Tried very hard and failed miserably, and stayed floating in mid air above my body until I managed to relax.

  5. Thanks for your input, journeymaid. That’s interesting that you couldn’t get back, I wonder why that is. Only such case I heard before was of Robert Monroe, but in his case it was some kind of learning. I said “always” and not “often” because statistically it is “always”. Of course, there are some few rare exceptions in everything. But this rarity doesn’t change the statistics. I’m glad you liked the post.

  6. Thank you for answering! And now you got me curious; is there actually statistics on this subject? I’ve never seem any! If so, I’d love to see the numbers, and sources…

  7. I was referring to what I observed so far when it comes to this, drawing conclusion based on experiences of other people as well as my own. I’ve heard many people mentioning a problem they have to stay outside the body due to emotions. Control over emotions is very important to have not only objective astral experience, but astral experience at all. Actually, now when I’m writing this I remembered one or several more cases where people have had the same experience as you, being in the same situation (i.e. being out of body for the first time and thinking that they are dying, and then start panicking and trying to go back to body, though having difficulty with immediate return). Might be some pattern here. But all in all it’s extremely easy to return back. Most of people unfortunately have to make super-efforts to have somewhat longer experience.

  8. Thank you, I enjoyed reading this.
    I’ve been told it’s necessary to be Vegan to enter the “High Astral” zones…what do you think about this? I became Vegan 2 months ago, and since then have only even had 1 projection! And that, though interesting, only lasted about 3 minutes! When I ate fish occasionally, and cheese, eggs etc, I was having far more projections. What could this all be about?
    Plus -I find that drinking coffee, in moderation makes NO difference (though some say it hinders A.P.) I can have a projection 10 minutes after a coffee!

    • Hi lovelygirlie,

      I’m glad you enjoyed reading this post. Personally I highly doubt that being a vegan can have any significant influence on astral travel. Healty food vs. junk food can of course play a role on our overall state of being. Proper nutrition can improve that state to a degree which helps with concentration. However, one can eat healty without becoming a vegan.

      In regards to coffee, I think this is very individual thing. What is needed for conscious astral split to occur is to be focused on a technique which keeps mind awake while body falls asleep. Some have problems with falling asleep and coffee then makes things even more difficult. Some other people don’t have that problem and can fall asleep even after drinking coffee. I personally stopped drinking coffee after noticing some artificial energies that it brings, though I really like tea 🙂

  9. wonderful information, i will refer my friends to this site

    • Thanks. I’m glad you find it beneficial.

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