This article is a continuation from the one from the previous week, in which we deal with increasing chances for astral projection, and having more conscious out-of-body experiences and lucid dreams. Last week I mentioned some important aspects such as concentration, awareness, relaxation, prayer, setting intention and goals etc. This week I will focus more on some other elements, equally important in order to start having regular astral experiences. To have such experiences on a weekly (or even daily) basis, it’s important to take this ability seriously – that’s really the only way how experiences out of the body will start to occur in your life.

If you take some famous people who succeeded with this exercises (famous in the spiritual circles), such as Robert Monroe, William Buhlman, Samael Aun Weor, etc., one thing that they all have in common is that they were very serious in, not only achieving astral projection once or twice, but practising it regularly and doing other things that help with sharpening the ability of astral projection in order to have it regularly. It is the latter that has the potential to change your life in ways unimaginable, but one needs to be serious, have pure intention, kindness, and thirst for knowledge.

So continuing from last week, another very important aspect to what we are talking about is:

Keeping a dream journal

I wanted to start by mentioning this one because it helps a lot to improve astral memory. It happens that our astral memory (which includes dream memory too) and waking life memory seems to be stored in different departments, meaning that we can easily access waking life memory, but have much more difficulty with accessing astral memory. An example to demonstrate this point is how a vivid dream can be remembered in the morning, but then completely lost in the afternoon, “never” to be remembered again. Even though it was a dream we considered important, and very vivid, it can still be lost. Same goes for conscious astral experiences – we remember them when we come back to our physical bodies, but details may be forgotten, and sometimes even the entire experiences. That’s because we haven’t worked on developing our astral memory, and that is done by keeping a dream journal.

The dynamic behind this is that by writing down dreams, we start connecting to that part of our unconscious mind, and by doing that we start remembering more and more situations and experiences that we had during sleep state. Just the simple act of writing down dreams opens the door into the unconscious mind and while writing them down, we often start remembering more and more details, not only of the dream we are writing down, but of other dreams too. The more we sharpen our astral memory, the more knowledge we will receive as to what is truly going on when we sleep.

Learning to remember dreams

Before we can even have the dream journal, it’s important to learn how to remember dreams. There are various techniques for that, and what many people find helpful is to not move when waking up in the morning, but placing attention on the last dream you had. As you focus on it you will see more and more of the dream and will be able to retrospectively go back and see other dreams that you had that night. That’s because your astral body is still partially detached from the physical, which makes it easier to stay connected to ‘the other side’ and to remember dreams. If you won’t be able to, there is a mantra that helps that’s called ‘Raom Gaom’. It’s done pronouncing it mentally by elongating the vowels: Raaaaaooooomm Gaaaaooooomm.

Main astral practice

You should have at least one main astral practice, of 45 minutes to an hour, during which you can properly practice relaxation and then continuing to concentration on an astral technique with the purpose of achieving astral projection. This practice should be done at a time of day when you are not tired, but also not too awake – there should be a dose of sleepiness present. You can experiment with different times and see which one brings you to that point of having mind awake and body asleep. For some people that is evening, for others afternoon etc.

If you are just starting out and are not used to practice for that amount of time, go gradually by starting with less and eventually reach one hour. Make sure that you are laying on your bed (or a comfy mat) on your back while feeling comfortable, but if you tend to fall asleep quickly, put more pillows under your head to be in a semi-recline position.

Many people do the mistake of doing the main practice of astral projection when they go to sleep at night. The reason why this is not ideal is because due to tiredness they soon roll over and go to sleep, instead of dedicating appropriate time to the practice.

Visualizing a place as you are falling asleep

In one of his books, Samael Aun Weor has written the following advice for reaching conscious astral split : “At the time of falling asleep, concentrate thy imagination and thy Will intensely, united in vibrant harmony, on a certain place or location. Concentration should be perfect and then begin walking with faith in the “imagined” place. You should not imagine that you are imagining, because the experiment will then fail. One should really feel oneself at the imagined place and totally forget the bedroom. This experiment should be done during the state of transition between vigil and sleep and once at that place, kneel and ask thy own internal God to take you to the Holy Gnostic Church, which is the great Cathedral of the Soul and the temple in which the Solar Logos, our Lord, the Christ, officiates.”

Affirmations

Affirmations are repetitive words or phrases that are used for various purposes when it comes to self-training, in order for a desired goal to stick in the subconscious mind and act as a reminder, or to strengthen will and intention. In the context of astral travel, one could repeat to oneself with strength, pure intention and conviction phrases such as: “When I go to sleep, I will become conscious in the astral plane”, or “Tonight I will have conscious astral experience”, or “Every time I fall asleep, my consciousness awakens in the astral plane” etc. This can be useful to both repeat out loud, and/or silently within oneself, and/or writing it down on a piece of paper, but every time you do it remember to do it consciously and intentionally.

Conserving sexual, emotional, and mental energies

This is a bit harder to do if you are not practising Gnostic (or genuine esoteric) teachings of a modern Gnostic master (such as Samael Aun Weor) that explain in details how this is done (related to being hermetically sealed, and having psychological centres balanced). If the energy is not wasted in reactions to inner and outer impressions, then we have more energy on our disposal that can greatly affect the practices of astral projection, lucid dreaming, as well as keeping oneself conscious in the astral plane for a longer time.

Trying to sleep on the back

This is a little more difficult because most people are used to sleeping on the side, but it’s worthwhile experimenting with this. I remember I had some interesting experiences of astral body separating from my physical body when I tried sleeping on the back. On an unconscious level we tend to be more attentive of the process of sleep when the body is in such position, and when we fall asleep we can suddenly be awakened by the sensation of our astral body floating out.

Not moving when waking up in the morning in order to try to project

If when you wake up in the morning you don’t move at all and immediately upon awakening you focus on a technique of astral projection with the intention of having conscious astral experience, there is a high chance that you would achieve it. The reason for this is that at the moment of waking up from sleep, we are still for some short time disconnected from our physical body, and the consciousness is still not merged with the physical body. This opportunity can be used for conscious exit. The split in such scenario would occur in the manner of seconds or minutes, provided you do it right.

Continued in Part III

HDP, December 2018.