What Out-of-Body Experiences Are
In out-of-body experiences the physical body is left behind and what is non-physical continues. This happens in dreams, in astral projection, in near-death experiences, and at death.
A dream is an out-of-body experience, but one in which there is no self-awareness. In dreams the perception of what’s around is usually covered or distorted by the projections of the subconscious, which means that what’s really there is not seen and there is no questioning of where one is.
Lucid Dreams
When someone knows they’re in a dream, it’s called lucid dreaming. When someone knows they’ve come out of their body, it’s called astral projection. If it is due to life threatening illness, it’s called a near-death experience. They’re all out-of-body experiences.
If someone is self-aware in a dream, and they know where they are, then they are having a conscious out-of-body experience. If they are just in the subconscious and are not self aware, then they are dreaming.
Normal Dreaming
Dreams happen when the body is asleep because the mind dreams here in the physical world while the body is awake. In dreams the images in the mind, in the subconscious, merge with and obliterate the perceptions from the astral senses, while in daily life the subconscious causes the external world to be perceived with the colorations of thoughts, feelings, images and emotions.
When going to sleep at night, the body is left behind and the state of daydreaming doesn’t really stop. But being without a body, there is no three-dimensional world to bring the psyche back to reality, so existence becomes the daydream. Effectively a person exists in dreams with consciousness submerged in thoughts, feelings, images, and emotions.
What is real can sometimes be seen in dreams and that’s how there are teachings, experiences of real places and premonitions. Normally however, the subconscious interferes and prevents a person seeing reality. The way to change this is to be more aware in daily life. By being more aware here, consciousness is more aware in dreams; it’s a simple equation. Daydreams go on almost constantly and they are the sleep of perception.
Q. What is the astral plane and how is it different from the physical world?
The astral plane is another dimension of this life. It’s one of two planes of the fifth dimension; the other is higher and is called the mental plane. The astral world is of the emotions; the mental is of mind. The fourth dimension is time. The fifth dimension is beyond time—it’s eternity.
Everything that we see here has its counterpart there. It’s the same world, it’s just another dimension of this one, and that’s why it looks like this.
When things are projected from the subconscious, what’s experienced is a self created world. The astral plane may often look very different from the physical world, but that’s usually because it’s seen as dreams. The objective astral plane looks just like this dimension.
It has different laws and different beings inhabit it. The fifth dimension serves its purpose for life and awakening, just as the three-dimensional one does.
Can you meet others that you know in your physical life: friends, family, etc. in the astral plane, or while you’re having a lucid dream, or an out-of-body experience?
Yes, you can have an out-of-body experience and meet someone over there, and when you come back to your body, you can talk about the experience, and as long as they were self-aware there, it’ll be a shared experience between you.
If someone isn’t aware of being there, but is dreaming, then they’ll see you through the subconscious projections of their mind. So for example, if they’re dreaming about being in a football stadium and you go and see them, they may not see you, or, they may just see you in a football stadium in a dream, because they’re only able to grasp bits of what actually happens.
So, it depends on the level of awareness a person has at the time of the dream as to how much they’re able to see of someone who projects and meets them while out of the body.
Why would someone want to investigate things in the astral plane?
Because we can get information over there that we can’t get here. For example, you can find out about death in a way which is impossible to do here. Here you just see a physical body, but there you can see the person who has left that body.
Likewise, you can find out information about other beings which exist. You can find out all kinds of mysteries which are impossible to discover in this physical world. Great teachings of the world come from the higher dimensions, and you can get spiritual teachings yourself directly if you’re out of your body.
Why are these dreams and other experiences in this astral plane so symbolic?
Symbolism is a universal language; it’s used in the higher dimensions and therefore in dreams. There are things which can be said in symbols that can’t be said in words. Words are limited in the esoteric wisdom they can convey, whereas symbols can have a greater depth and meaning.
Symbols are a universal language spoken in higher dimensions. This language is written in ancient sacred sites and in teachings of the past, and it’s a gradual process to understand it. Symbols also protect the knowledge from the uninitiated by hiding it in a language the public doesn’t understand. In this way knowledge can be imparted to the more spiritually advanced initiates, while protecting it from those who would trash it and try to harm the initiates. If you were to walk the path to enlightenment, you would become one of a small number of people that are able to get secret teachings and tap into hidden knowledge out of the body and in dreams.
How do you know that what we experience in the astral plane is real and not just a figment of our imagination?
Because you can test things between here and there, and you can verify that it’s real. For example, you can project out of your body and go and check somewhere, or see something you’ve never seen before, which you can easily verify later. If you do, you’ll discover that what’s in this physical world is in the astral plane too. It becomes obvious that you’ve had an objective out-of-body experience and that what exists over there is real.
What does it mean if we dream that we are flying through space?
It can mean that you were actually traveling through space, because dreams take place in the astral plane, and there we do travel. When dreaming, everyone goes to many different places. If you can remember your dreams, you can recall the different places that you’ve been to.
Many people have dreams that seem to show future events that eventually come true—how and why does this happen?
This is unexplainable in conventional scientific terms. There are premonitions happening in people’s dreams all over the world, and they have happened throughout history.
The reason why premonitions occur in dreams is that time is different in the higher dimensions, and there is a causal mechanism which moves action from there to here, so many events happen first “over there” and then gradually permeate here. When I say “over there”, I mean in the world of the sixth dimension (known as the causal plane), not the fifth dimension (eternity), where dreams occur. There are seven dimensions; many events happen in the higher ones and permeate down, until they eventually reach this one.
When someone has a premonition in their dream, they’re getting information from something which has already happened over there, or they see something that comes from the higher dimensions where events are known to be moving in a certain direction, or where there are causal mechanisms (actions taking place that inevitably lead to a result), and so the event is seen in a dream it before it actually materializes here.
Some people dream about being another person even, living in another era or country for example. Can you explain what all of this is about?
It could come from the subconscious, or have a symbolic meaning, or it could be something which they had lived through many years ago. Every event that happens here is stored and forms what’s called the Akashic records. When you’re in these records, it’s as though you’re actually living in that time.
If you’re trying to understand dreams or astral experiences of these kinds, you need to be able to distinguish the difference between objective experiences and projections of your own subconscious. By tackling the subconscious during daily life you can free yourself from it gradually, weakening its influence here, and therefore weakening its influence over there, and then you can see what actually happens over there.
Can I take control of or create my own dreams?
Yes, to do that you either have to be aware when you are dreaming, or knowingly influence your dreams with what you do in daily life.
It takes training to do something in the physical world that has an impact in dreams. If you wanted to do it, you could train yourself to do something that will trigger you to remember to question where you are when you’re dreaming. You could for example keep asking yourself whether you are in the physical world or in the dream world at many times during the day. Combine this with doing something that can only be done in the dream world, like jumping in the air and floating or pulling your finger and seeing it stretch. Or jump up in the air every time you see the stars and question which dimension you are in. These get recorded in the subconscious, and you’ll eventually do the same thing and question in your dreams, only you’ll realize you’re in a dream and will be conscious in the astral plane.
When you do wake up in the astral plane, don’t waste the experience by trying to create your own reality there. That is just imagining something and making it appear as real, instead of being clear and objective so your astral experience is of what is real, and you can learn there.
You can create things from your subconscious. So for example, if you imagine a yellow car outside your house and concentrate on it, then it can appear. It won’t be real though obviously; it’s a projection of the mind, which wastes the opportunity to see what’s actually there. To explore life outside the body, it’s better to be objective and to see things as they are.
You can also change what happens in your dreams generally by doing different things and by changing yourself. As you change here, you change in your dreams as well.
Why can’t we always remember our dreams?
There are many reasons why. First of all, the state of awareness during the day can be pretty low; there can be strong daydreams with feelings and emotions turning over and over with hypnotic power – robbing awareness of the three-dimensional world. When that happens in dreams, the effect of the subconscious projections is very strong, submerging everything, and creating bad dreams. Because the subconscious is so strong, those dreams tend not to remembered — unless they become very negative, and become nightmares, which wake you up.
Being in heavy ego states throughout the day drags a person into low subconscious states which makes the consciousness more asleep. In dreams these states drag a person into low subconscious regions where bad dreams happen and where dreams cannot easily be remembered. Consciousness requires the practice of alchemy to shine, and without creating higher spiritual bodies, it has no substance holding it and it wanders lower regions where mental forms create an illusory reality and sinister forces and influences permeate the psyche.
Another reason could be that the memory may not have been trained to remember them, or a person is not trying to remember their dreams.
It’s difficult to remember dreams if you get straight up out of bed as soon as you wake up. But if you lie still when you wake up and try to remember, then you can remember them better. Another reason could be disturbed sleep, or getting to bed too late.
There are many reasons why dreams aren’t remembered. If you understand the reasons and tackle them one-by-one, dreams will become a valuable source of learning.
Who’s responsible for giving these symbols, these teachings you speak of?
If you go out of the body you’ll find that you’re not alone, that there are other beings over there. They have been mentioned in different religions and spiritual teachings. They are either spiritual beings that have awakened in light or evil entities that have awakened in darkness.
There are some that have awakened spiritually from a human existence, while others are monads who are spiritual in their very nature and were formed so.
What are the Akashic records? Are they a place where everything that happens is recorded?
You may be fortunate enough that your astral experience takes you to the Akashic records, which are files of nature where every single event that has ever happened is recorded and stored.
When you actually go into the Akashic records, what happens is that you appear in the place and time of the record. So let’s say you take out an Akashic file from a Roman period, you would then find yourself not looking at it like some kind of movie of those files, but you would be back in the time and place of an ancient land. In one of my earliest out-of-body experiences, I projected out of my body and went straight back in time to the early 1960s to my bedroom. It was exactly as it was when I was a child, but I was there as I am here now in just the same way.
However, if you do go into the astral plane, you can’t expect it to be exactly as you want it to be because there are other sets of rules. You have to watch out for dreams from the subconscious that can convince you that you are seeing records from the past, but which are actually just projections from your own subconscious.
That’s why you should be as aware as you can be when having an out-of-body experience, so that you see what’s there. If you try to will it too much, you can easily project a fantasy from the mind, which becomes as though something real but actually isn’t.
Do people heal from the other side to here?
Not so much ordinary people, but spiritual beings heal from that dimension, because the dimensions interpenetrate, they go down to the tiniest level where the dimensions meet. So a being from the other side can heal through the fifth dimension to this one. Spiritual beings have a great power to heal.
Is there anything to be frightened about when having out-of-body experiences?
Going into the unknown can give rise to a lot of fear; in fact, it’s an elementary fear, the fear of the unknown. But everyone goes into the astral plane every single night when asleep and people don’t die because of it, or get stuck there, or anything like that—everyone comes back naturally, we are attached to the physical body with a silver cord that brings us back every night. It’s only cut at death, so don’t worry, you’ll come back.
There are things there however that can frighten people. You might have heard of scary stories of people meeting sinister beings while they were having an OBE. It’s because there is light and darkness in the universe, and some beings awaken for good and some for evil; there’s a positive and negative side. On the negative side are the inferior dimensions—if you’ve ever had a nightmare you’ve experienced the inferior dimensions. These are referred to as ‘hells’ or ‘abysses’ in various religions. If you’ve had a nightmare, you’ve actually been to hell.
There are parts within each person that take the psyche to the abyss and link them to that region. This is part of what you can discover in the astral plane, and there are things you can do to protect yourself against those sorts of negative influences.
It’s something to be aware of—once you are aware of it then you can start to overcome the fear of it—but it’s the fear of the unknown, which is the biggest problem. Once you have had enough out-of-body experiences, you’ll probably to get over that fear and a different dimension is open to you.
There are things going on that are unknown to most of humanity. If you’ve consciously been to the other side, you may want to tell others about what you’ve seen, but you can never show them your own experience. Whoever wants to understand life beyond the physical plane should astral project and go to the higher dimensions and see beyond the three-dimensional world for themselves.
~ A talk by Belsebuub given in Berkeley, California 2007
