Class Notes

Out of Body Experiences: How to have them and what to expect

or, "Who wants to be an astral traveler?"

Wainwright House - June 4, 2000 10:00am-5:00pm

9:00 - 10:00 Music: "Beethoven's Last Night" by Trans-Siberian Orchestra

10:00 - 11:00 Introduction

Who am I?

Class information

What is an Out-of-Body Experience (OBE)?

My Childhood

First Contact

Beliefs Blown to Bits

Pokes and Prods

My first OBE

Eventually I learned how to leave my body. How?

Why did I write the book?

Format of the class

Break every hour - PLEASE REMIND ME.

(Break)

11:00 - 11:45 - OBE Foundations

There are lots of ways to have an OBE. The first way is thru NDE, but don't recommend it! I agree with Professor Charles Tart who wrote something to that effect in the foreword to my book. The other OBE methods all employ one of three devices.

I'll try to cover and teach all three in this class.

Exercise 1 - Prayer

Background:

OBE preparation

Before you can build a house, you've got to dig the basement, lay the foundation, etc.

Before you go out and play golf, you've got to learn the rules, the etiquette, how to hold the golf club, what to wear and so on. So now I'd like to lay the foundation for your OBEs.

What happens during an OBE?

The physiology of sleep (What happens during sleep).

Brain Waves 101:

Brain waves measure the electrical activity at the surface of the brain. They don't tell you anything about what's happening deeper inside the brain.

The stages of sleep are:

Awake - Alpha and beta brain waves

Stage 1 Sleep - The initial stage into falling asleep (2-5% of a normal night of sleep: 1-5 minutes)

Stage 2 Sleep (45-55% of a normal night of sleep: 10-15 minutes)

Stage 3 Sleep - Deep, dreamless "slow wave" sleep (10-25% for Stage 3 and 4: )

Stage 4 Sleep - Deeper, dreamless sleep

Stage 5 Sleep - REM (dreaming) sleep (20-25% of a normal night of sleep)

The Dance of DHEA/Melatonin.


























Where to practice

What to wear

Conditions

Things to avoid

Distractions

Position

Fears

Exercise 2: Resolving Fears

Background: Fears can (a) prevent you from having an OBE, (b) lead you to prematurely end the OBE, or (c) create negative experiences.

11:45 - Noon - Changing your belief system:

Exercise 3: Altering your beliefs

Background: Your beliefs create your reality. You are an astral traveler. Believe it. Live it. Take ownership of it. Say to yourself, "I am an astral traveler." Change your inner dialogue!

Over the lunch break, try to change your beliefs to allow for astral travel.

12:00 - 12:30 - The subconscious connection:

Next, I want to talk about the subconscious. Before I start talking about this, can someone please remind me when it's 12:15? There's something very important I need to do at 12:15. Please; it's very important.

I'll talk about the subconscious first, because you should start doing those exercises ASAP.

There are several methods of communicating with your subconscious:

Someone reminded me that it was 12:15. Addressing the person who reminded me:

Most people use their subconscious sporadically, if at all. They don't pay attention to what it says. They don't use it consciously. Start actively using your subconscious!

Exercise 4: Training your subconscious - Affirmations

Background: The subconscious can take you out of body any time. Make your desire its desire.

Close your eyes. Say to yourself, "I'm going to start having out-of-body experiences." Imagine yourself leaving your body. See yourself peeling away from your body. Now you are floating. Look back and you can see your body. Ask yourself, "Is that what I want?" Answer, "Yes." Again: Imagine yourself out of your body. Ask yourself, "Is that what I want?" Answer, "Yes." Feel your intense desire to leave the body. Do not affirm that you are in a state of lacking. Just feel the desire. Now remind yourself: In ten minutes, I've got to remember to do this again. Convince yourself of the importance of experiencing an OBE.

12:30 - 1:30 - Lunch Break

1:30 - 2:00 - The Lucid Dream Connection

Welcome back. Did everyone have a good lunch? At the beginning of the class, I mentioned three ways of achieving OBE: Turning Lucid Dreams into OBEs, Subconscious training, and Conscious induction. We talked about the subconscious. Now I want to talk about lucid dreams. The easiest way for most people to have an OBE is through the mechanism of the lucid dream. First I want to talk about the difference between dreams, lucid dreams and OBEs.

Exercise 5: Training for Lucid Dreams

Background: You can turn lucid dreams into OBEs by dispelling the dream illusion.

Once again, employ the subconscious to help you. Ask yourself constantly, "Am I dreaming?" Every time you look at your watch or check the time: Ask yourself, "Am I dreaming?" Don't pay lip service to this. Do some serious reality checking. Ask yourself questions: Is this a normal situation? All kinds of questions. Question reality. Am I seeing the real world? Can this possibly be a dream? Entertain the idea. Test reality.

Do this affirmation: My nightmares are dreams. When faced with something scary, I swear to God I will face it and not run away or hide from it. If you are ever in a scary situation, ask yourself, "Could be a dream?" If it's a dream, you don't need to be afraid of it, do you? You can face it down. Once you realize it's a dream, you can say "enough." "I'm not playing this game." I'm hallucinating. I demand to see real thing.

Conscious OBE Induction

Now let's talk about consciously induced OBEs.

2:00 - 2:30 - Relaxation

The first important thing to know is how to relax.

Exercise 6: Relaxation exercise

Background: Your body needs to be as relaxed as possible to consciously induce an OBE.

(Break)

2:30 - 3:00 - Quiescing the mind (stopping the internal dialogue)

Once you've learned how to relax properly, the next step is something I call "quiescing the mind."

The astral doorway is very tiny. Here's a picture to illustrate my point:















Your consciousness is like this brick wall. To get out of your body, you need to squeeze through this tiny hole in the center. Your conscious mind is filled with noise. Symbolically, it takes up about half of this brick wall. How do you get a balloon into a bottle? Deflate it. Likewise, to induce an OBE, you need to reduce your mind to a tiny pinpoint of awareness. You need to make your consciousness as tiny as possible so it can pass through the hole.

I like to think that's what Jesus Christ meant when he said that it was easier for a camel to pass through the needle's eye than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Why? Because when you're rich, you have lots of distractions. Your mind is busy. Let's do an exercise:

Exercise 7: Quiescing exercise

(I press some buttons on the CD player, but no sound comes out. I wait. Nothing.)

3:00 - 3:30 - Keys to conscious OBE

Next topic: The keys to conscious OBE. In my book, I listed the keys to conscious OBE as:

State of mind:

When it comes to inducing OBEs, it's important to withdraw your attention from the outside world and completely ignore all sensory inputs coming from your physical body. It's equally important to turn your attention inward, accepting inputs strictly from non-physical sources.

Realism:

It's important to "focus to such a degree that it all becomes real." At first glance it might sound like self-deception. You're purposely trying to use your mind to make imaginary things seem real, and that's supposed to magically transport you to another world. But all the visualizations and mind games are really just mental devices to free you from your body. They are means of tricking your mind into letting go of your body.

Motion:

People have a hard time reconciling how I can talk about inducing OBEs by performing exercises like visualizations while simultaneously "quiescing" my mind to the point of complete inactivity. To them, it sounds as if there is a fundamental contradiction between the action (visualizing) and the non-action (keeping the mind still). Since my swaying motion and the visualizations are set up in my mind to be in perpetual motion, I don't have to use my conscious mind to maintain them. After I start the swaying motion and visualizations and direct them mentally to keep running, then my mind is free to stop all activity and become an observer. I stop all thought processes and watch the swaying increase until the momentum literally throws me out of my body.

Receptivity:

Ideally, you should remain receptive. You should open yourself up completely to whatever new sensations you feel. This complete openness can leave you feeling very vulnerable, and vulnerability can cause fear and worry, both of which will thwart your efforts to induce an OBE. That's why it's important to conquer your fear. After you start the swaying motion, you should wait with quiet anticipation for whatever comes.

Passivity:

It's important to remain passive (i.e. "not doing anything") especially the closer you get to the OBE state. Action ("doing") implies using your physical body, whether it's your brain (the act of thinking or feeling), or other more physical actions. During OBE practice, you might be tempted to analyze what's happening to you, or wonder if you're doing something wrong, but by waiting to organize data ("not-doing") until after the experience (or even until you're separated from your body), you are much more likely to successfully induce an OBE. Of course, once you're out of your body, you can "do" whatever you want.

I've got an article on this topic on my web site if anyone is interested.

(Break)

3:30 - 5:00 - Techniques

Too many people focus on the techniques and not on the preparation. I believe the techniques are secondary to everything else: The preparation, the frame of mind, the relaxation, etc. If you're in the proper state of mind and focused, OBE seems like child's play. If you're not, it seems impossible. It doesn't matter what technique you use: There are hundreds of them out there. They're all devices (mind tools) that trick your mind into letting go of the body. What does matter is achieving that perfect state of mind.

Exercise 9: Imaginary vibrations (Buzzing exercise)

Background: Legendary OBEer Sylvan Muldoon believed the soul is harmonically attuned to the body, but at a much higher frequency. Music example: Low "C" and middle "C" are the same note, separated by octaves. Play both on a piano and they sound pretty good. But play "C" and "D" and there is discord. Likewise, raise the vibrations of your soul, and it might just separate from your body. Everybody close your eyes. Imagine that your body and soul are both vibrating like two notes on a piano: they are in sync. Now imagine that the vibrations of your soul start to slowly increase in pitch. Your soul starts vibrating faster and faster. The frequency gets higher and higher. Pretty soon, the pitch becomes so high and out of sync that your soul is literally rattled free of your body.

(Everyone talk about their experiences.)

Exercise 10: Yo-yo Visualization

Background: Thoughts are projections of consciousness to a certain degree. If you think about a friend, I believe you are sending a certain non-physical part of yourself to that friend. Close your eyes and imagine that there is a yo-yo attached to the place where your eyebrows meet, your third eye. Now slowly push the yo-yo out in front of you. Then retract it back again. Push it out again. Retract it again. Do this several times. As you get more comfortable with this, increase the speed. You should be able to push and retract (a complete cycle) in about one second.

(Everyone talk about their experiences.)

Exercise 11: Imaginary Rocking Exercises

Background: Thoughts are projections of consciousness to a certain degree.

Exercise 12: Chapter 24's Method

Background: My most successful OBE method.

Additional Techniques:

Handling The Vibrations

Additional Hints and Notes:

OBE: Body: Deep trance, Mind: Alert, Meditation: Body: Light trance, Mind: Deep.

If you're not achieving OBE, then keep changing the way you practice. Change all the variables. Change the position you are in. For example, when I'm on my side, I usually fall asleep, but when I'm on my back, I remain awake due to conditioning. Try changing the how close you let yourself get to sleep each time. Try changing what you focus on each time.

It's very common for a person to have a good measure of initial success at OBE, only to suffer major setbacks later. You may recall from my book that I got really lucky with my first encounter with the vibrations on my first OBE attempt. After that, I practiced every night for a solid month with no OBE results. Weird sensations, yes, but not OBE results. Then after a month of practice, I had my first full OBE, but that was BY ACCIDENT. I kept trying and kept trying, and never lost hope, but my next OBEs were just as hard to get. At first I had about one or two OBEs a month.

If you go into OBE practice with a negative or pessimistic attitude, you will fail. If you remain positive, be persistent, and patient, you may succeed. I believe that everyone can do OBE. You really shouldn't judge yourself by your OBE success or failure, because it's a tough trap to get out of. If you do, each time you fail, it becomes a spiral of failure and depression because you end up setting yourself up to fail. Your belief creates your reality, especially when it comes to the astral. So try to view every practice attempt as "starting over." Go into it with an inquisitive attitude of fun. Try going into it just to see what happens. It might be your own expectations and/or beliefs that are causing you to fail. So temporarily suspend your self-judgement until after you are done practicing.

Final questions?

Postscript

5:00 - 6:00 - Book Signing

Recommended reading:

Peterson, Robert: Out of Body Experiences: How to Have Them and What to Expect

Bruce, Robert: Astral Dynamics

Buhlman, William: Adventures Beyond the Body

Monroe, Robert: Journeys Out of the Body