Astral Travel

Have you ever arrived somewhere you are sure you have never been before and then found there was something very familiar about that place?  Perhaps you then even remember that you dreamed you visited it before.  That has certainly happened to me.  It is a phenomenon generally known as déjà vu.

Most people will try to explain déjà vu away and say there is nothing "magical" about it.  One explanation commonly given is that there is a glitch in the way memories are stored in the brain.  The immediate memory of something experienced only a few seconds ago, or even a few fractions of a second ago, somehow becomes confused and associated with much older memories.

This may, in fact, be a genuine explanation of déjà vu in many cases.  But it is not always the real explanation.

The reality, I strongly believe, is that when we sleep it is possible for our mind and spirit to disassociate itself from our body and travel to places we may never have visited physically.  This is called "astral travel".

Many people use the term "astral travel" to mean only this kind of experience - travelling in your "dream body" to a physically real place.  I certainly believe this is possible, but to me it is only a small and perhaps even unimportant aspect of astral travel.  To me, astral travel is the same as what is often called "lucid dreaming".  In other words, being aware while I am dreaming that this is a dream, and then taking control of where I go and what happens in that dream.

My last blog article referred to the importance of play.  What if you could play in any way you wished?  In a lucid dream you can!  There are no limitations.  None at all.  You really can do whatever you want!

What if you could, for example, decide to launch yourself into the air, flying over the countryside, and then landing wherever you wished?  Not in a machine of any kind, but simply launching your body into the air without any mechanical aids?  Would that be fun?  It certainly is for me!  Maybe you would find it fun too!  This is something you can easily do in a dream state if you realize you are dreaming and are in control of the dream.

But lucid dreaming is not just about flying to places real and imaginary.  It is, in my view, all about play.  The best form of play.  A chance to experiment without having to worry about the consequences.

The reality is that all of us are playing that way in our dreams anyway.  It is just we are not aware we are playing and therefore cannot get full enjoyment from the play.  Scientists have discovered that all mammals dream, and it seems they use their dreams to test ways of reacting.  If you are a pet owner you have probably observed this.  For example, you may have seen your cat making involuntary movements that are apparently caused by chasing a mouse even though she is not actually awake and running and there is no mouse.  Or your dog chasing a cat.  Scientists have observed and measured these involuntary movements and confirmed what we as pet owners suspected was happening.  Nature has given us all a dream world to allow us to play and to test what strategies may work and what strategies will not.  We can test these strategies in absolute safety.  If the result is that we are almost certainly going to be killed or injured, that happens in the safety of the dream, leaving us alive and healthy to try a different strategy.

You are already playing in your dreams.  So why not take things one stage further and become aware of that play?  Learn to dream lucidly and start enjoying limitless play in the safe environment of your personal dream world.

The Science of Dreams

Photo by Marcin Mycielski

If you have come here for a course in dream interpretation you will be disappointed.  I do believe dream interpretation is a valid and useful discipline, and I am sure I will write a blog on this some time, but that is not the purpose of this blog article.

I want to focus on the purpose of dreams.  Why do we have them?  What purpose do they serve?

Science now knows that dreams fulfil a very important purpose.  They are a way for your mind to experiment with many different scenarios in a no risk environment.  This goes right back to our primitive ancestry when we needed to find better ways to hunt for our food and at the same time to avoid becoming the food of our predators.  In a dream we could try out different techniques and see the likely effect of those techniques.  Our dream mechanism is very good at mimicking the environment we are testing and responding in ways that environment might respond in a real situation.  Our ancestors would test one set of techniques, recognize the weaknesses, and modify them to make them more effective and less risky.  All in the security of a dream world rather than the real world.

If you have a cat or dog you have probably noticed your pet dreaming.  Probably your cat is dreaming of chasing a bird or mouse, and your dog is dreaming of chasing a cat.  This is not simply play, or a memory of some "real" life experience, but your pet is testing different ways to chase its prey and seeing which ones are more effective.  This use of dreams as a kind of sandbox (to use a computer programming example) is not exclusively human but is common throughout the animal kingdom.

This continues to be the role of our dreams even today.  We face very different challenges from our ancestors, but can still use the same "sandbox" to test different responses to those challenges.  When we find what appears to be the best response, our subconscious notes this and then prompts us to use it in "real" life.  The challenges may, for example, be the best way to conduct a sales negotiation, or how best to convince our children to behave properly.  They may be how best to start that new business we have been considering starting over the past few months, how to convince that young lady or young man we fancy that they should go on a date with us, or how to achieve some other goal for which we have a burning desire.

Some notable scientific discoveries have arisen from this dream testing technique.  For example, the German organic chemist August Kekulé discovered the structure of benzene in a dream.  In that dream he saw a snake chasing its tail and suddenly realized the benzene molecule was ring shaped.  This might not seem an example of testing different structures in a dream, but I am quite sure that is what was actually happening below the surface.  All Kekulé remembered was the final answer, hidden within powerful imagery (which is often the way dreams give us the final answer to whatever we have been testing in them).  But there would have been plenty of other structures which he had tested in his dreams and which turned out not to be the correct answer.  As is very often the case with this very efficient system, the only dream he remembered was the one that gave him the right answer.

Is there any way we can use this knowledge of how dreams work in order to improve the system?  I believe there is.  Firstly, simply by being aware of it then it is more likely we will unconsciously send instructions into the dream world to test for what we really want to know or do.  Secondly, we can try to experience lucid dreaming, or being aware that we are dreaming, and then actively test out our concerns.

Linked very closely to the idea of lucid dreaming is the skill of astral travelling - experiencing something beyond the physical realm through out of body experiences.

The eminent American psychologist Dr Steve G Jones, who has extensively practised astral travel, has produced a fascinating 6 part free course on astral travel.  You can access it here:

Astral Projection

Mental Fields

If you are like most people you probably believe your mind is in your brain.  But is that really the case?  Many people (myself NOT included) believe the mind is simply a result of electrical activity in the brain.  If this is the case, then it is logical to assume it is centred in and around the brain.  Notice, though, my inclusion of the word "around".  Think of it more like a magnetic field, which expands beyond the physical magnet itself - sometimes well beyond.  My own belief is that as the mind is not a physical state at all there is no reason why it should be limited to a particular physical location at all, although I accept that much of the time we will tend to focus our "mental field" around our brain, if only because this is what we are conditioned to do.

Once you accept even the limited expansion of "around the brain" rather than "in the brain" this opens up many interesting possibilities.

Consider telepathy.

This is an ability which is often scorned by those who have not studied it deeply.  They believe it is completely unscientific to propose an ability to read someone else's mind.  I agree we do not yet have scientific proof that this ability exists, and perhaps we never will.  But that is very different from suggesting it is not possible for it to exist.  If the mind is like a magnetic field, extending beyond the brain, then it is not at all illogical to imagine the intersection of two such mental fields allowing an exchange of information between the two minds.

Have you ever felt your skin crawl and then turned to see someone staring at you?  Or stared at a sleeping pet that immediately opens its eyes and stares back at you?  Could these incidents perhaps be explained by the intersection of the two mental fields?

Or how about telekinesis?

Again, if the mind is like a magnetic field and extends beyond your body, why should it not be possible for it to have the power to move objects just as a magnet can do.  And as we are talking here of a "mental field" rather than a "magnetic field" there is no reason why this ability should be limited to magnetisable objects.

Telekinesis is, of course, rather a trivial power.  The mind has much more relevant powers than a party trick like this.

The power to connect with Universal power for example.  Check out my earlier article on healing for one way in which this can be used.  But the power is not, of course, limited to healing.  The idea of linking with Universal power and using it to achieve goals you have set yourself or simply to become a better person is, in my view, perfectly sound, and the method (moving your mind out of your body to merge with the Light of the Universe) quite naturally falls in line with this "mental field" concept.

Astral travelling is another concept that makes a lot of sense once you can accept that your mental field is not limited to one narrow physical space.

Acknowledging your mind is not limited physically can be a real paradigm shift.  Open up your mind today and see where this takes you!