“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

19
Out-of-Body Experiences from the Dream State

From 1963 until 1966, Rob and I worked alone, holding the twice-weekly sessions and following Seth’s instructions. I had several spontaneous out-of-body experiences during Seth sessions and while doing the exercise Seth calls psy-time. These checked out in physical reality and are recorded in my book, The Seth Material. Some of these episodes concerned strangers who had written to me. In out-of-body states, I correctly described distant environments giving specific, checkable information. Such instances did much to convince me that projections were not just imaginative dramatizations.

In the meantime, we joined a book club that dealt with psychic phenomena. Much to my amazement, their literature listed several books on projection. We ordered Oliver Fox’s Astral Projection. Astonished, I discovered that my experiences followed his rather closely, even though most of my projections to that date had been spontaneous. I decided to do more deliberate experimentation from the dream state by napping during the day — something I hadn’t thought of earlier.

Following Seth’s instructions, I was learning to recognize when I was dreaming while I was dreaming, manipulate dream events if I wanted to, leave my body and separate halluncinations from reality.

“Dream Bodies”

For all practical purposes, of course, you will usually find yourself in some sort of body form in your out-of-body experiences. These are a necessary camouflage, for you cannot yet think of identity without some kind of body, so you project in such a form. It varies according to your abilities, and without it, you would feel lost indeed. The form itself is not important, but it can tell you something about the dimension in which you are having the experience.

The dream body is the one with which you are most familiar. It has been called the astral body. It strikes you as being physical when you are in it, but you can do things with it that can’t be done ordinarily. You can levitate, for example. As a rule, however, you do not go through walls with this body. This is the body you use for ordinary dreams. Levitation is possible with it but on a limited basis.

When you enter a different dimension, the abilities of the body form change, and for all intents and purposes, it is a different body form — which we will now call a mind form. It still seems physical in shape, but you can walk through physical matter with it. You can levitate much more freely, traveling within the solar system. But you cannot go further with it.

At physical death, after the last reincarnation, then the normal form is the dream body, and excursions are made from this point. It is possible, as mentioned, to suddenly switch from the third form to the dream body, but with a considerable jolt to consciousness.

(Since Seth makes further reference to this incident, I’ll describe it briefly, though waking projections will not generally be discussed in this book which is devoted to dreams and related material. I was so reassured by Fox’s experiences that I instantly tried to project from a waking state. I lay down on the bed to support my body, closed my eyes and used all my will-power to eject myself out. Almost at once, and I must admit, much to my astonishment, I succeeded. There was a wrench, almost painful, a click at the back of my neck and I found myself flying through a window at seemingly incredible speed, out of the house at second floor level, gaining altitude and heading over Water Street toward the mountains in the distance. My head felt bursting with pressure. Fully alert and conscious, I was terrified of falling.

Here, as I told Rob later, the “brave experimenter” quite simply panicked. I was scared stiff; I’d bitten off quite a bit more than I could chew. At the moment I panicked, I was suddenly pulled backward through the air faster than I’d come, if that was possible. This frightened me more than the forward flight. This time, there was a strange, very loud noise, like the magnified twang of a rubber band or cable that seemed to be reeling me back in. I actually hit my physical body with a shock, my physical head and neck banging up and down on the pillow, so that my shoulders and neck were stiff for a week.

I realized only later that the cord or cable I’d felt was the astral cord. The experience put me off enough that for some time following I always used a light trance or dream framework for projections. Now Seth said:)

Now, when you project from the dream body, consciously you are already outside of the physical one. You have already made the initial change away from physical focus. The mass of valid projections are made from the dreaming body. When the excursion is over, the return to the dream body is made with no strain, you see, for the ego is little concerned. In many such cases, however, the knowledge is not available to the waking self.

That particular experience was my most “shocking,” and I’m just as glad it happened in the beginning. Later, I always specified that I wanted to get out of my body in my room or apartment or go to another specific location. Very rarely do you go wide-awake, speeding out of your body like a rocket. Dream projections are quite different, in any case, and the ego is already protected, as mentioned by Seth.

But nothing happened. He just hung there. Suddenly he realized that he was out of his body and didn’t know what to do next. He yelled out for me, but I was in my physical body, humming merrily out in the kitchen, and I never heard a thing. Desperately, Rob wished for some support, and quite spontaneously he created a child’s scooter that appeared beneath him. He could see the yard and garage clearly but the image of a grown-up man on a scooter up two stories from the ground was just too much — he snapped back to his body.

I want to give you some idea of the conditions you may expect to meet in any successful projections, so that you will be prepared to some extent. For simplicity’s sake, we will call the body forms discussed in our last session forms one, two and three.

You may find yourself, for example, in the middle of a battle that was once planned in some general’s mind, a battle that never materialized in physical reality. In such a case, incidentally, you were not a part of the battle and could not be harmed. However, you might be attracted enough to project yourself spontaneously into the body of one of the soldiers, in which case you could experience pain until your own fear pulled you back. As you learn control, such mistakes vanish.

A few days after this session I tried my first deliberate “projection nap,” as I called it. Instead of going to my typewriter at 8:00 A.M. as usual, I lay down and set the alarm for 9:30.1 gave myself the suggestion that I would go to sleep, recognize my state when I began to dream and project my consciousness out of my body. Paper and pen were on the bedside table. I also closed the doors so I would not hear the doorbell or phone.

If so, I should be able to project. So I got out of bed and went into the bathroom where I sat on a chair to think things over. Again, everything seemed the way it should be, though the room did look exceptionally sharp, the details in brilliant focus. Could I be out of my body already, I wondered? If so, I should be able to levitate in this body which seemed physical enough to me. Feeling rather foolish, I willed to levitate.

Here I experienced another false awakening in which I told Rob what was going on and explained the previous episode. (Actually I’d returned to the bedroom, I believe, still in astral form, lost the necessary focus of consciousness and hallucinated.)

The sensation of intense speed was very real at the beginning of the experience, and during the entire episode I struggled to retain a critical sense which I alternately achieved and lost. The experiment was a success, in that I was convinced I’d left my body from the dream state. But what about Rob’s doubles and Miss Roohan?

“More on The Dream Body, Inner Senses and Projection”

I want to make this clearer, however. Suppose that you suddenly understand the concept of oneness with the universe, and that this inner sensing of concepts is to be used. You would then construct dream images, a multitudinous variety of shapes and forms meant to represent the complicated forms of life. You would then have the experience of entering each of those lives. You would not think of what it was like to be a bird. You would momentarily be one. This does involve a projection of sorts, yet still must be called by contrast a pseudo-projection. A normal projection would involve one of the three body forms.

You will be able to look back and see your physical body upon the bed on some occasions, and in other cases you will not be able to do this. In the first body form, for example, you can look back and see the physical body. If you project from this form into the next, in order to intensify the experience, then from this second form you will not see the physical one. You will be aware of it, and you may experience some duality. In the third form, you will no longer be aware of the physical body, and you will not see it.

Using the third form, there could be a tendency for you not to recognize your own physical situation. It would be difficult to carry the memories of the present ego personality with you. This third form is the vehicle of the inner self. The disorientation that it feels is the same that it will feel when the physical body is deserted at the point of death. This disorientation is only temporary, and when at death the form is severed from the physical body, then all the memories and identity within the electromagnetic structure become part of the inner self. This form is sometimes used for purposes of instruction, however, or to acquaint the whole personality with the circumstances that strongly affect it.

Most of your projections will be in the first and second form, in any case. Usually you will project from the physical body into the first form and then, perhaps, into the second. Occasionally, this will happen and you will not know it, despite all your attempts to ascertain your circumstances.

So at least twice a week I lay down to experiment, my body on the couch or bed, the alarm clock set, my house in order, while I try to “get out” to see what I could find. I seem to have a curious talent for this, and rarely do I fail to leave my body when I’ve really made up my mind to go. Yet for periods at a time, I just concentrate on the Seth sessions, with Seth on the one side of reality and Rob on the other — two good guardians. Then I avoid out-of-body experiments. A sense of strangeness seems connected with them then. My consciousness, so used to my flesh, says that I’ve had enough. And I’m afraid to leave my body in the wintertime. In black and white print, this sounds ridiculous, yet, emotionally, the statement has a logic that speaks louder than all my deliberate suggestions to the contrary. So I experiment between May and November, coming in for the winter when the wild skies of fall are over and the bone-chilling cold settles in.

Not that I’ve been cold out of my body, because I haven’t. But my flesh itself seems to slow down come December, despite all I should know from the Seth Material about the innate vitality that gives the body its life.