“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Experimentation requires constant vigilance and continual checking. The following experience of mine shows some of the issues involved, and can give some of you some hints as to how to proceed. I usually speed out of my body and away from this location very quickly. Left to myself, this seems to be my characteristic method. But this allows no walking around the room, no chance to study the actual departure with any clearness; it happens too quickly. So, many of my experiments include the attempt to leave my body slowly so I can study my behavior.

Then I realized that I was in an excellent state for experimentation, fully alert and awake, and still in my body which was asleep. This time I decided to try and get up astrally, just walk around the room and observe the various stages of activity. I tried cautiously at first, afraid that I might rouse the physical muscles instead. The second time I succeeded, getting used to the fine distinction between moving the astral body up while leaving the physical one alone. This took quite a bit of concentration. I finally stood up, wobbly, and somewhat groggy with the effort.

I was having trouble getting away from the couch and walking properly. All through this, I was afraid that my body might not be as deeply asleep as I’d earlier supposed, but all of my consciousness was with me in my astral form. My vision wasn’t clear, though, and the room looked hazy. I shook my head to clear it and saw to my dismay that the entire living room wall was lying flat on the floor, face up, closed door and all. This told me at once that I was hallucinating and if I didn’t watch it, I could fall into a dreaming state. (If I’d just accepted the wall’s position as ‘one of those things,’ I would have lost my critical awareness.) I decided that it might be better to go back into my body and try over.

By now, I was standing with my back to my body, and I just ‘fell’ backward into it. I got out again fairly quickly, this time able to study the strange sensing involved in distinguishing between the astral self I wanted to sit up and the physical self I wanted to stay flat. I walked out to the center of the room which now was perfectly normal, but had difficulty walking and remembered that in my case, at least, this sometimes happens when I’m close to my body. I decided to go to Rob’s studio, where he was working, to see if I could make him observe me.

I was still walking very slowly, with my astral eyes slitted to cut down the focus of distractions. I closed them to deepen my trance and reached out for the bathroom doorknob. I felt it hard and round, perfectly normal in my astral hand. Then I paused in uncertainty; something didn’t seem right. What had I done wrong now? I opened my astral eyes fully and stared down at my hand. It circled a ‘knob’ of air. For just another moment I felt the hardness, the bulk of that knob. Then only air was there. Obviously, I’d hallucinated the doorknob. The door was still several feet away. Disappointed with myself, I returned to my body, determined to plan out a new course of action.

I decided to continue the projection though I hadn’t faced these particular conditions before — being half in and half out of an environment. Instantly, I found myself walking along the park path, sometimes slightly above it. The night was foggy and dark, as it was in Elmira. My sight was operating perfectly, but it took a while before my hearing worked. (In good projections, all senses are super-perfect). I worked at getting clearer focus and really enjoyed walking down the park paths. I hadn’t been in that park for years and was consciously delighted. Now and then I paused to see if anything had changed. So far everything was the same.

At the end of the park basin are a flight of stone steps leading to another street and an old house in which I once lived for a short time. I went there. The front downstairs door was ajar, but to see how well I was doing, I walked through the part that was closed and went upstairs. After wandering through the upstairs hall and seeing no one, I went out to the side porch and stood looking out at the park and enjoying the night air.

It all started when I turned over to switch on the light next to the bed. It flashed a bright red color which I thought strange and unaccountable. I got up to go to the bathroom, but when I began to walk, I felt very dizzy. When I reached the door, I had the odd feeling that I’d left something behind me. When I looked back toward the body, I nearly flipped. I sure had left something — my body! Then I realized that I was in my astral form.

First I found myself in the studio and Rob was there. He came to bed with me, and we made love. I was surprised he was home, knowing it was Friday when he was out of his body also, and so was I. I told Rob and we discussed it, plus our amazement over out-of-body love-making. Then, laughing and curious, we walked out into the living room together, looking at everything. The room and the morning were all normal. We hugged and joked — the bodies we had certainly seemed real to us. Yet to others we’d be invisible.