“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The sensation was quite definite, and quite strange. For I still felt my body against the bed—I lay face up, covered by a blanket—as though my body was pasted to the bed. In other words, I floated in the air, bed and all, quite pleasantly. There was no fear or panic. Instead I hoped to continue the experience into something greater.

(Peculiarly, I had no feeling of being detached from my physical body—that is, I didn’t feel I was bodiless, hovering above it: I had taken the bed up with me, you see. I felt the bed and I were several feet above the floor. I wanted to try turning over astrally, and I wanted to try reaching up toward the ceiling astrally, to see if I could touch it. I didn’t move at all, though, because of the noise from the kitchen. I managed to hold the state while considering the kitchen interference, but was concerned lest any attempt at movement on my part would break the spell entirely.

Out-of-body encounters were used as a matter of course. The visitor could appear and disappear then without fear of pursuit. Civilizations were often warned in advance of natural disasters that were apparent to the visitors with their greater viewpoint.

The problem comes when you try to categorize consciousness or being. The out-of-body state, in greater terms, is a far more natural state than in the body. You adopt and make a body. You do this now without knowing that you do so, but a body can be made from the camouflage of any system, constructed easily when you know how to do it.

Verbal sounds were often stereotyped simply because the effect of sound was understood in its effects upon the body. Any ideas that are considered superstitious had a quite legitimate basis, therefore. Sound was used to locate one also, and to break someone down. It was also used to locate gas pockets.