Astral Travel: User’s Manual

 

It’s beautiful up there. But mountaineering isn’t for everyone. This Internet user has another solution. She’s a philosopher. She doesn’t need mountain hiking, extreme sports or fairground attractions to get dizzy. She simply considers the vastness of the universe. Let’s listen to her. She’s a warrior.

 

“Sometimes I get dizzy thinking that we live, evolve and exist in a Universe we know nothing about. The Universe we think is infinite… It frightens me to think that the Universe has always been there… That it has no walls, floors or ceilings! That, in the end, we’re nothing… Just a microscopic speck of dust among millions of billions of others. A tiny planet populated by beings of no great importance compared to everything else in the Universe. The human being is just a micro-particle. He is in no way superior to other living beings. He is not superior to anything else in this Universe. He Is…but he is nothing.” (source)

 

Part One

Leaving the Body

Thank you to her for expressing what each of us, warriors of the infinite, may have felt at some point in our existence. And we’ve never been able to forget that moment of vertigo; it’s so real, so powerful! More real than many things we believe to be real, which are merely mental projections.

 

The reality of the astral is of this absolute nature. Once you’ve experienced it, you can’t get over it. Our greatest desire is to go back.

I’ve been consciously exiting my body since I was a child. The first one I remember clearly was when I was twelve. The second, even more incredible, was when I was sixteen. Since then, I’ve lived through the Rochefort years, with the two friends who have meant the most to me, my almost-brother Devic and J-Cl. Flornoy, my benefactor. In those days, every day brought its share of wonders. The new was jostling for position on the doormat. When you opened the door, you never knew where that simple gesture would lead.
But today… Today! It’s a thousand times crazier. I’ve never felt so alive, never been such a stranger in this world where so many people are bored and despairing. And with good reason: all the signs are pointing to the dark times ahead. For the vast majority of our contemporaries, the future has never been so depressing. And yet it’s not!

All it takes is one tiny step sideways, one tiny slip, one mini chassé step, and nothing resembles this grey purgatory any more. The gigantic sun of Arcturus dazzles us. The round of giant galaxies sweeps us along in its frantic race. The poor, everyday spectacle we see from our windows has suddenly been transformed into a cosmic ballet that invites us to embark on the great, the impossible, the unbelievable Adventure of the Soul. And that’s what I’m going to talk to you about.

 

 

The First Jumps

Now I’m being a serious, boring teacher. It’s not like me. Change of diet.

I wanted to make sure I didn’t confuse my out-of-body jumps with an ordinary dream. At first, I gave them numbers, starting with my third jump, since the first two had taken place in full consciousness. As soon as I left my body, I said out loud: Jump 3! And the astral journey began. Ditto for the next one: Jump 4! But when I got to the sixth one and shouted Jump 6! I laughed like a whale and went back to my body like an idiot.

After that I told myself I was going to stop this mania. The last thing I wanted was to shout Jump 7! only to find myself threading my body like a sock. I didn’t need to count anymore, I was sure I could control my quantum leaps into infinity. Astral travel is the shock of infinity and the experience of vertigo, as this Internet user so aptly put it. I was going to write astronaut, but so was she. This vertigo seizes us without warning, as soon as we leave our bodies and come face to face with infinity. I should say infinity.

Infinity is unique by nature, because it is infinite. I soon discovered that infinity is twofold, and that I’m right in between. The first contact revealed my very smallness in the face of the boundless universe. By the age of twelve, I had already experienced metaphysical vertigo.

Since then I’ve come to understand that astral travel almost always begins this way, with a cosmic vertigo. If we consider our inner universe, the vertigo is just as great. Double infinity, double vertigo.

 

The Motionless Axis

The second vertigo is the opposite and the complement of vertigo in the face of infinity. Faced with the infinitely small, microcosmic vertigo reveals our omnipotence in the face of the micro-universe that inhabits us down to the infinitesimal. This ineffable experience does not come immediately to us. But when it does, it’s not our greatness that dazzles us, nor our smallness that overwhelms us, it’s a peaceful blend of the two: the intoxicating sensation of being a crossroads, a point.

Of being only a point, of course, but an infinite point. The blossoming coexistence of opposites. The exhilarating certainty of being the immovable axis around which the wheel of the world turns. I identified with the Yggdrasil ash tree of Viking legend. I saw the outside world in all its vastness spinning around me, and inside me, inside the axis that I was, I saw the infinitely small.

It was a very exhilarating feeling, and I didn’t feel the pride of the donkeys and gurus, because compared to the tyrannosaurus, the dragon of the origins, the gigantic blue whale, what does the pride of the ant weigh? And I said to myself that a philosopher ant must feel the infinitely small in its dizzying body, just as I do.

 

 

Multi-Cosmic Vertigo

There are other metaphysical vertigoes that can be discovered later, or not at all. Among them is multi-cosmic vertigo. This particular vertigo takes hold of the subject who has the concrete experience of the multiverse. Beware, this vertigo is terribly powerful. I’ve outlined the correct inner approach here, but I wouldn’t recommend this practice without enlightened assistance, or consistent experience of astral flight.

From the vertigo of the immensity of the universe, visualize an infinite number of parallel universes, all as vast as the first, all vertiginously close to each other. Your task is to slip into one of them, any one of them, and return to that pivotal point where you can penetrate an infinite number of others. I’ve named this particular place the Multiplier.

I can provide the training for all these practices. I’ve already taken a bunch of readers astral. These infinity travelers were supervised, their progress controlled, their experiences measured and short-lived. There have been several series of group astral flights. One of them ended badly for me, as I was used as a shield by the entire pack of Flying Wolves.

 

Astral Masters

But it calmed me down. I realized that danger exists in the astral, a sensation I’d never experienced on my solo flights. That’s when I met the Archons. These powerful beings can beat us all to a pulp if they want to. They’ve been in charge of this planet since time immemorial. They created the first man, a sort of soulless robot. They perfected him to such an extent that the Great Goddess saw fit to give him an immortal soul, supra consciousness.

The Archons are highly intelligent, but lack this supra-consciousness. For them, the death of the body is the end of the game. They have no chance of reaching the Pleroma, where the immortal souls are. Their corpse disappears like a dream, seemingly melting into the ground or into space. Their domain is the netherworld, just beneath our feet. But they can also evolve in the astral. They are masters of this technique and didn’t appreciate my taking a busload of tourists there.

Hence their anger and my punishment. A terrible bolt of lightning broke my neck. I’m still suffering from it after all these years. After what I’ve learned about them, I know I was very lucky. They could have squashed me like the mosquito I am next to them.

So many times I’ve been close to death! And I’m still with you. I have always enjoyed unfailing protection. Why is that? I don’t know why. But I thank someone for it. For whom? I don’t know who. The more it goes on, the less I know.

 

 

When emptiness reaches the inside of the skull, that is the beginning of wisdom (Lao Surlam).

 

Part two

Re-entry

Ten years ago, I posted a first version of this article. I already had a fair amount of experience of astral flight, except that I’d never encountered the slightest danger. That was before the terrible Archons and their pig-headedness. It was essential that I update this article with my recent experience.

 

 

In 2014, I wrote this

Don’t be afraid of getting so lost in the multiverse that you never find your original universe. This possibility never arises for the explorer, because his silver thread always leads him back to his body. Our body is the anchor that guarantees our return to our home port: this particular universe. Seen from the threshold of nothingness, where all universes communicate, there’s nothing special about ours that makes it easy to identify. A matter of feeling? Not at all.

You return to your body automatically, effortlessly and painlessly, whatever the duration and extent of your exit. At least, that’s how it’s always been for me. In the astral, there is no time or distance. Whether you’re out of your body for ten years or ten seconds doesn’t affect your ability to return to it. The silver thread does its job whatever happens, except death.

If you feel pain, apprehension or any other negative emotion when re-entering your body, you must stop this yoga. When energy is too low, you risk depression, even autism. Or death. In this state, exiting the body is a dangerous experience and should be avoided at all costs.

 

Not so simple!

I was influenced by the standard discourse on body exits, the silver cord and the whole shebang. But it’s not that simple. A lot of it is just plain wrong, as I’ve come to realize.

When I write my articles, I soar so high, so far away that I’m afraid I’ll never get back to my planet, my country, my city, my home and my body. So I thought of something. I plug in the TV behind my back – I’m only interested in the sound. I put on TF1, the dumbest channel in the multiverse. So typical, so stupid and corny that I recognize it from far, far, far away. I use it as a lighthouse when you’re lost at sea. Wherever I am in the multiverse, this cheesy chain pulls me to it more reliably than a silver cord.

Chlofff! Thanks TF1! I find myself in front of my screen, typing on the keyboard. All through my flight, I kept writing, crossing the most remote galaxies. On my return, I discover what I’ve “written” in my absence. It’s fabulous. It’s not about my astral flight, it’s about something else. But it’s well done, with my usual writing tics, rare synonyms, alliterations, rhymes, gags and ugly puns for stupid people. No doubt about it, it’s me, it’s my body, I’m back. I turn off the TV. A little silence gives me a vacation.

All of which is to say that getting back to your own body can be tricky, and even rather scary if you haven’t planned ahead. When you want to travel far, there’s no point in taking it easy. Leaving is nothing, it’s the return that sucks. You can do like Tom Thumb, sowing stars along the way. Or better still, leave the TV on TF1.

 

 

The cord myth

It’s our cord that brings us back, they say. All you have to do is follow it and you’re back in your body. But it’s not true. It’s a legend told by ignorant people with no experience. I practice astral flying every day. Conscious exits are my main activity. I even manage to write my articles while I’m flying at the far end of the many-worlds.

In fact, that makes two of us. Or more exactly, I’m here and here. Read this link, you’ll understand. The silver cord is neither silver nor a cord. It’s a big tentacle that starts from the belly, a little below the navel. It branches out as much as it wants, each strand connecting to the chakras of people we’ve met, whose energy we’ve liked. In this way, we’re connected to an infinite number of people. In this world and in others: don’t forget that every night we practice astral flight. It’s the ordinary dream. But it remains unconscious.

What we remember when we wake up is usually nonsensical. Our dream experience is distorted by the mind. There’s a program in the brain that disguises our dreams to make them silly, but acceptable. This program is called dressing. It’s supposed to protect us from the nightmares that the reality of the multiverse could give us. Ta ra ta ta! Just the opposite. The dressing lies to us, as do all the Archons’ plans.

 

The Assembly Point

I mention the silver thread because many of you are familiar with this theory. Of this metaphor. But I prefer to stay in Castaneda‘s mental universe, which is perhaps less familiar, but which makes these things much clearer. Nagual warriors believe that the entire universe, including the multiverse, is contained within our luminosity – as he calls our aura. Within this luminosity, only visible to the sighted, is a particular point, saturated with brilliance. It lies on our back, a dozen centimetres behind our right shoulder blade. Naguals call it the assembly point or A.P.

It’s through this point that we assemble the universe, say the Naguals. Hence the name “Assembly Point”. Through it we perceive this particular universe, our here and now. At present, almost all humans have the assemblage point at the place I’ve indicated, which is that of reasoning. This uniformity is reflected in the dominant thinking and creed towards the omnipotence of science.

But it wasn’t always so. At the dawn of humanity, 300,000 years ago, the assembly point was further to the left and closer to the body, in the place of operative magic. Intuition and clairvoyance were the ordinary way of apprehending reality. Or rather, realities.

Getting out of your body simply means changing the position of the assemblage point. Given the extreme smallness of this point in our luminosity, we understand that there is room for an infinite number of different positions for the assemblage point.

 

 

The A.P. bowl

But the humans of our sad age have fixed it firmly in place. Juan Matus, Carlos Castaneda’s benefactor, explains that, over time, the assembly point has hollowed out a small bowl in the aura’s luminosity. The difficulty lies in getting the assemblage point out of this trough. The position of the A.P. is worldwide, identical for all and set in stone. Immutable? No. But to move your A.P., you have to be awake.

This makes it easy to return to your body, even without TF1. Getting back to your usual position at the bottom of the bowl presents no particular difficulty. It’s like being pulled by a rubber band back to where you came from. This impression is undoubtedly the origin of the silver thread metaphor. It’s just an image. The reality described by Nagual seers is both much simpler and infinitely more complex. It shares many similarities with quantum theory.

 

The astral in question

Why the astral? I’ll tell you why. It’s the only vantage point from which to understand the strange landscape of everyday human life. When you’re really far away, you can see clearly. Very clear.

 

 

 

 

A pressure cooker, if there is not a valve that lets out the steam, it explodes.
Guy Savoy