How to astral project

It begins long before bedtime

We often treat astral projection like a microwave meal: read the steps and you’re done. It doesn’t work like that. We all come out of the body unconsciously every night; what is needed is for your awareness to be there while it happens. Pay attention to your waking life from moment to moment, and you begin to pay attention to your nights the same way.

During the day: practice waking up

The training ground is your ordinary day. Choose a few moments in advance, such as a doorway or the moment before you pick up your phone, and each time one comes, stop for two or three breaths and arrive through your senses. Then ask three small questions. Who is here: what am I thinking and feeling? What is here: is everything around me what it seems? How did I get here: can I trace my steps? In a dream you can meet a camel in your old school corridor and never ask how you got there. Asked often enough by day, the questions begin to ask themselves at night.

Then check. My favorite reality check is to hold my nostrils shut and try to breathe through them: if I can’t, I’m in the physical; if I can, I’m not. Do it as though you really might be dreaming, or you will do it just as half-heartedly inside a dream.

Two more things belong to the day. Meditate: I had been meditating for two years before I first floated out of myself, and I wasn’t trying to leave; I was trying to be quiet. And know what you would like to do once you are out, even something as simple as walking down your street. A vague intention brings a vague experience.

The hour before sleep

To the masters of Tibet, falling asleep is one of the holiest acts a human being performs, and the hour before it is the entrance hall of a temple.

So I keep that hour gentle, because the threshold cannot be stormed, only entered. I let the day finish, so that I go to sleep with a tired body but not a tired spirit, the day’s worries no longer running. Every crossing I know of begins with deep relaxation, and a tense body is a locked door.

You can add a prayer: not a recited one, but a request from the heart to the deepest part of yourself, whatever you call it, to show you the reality of the astral. It needs no words. Hold the longing in your heart.

Falling asleep: my steps

• Lie down comfortably. On my back is best for focus, but I have come out of my body in almost every position.
• Let go completely. Travel slowly up from the feet to the crown, softening each part on the out-breath. The jaw and eyes hold more than you think.
• Lay down one intention. Once or twice, with real feeling: I will be conscious while my physical body sleeps. Once with conviction does more than a hundred times like a robot. Then let it go.
• Or let a mantra carry you. My teacher in the tradition of gnosis taught me two: “FA RA ON” and “LA RA S.” Recite one silently as you drift off, each syllable drawn out, a breath between: FA… RA… ON.
• Watch yourself fall asleep. Don’t try to stay awake. Rest your attention lightly on the body growing distant, the sounds receding, the thoughts thinning, and keep the smallest thread of awareness running through it: mind awake, body asleep.
• If you wake in the night, don’t move. Stay still, remember your intention, and fall back toward sleep with your awareness held open. My first crossing began exactly like this.

Now and then you can wake yourself on purpose: an alarm four to six hours into your sleep, ten to thirty minutes up, walking slowly or sitting quietly and staying drowsy, then back to bed with your intention. Drowsy, you are less inclined to overthink. But hold it lightly. An alarm in the small hours helps in its place and becomes a wall the moment it is done with clenched insistence.

Waking yourself in the night is optional, and it isn’t for everyone. Enough deep, restful sleep matters more than any technique. If you have trouble sleeping, or frequent or distressing sleep paralysis, please talk to a doctor. What I share here is my own experience, not medical advice.

At the threshold, and how to leave

Some night the threshold may announce itself. Once, after a calm, meditative evening, I woke in the night and lay still, falling back toward sleep with my awareness held open. Sounds began: banging, voices, a vibration. When I focused on them they vanished, so I let them be, and they grew until they filled everything. You may hear a hum swell into a roar, feel a trembling as if an engine had started in your chest, or see colors swirling behind your closed eyes. The vibrations can feel like electricity, though not painful.

Don’t panic, don’t get over-excited, don’t analyze. Be like a Zen monk. You don’t need to seek these sensations, or have them at all. When they come, this is how I leave:

• Wait for the peak. Let the sensations grow stronger and louder. It’s like milk on the stove: take it off too early and it isn’t ready; too late and it boils over.
• Then simply get up. Lean into the sensations and get up, float up or roll out, as you usually would, only not with the physical body. Or intend to be standing somewhere in your room.
• If the sensations fade, stop. Relax, keep noticing them, and try again when they strengthen. You haven’t failed.
• If you feel stuck, sway. Try a swaying sensation in your awareness, like a chick rolling its egg to crack it. Never tense the physical body.
• Once out, keep your eyes open and look at your hands. Closing your eyes can take a beginner straight back. Studying your palms steadies the scene and burns off excitement, the commonest reason people are thrown back within seconds. If you can’t see yet, stretch your arms up and look for your hands.
• Then go. Do what you set out to do, or simply walk outside your house and calmly take everything in. Looking keeps you there.

From a dream

Dreams are another door. Once you are lucid, you are already halfway there. I either feel my own mind making the dream and let it stop, or fly upward fast with the intention of entering the astral plane; both are in “Astral Projection vs. Lucid Dreaming.”

There is a simpler door most people overlook. Have you ever woken from a dream, fallen back asleep and carried on with it? You can do this on purpose. When you wake from a dream, or from an experience that ended too soon, don’t move and don’t start thinking. Gather your attention on where you just were and go back into it: not remembering it, but being there. Or choose a place you know very well, a room or a garden, and be there: feel your body in it, see the small details, while your physical body falls asleep. This is how I have had several experiences in one night.

Remembering what happened

None of this helps if you can’t remember it. I have recalled profound experiences only hours later, by luck, after waking into a busy day. So make remembering the first thing you do each morning, and give the boring dreams the same care as the interesting ones.

On waking, keep still and begin, silently, the mantra my teacher gave me for this, RAOM GAOM: OM, with RA at the start the first time and GA the second, drawn out and only in the mind. Ask yourself, What did I dream? and keep going for a couple of minutes even if nothing comes; one detail leads to the next. If you are lucid or out of the body, say, “I will remember this when I wake up!” and replay it before you return, again on waking, and again as you write it down.

There is no single method

Steps like these are stabilizers on a bicycle, useful until you can ride without them. If nothing happens tonight, that’s fine; every attempt is progress. Be gentle and patient with yourself. Multiply patience to infinity.

Watch the talk on YouTubeThe FIRST Astral Travel Method You Should Try Right Now: Astral Projection Prayer

I wrote these practices out in full in my first book, Beyond Dreaming, with a summary of my own approach. Read it slowly, and try them sincerely.