Is astral projection real?

The question worth keeping

Since I started my channel, the question I have been asked most is some version of this one: Gene, how do you know it wasn’t a dream? It is a good question, and I would rather you asked it out loud than carried it in silence. How will I know that any of this is real?

The question itself is a sign of health. The person who never asks it will believe everything the night shows them. So keep the question; only learn to ask it well. I can tell you what I have found and how I checked it, but I always recommend that everyone discover their own truth for themselves.

What it is like when it happens

You might be thinking: surely you can’t know you are in the astral just by how it feels. But really, it is like that, the same as knowing you are in the physical right now. When you remember a dream, you know it was a dream; in the astral, you know you are in the astral.

I have told the story of my first night out of my body, July 25, 2011, elsewhere. What stays with me most is the energy of it. You can almost imagine a lucid dream, but not astral projection: in the moment it is always a new energy, intense and palpable, and carried in that energy is the reality of what you are experiencing. It was realistic to the core of my being, more physical than waking life.

That night held a small confirmation too. Afterward I went to my window, and then outside. It was a full moon in a clear sky, and the moonlight through my window and the moon itself were exactly where I had seen them. I wasn’t taking note of moon phases back then.

Watch the talk on YouTubeMy First Astral Projection Experience

The afternoon I checked

Confirmation is the answer people most want, and it is the one I never went looking for. I never set up experiments, like having someone place a number in another room; what I felt directly was enough for me. Then, one afternoon in September 2014, it came looking for me.

It was a rare sunny day in England. I lay down for a midday nap and soon found myself coming out of my body into my own room. Everything was where it should be, the same house, the same furniture, except that the air itself was glowing. A warm golden light filled the whole house, and when I looked closer there were tiny sparkles of white in it, as though someone had thrown fairy dust over everything. I walked out of my room and along the corridor, and started down the stairs.

Halfway down, I could see into the living room. My sister-in-law was sitting at the end of the sofa in the corner, in her pajamas, on her phone, next to a friend of hers whom I hadn’t known was visiting. She was holding a blue packet of cheese and onion crisps. I noticed the blue packet clearly, because we had several kinds of crisps in the house that week. Then I simply thought of my body, and I was back in it.

I had been in my room for hours. I had no idea where my sister-in-law was, or that anyone had come to the house. I got up at once and went to the top of the stairs. She was sitting exactly where I had seen her, in the same corner of the sofa, in her pajamas, on her phone, beside the same friend, with the same blue packet of crisps, even curled up sideways facing her friend.

A packet of crisps might not sound like the most exciting confirmation. But for me it was, and it still is, because I saw something I couldn’t have known. Many practitioners go through a phase like this. It isn’t necessary, but it does help to ground your confidence.

Something similar has happened a couple of times since. Once, practicing a shamanic exercise of finding an object out of body and then seeking it in the waking world, I found myself out at night a few roads from where I was sleeping, drawn to a smooth, light gray pebble at the foot of a tree growing out of the pavement. A couple of hours later, in my physical body, I found the same stone at the foot of the same tree. It is on my altar today. Do I understand that experience intellectually? Not really. Do I know it was true? Absolutely.

Why I don’t ask you to believe me

After my first experience I told family and loved ones, and that was a mistake. I could see they thought I was crazy, so I kept my experiences to myself for many years. I tell you mine now not to make you a believer, because belief is exactly what we do not deal in.

Belief feels like readiness. In practice it is the opposite. I have watched people of enormous faith stand at the threshold for years, and I have watched people who called themselves skeptics, but were honest enough to say “I do not know” and to keep the notebook anyway, cross far sooner.

I love science, and I can’t wait for it to catch up on non-physical research; in the meantime we can become our own pioneers of consciousness. And if your mind doubts along the way, so what? Sometimes my own mind becomes skeptical too. I just observe it, smile, and carry on.

How do I know it wasn’t a dream?

I have written about the difference between a dream and the astral on its own page, so here is only the heart of it. A world made by your mind obeys your mind; a world that is not made by it does not. And in a dream, detail goes soft when you stare at it; in the astral it deepens, and stays.

There is also the feeling of the place. Every region of the inner worlds has a feeling as exact as the feeling of a room you walk into, heavy or light, hostile or kind, and it tells you truthfully what kind of place it is.

And be patient. The greatest error a beginner makes is not doubt; it is conclusion. Something happens on the far side of sleep, and within seconds the mind has decided what it was. Record first, interpret later, and later means months.

Why so many experiences go unremembered

Some dreams are actually unconscious astral projections. People are sometimes visited by relatives who have passed away and wake up remembering it only as a dream, though there was something real in it. Was it a dream, or did he really visit? Both are true: it was a dream, and he visited you in the dream.

Why don’t we remember more? We remember what makes a strong impression on us, the way a child tells his parents about the playground, not the lesson. If part of you isn’t interested in these experiences, or doesn’t believe in them, there is little desire to bring the memory back. Then the morning finishes the job: at the first sudden movement, the night dissolves before it was ever seen. That is why so many people sincerely believe they do not dream. They dream.

How to begin finding out

You don’t need to believe anything in advance. You only need to try the small practices sincerely and honestly, and the results will speak for themselves.

• Keep a book of the night. Put a notebook by your bed. On waking, don’t move; let the night come back, then write whatever it sends, even the honest word “nothing.” Date every entry.
• Test what you find. When you are awake on the far side of sleep, notice whether the world obeys you, and study one small detail until you are certain.
• Don’t chase a confirmation. Experiments with numbers written on cards mostly fail, not because the astral is unreal but because the traveler is trying, and trying closes the door. Confirmation arrives sideways, unbidden and small. If it comes, write it down, date it, check it, and let it go.
• Keep your experiences mostly to yourself. Other people’s doubts can quietly become your own.
• Keep practicing rather than analyzing. With patience your intuition grows, and the experiences will make sense in time.

Where to go from here

I tell the story of that golden afternoon in my first book, Beyond Dreaming, and again in Sealing the Vessel, whose chapter “Evidence, Not Echo” is my fullest answer to the question of how you will know. The Astral Doorway Course, recorded live with its first circle, is open now to walk at your own pace.