A Brief History of Astral Travel The idea of astral travel is rooted in worldwide religious accounts of the afterlife. The ancient Egyptians were perhaps one of the first cultures to record beliefs about astral projection. Hieroglyphics in tombs display prayers which were to be said over the body of the deceased to guide the spirit on its way. They believed that the soul (or ba) was housed in a spirit body (the ka) which is an exact replica of the physical body. At death, these etheric bodies gave way to the sahu (the true spirit body) which would house the ba forever. Egyptians believed the ka could leave the body during life. They drew graphics of people sleeping with their kas floating above them which is very similar to the modern day descriptions of NDEs. Tibetan Buddhists believe in the bardo body which can leave the physical body, not only at death; but while still alive and able to pass through physical matter. The bardo body can be directed wherever by will. Tibetan Buddhism and their Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thodol), is a description of the bardo realms the bardo body travels through upon death. Ancient Greeks believed in a double body, which housed the soul. Plato believed the soul was freed upon death but could also leave the body during life. and when it did it perceived the physical world as dimly lit. The Hebrew and Christian Bibles contains references to astral projection: The Book of Ecclesiastes states: Remember him - before the silver cord is severed, or the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, or the wheel broken at the well, and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. (Ecclesiastes 12:6-7) Pauls Second Epistle to the Corinthians is more generally agreed to refer to the astral planes: I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know - God knows. And I know that this man - whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows - was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell. (2 Corinthians 12:2-4) According to classical, medieval and renaissance Neo-Platonism, Hermeticism, and later Rosicrucian and Theosophist thought, the astral body is an intermediate body of light linking the soul to the physical body while the astral plane is an intermediate world of light between heaven and Earth, composed of invisible astral realms which are physically represented by the planets. These astral realms are believed to be populated by angels and spirits. These concepts agree with the cosmology revealed by Edgar Cayce. Astral bodies, and their associated planes of existence, form an essential part of the esoteric beliefs which deal with astral phenomena. For example, in the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus, the body of an individual is a microcosm or fractal of the universe as a whole. Often these astral bodies and their planes of existence are depicted as a series of concentric circles or nested spheres, with a separate body traversing each realm. The idea of the astral world figured prominently in the work of the 19th century French occultist Eliphas Levi. Afterward, it was adopted and developed further by Theosophy, and used afterwards by other esoteric movements. Emanuel Swedenborg was one of the first practitioners to write extensively about astral projection. French philosopher and novelist Honoré de Balzacs fictional work Louis Lambert suggests he may have had some astral experiences. There are many 20th century publications on astral projection, including those of Robert Monroe, Oliver Fox, Sylvan Muldoon and Hereward Carrington (as previously mentioned), and Yram. Carl G. Jung, a NDE experiencer, saw the astral journey as a paradigm of modern mans search for a soul, and pictured a collective unconscious memory, driven by archetypal forces and knowable in the symbolic language of dreams and visions. Jung saw this archetypal world as, like the astral plane, an objective psyche, extending in the world at large, bridging mind and matter. Jung worked with physicist Wolfgang Pauli in an attempt to correlate quantum mechanics with the astral world . In his book Autobiography of a Yogi, the Indian yogi guru Paramhansa Yogananda (1893-1952) - himself a NDEr - provides details about the astral planes. Yogananda reveals that nearly all individuals enter the astral planes after death. There they work out the deeds of past karma through astral incarnations, or (if their karma requires) they return to Earthly incarnations for further refinement. Once an individual has attained the meditative state of Nirvana in an earthy or astral incarnation, the soul may progress upward to the illumined astral world of Hiranyaloka. After this transitionary stage, the soul may then move upward to the more subtle causal spheres where many incarnations allow them to further refine until final unification. Astral projection author Robert Bruce describes the astral world as having seven astral planes separated by immensely colored buffer zones. These astral planes contain endlessly repeating grid coordinates system grids that are tiled with a single signature pattern which is different for each plane. Higher planes have bright, colorful patterns, whereas lower planes appear far duller. Every detail of these patterns acts as a consistent portal to a different afterlife dimension inside the astral plane, which itself comprises many separate dimensions. Other notable astral projectionists include William Buhlman, Robert Peterson, Bruce Moen and the former NASA Aeronautical Engineer Albert Taylor have written extensively about their theories and experiences in astral projection. Dr. Raymond Moody, M.D., although not an astral projectionist, is thought of as the father of the near-death experience and has written a very popular book, Life after Life, on the subject of out-of-body travels associated with the dying. Modern biologists, such as Rupert Sheldrake, influenced by Jungian ideas and by vitalism, have theorized the existence of organizing fields of life called morphic fields consisting of memories and drives.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 04:57:27 +0000
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