Wow , the timing of you posting this is just so perfect its funny. These past few weeks I have been focusing heavily on Astral projecting myself and learning more about the other realms and entities that exist there.

I have been trying this a lot and am now getting to the point where I make 3 times a day where I attempt it. Whats been even cooler though is that I was able to talk our local meditation group to join in on me with this one and we have been experimenting with this a lot and have been getting some very interesting results.

I am really really really curious to see the responses from other people you get here as well, because I want to learn about this as much as I can. From a lot of the people I have been talking to that have said they have done it as well as from everybody's experiences in our group experiment with, I am learning that a lot of people tend to confuse astral body projection with an out of body experience or maybe a Remote Viewing experience. Sometimes people even lump lucid dreams as the same thing as Astral Projection experience, but I honestly feel these are still two seperate things. So I completely understand about the contrary explanations you are getting out there on the internet because I am getting them too, but also from people in person too lol, and its very confusing .

So I am still learning, but heres what I have come across so far in experimenting with this and the results from the others in our group:

-1. As you are entering this state, you will feel your body start to vibrate, or almost have this see-saw sensation. Someone else in the group described it as the intense pulsing sensations you get when you are on Psychedelics or Ecstasy. For me, I don't really do drugs, but I have had done Ecstacy a long long time ago in the past and i guess you could say that this sensation was somewhat very similar to that as you are initially entering into this state, but it is far far more intense and it is still nothing quite like Ecstasy in my honest opinion.

-2. Once you enter this state, you know you are in this state. It is unmistakable. You somehow become fully aware that you are no longer in the physical. This is far different from casual Out of body experiences and Remote viewing in my opinion because even though you are technically leaving your body in these types of experiences, you are now able to see and interact with a part of the physical world that has always been invisible to you before. ( I am talking people that have died, entities that are lingering around in the room that you are in that you had no idea were originally in the room with you when you were in a normal state of consciousness)

-3. That vibrating sensation I was just speaking of earlier is cranked up to x100 once you are fully in. Also, everything you see and feel is far more intense than what you would feel in your normal physical body.

-4. If someone talks to your physical body or touches you, you will most likely disconnect. What happens when you start to enter this state is that you go from 100% physical conciousness and then start to transfer that percentage more and more into Astral Consciousness. So lets say you start to feel youself slipping into your astral self, we could say that you are now 60% phsycally conscious, 40% Astral conciousness....then when you feel you are fully in, you are then 10% phsyically conscious and 90% Astral concioussness.

You are always physically conciouss to some degree, even if it feels like you maybe have fallen 100% into astral concioussness, this isn't so. You always have some percentage of yourself still aware of you physical body at all times. What I am basically trying to explain here to you is that your focus transitions completely off of your physical body and into you astral self, but if something causes you to bring your attention back to your physical body, this will greatly detract you from you holding your astral state.

-5. You can disconnect at anyime. Do not worry on the mechanics on how you do it. You just kinda become aware of how to do that naturually when you are there so do not worry about getting trapped there or anything like that. In fact, you even thinking about those things while you are in that state will most likely instantly disconnect you and bring you fully back to physical ironically. You will actually see at first that it is extremely hard to maintain this state and you probably will struggle with trying to NOT disconnect so quickly after just entering.

-6. There are different realms you can astrally project to. I think Rob or someone else on here would probably know this one way better than I. I know for sure that there is a realm that is basically like the ghost side of this physical world we are in. I have been only into two realms so far. This ghost like side of where we are now and then the dream realm where your consciousness goes to during sleep. I am actually hoping someone can post on here and maybe help explain more about these realms to us and enlighten us even more.

-7. When you come back, your body feels very, very, very, heavy. It is not like coming out of a simple meditation where you get that disorienting feeling of, "where am I? Oh man I haven't moved my legs in so long, I better stretch." No, forget that, this feel like you are now wearing a medevil Knight's heavy iron armor and it takes like 15 - 30 minutes to feel fully back to normal again. (For me at least, maybe im just a wuss)

Also, I want to add that based from our group experience, I have learned that there is no one size fits all way for entering into this state. For me I visualize myself going down a blue and white tunnel and it takes me there pretty quick, but for others they either visualize someone taking them out of their body for them or visualize themselves leaving their body to fly with birds that they are imagining are just passing them by through the window. We all used some form of bineural beats, and it definitely is a very helpful tool for this. I am sure you can find something specially tailored to astral projection out their on the internet.

Here is something very similar to what I visualize when I am going into this state, give this one a try and maybe it will work really well for you too :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDT48wB2JX0

EDIT 5/16/2013 detailed reply to Lozenge123's question

For most of the people in our group, they have never done it before, so it is more out of wanting to just experiencing it for the very first time for them. Because everyone is in the same room together, it seems to help a lot with the fear part. Otherwise I feel like this would probably go no where for people doing it for the very first time.

The goal for this entire experiment is to see if we can all project ourselves astrally first, then see how the mechanics of meeting up each other would work. Wether it would be that everyone would by default astrally project themselves into the same room that their physical body was in and therefore make meeting up with each other far more easier. Or would it be that some people end up in other rooms or other locations in the building or maybe even places farther away?

Depending on what would happen I wanted to see that if the second scenario happened, just how difficult and what the process would be like of having that other individual come find us or vice versa in this astral state of consciousness. I was also curious to see how we would visibly appear to each other and also whether some of us would only be able to perceive just a select few of people and not everyone and then try to learn why that was.

Also I wanted to see what would happen if lets say someone ended up projecting themselves into a different realm like the dream realm while everybody else was in the Physical Astral realm. Would they both be able to see each other? Or just one realm ony being able to percieve the other while appearing completely invisible to the people that are astrally projected in the other? Would you be able to at least have ghost like sensations such as feeling you are being watched or that there is another person in the same room you are, even though you cannot see them?

The second part of the experiment was to see how perceivable manifestation would work if we were to all make it into this realm together. Lets say someone decides to grow wings on their back, would everybody see it? Or maybe just a few people? What would be the reasoning to why only a few and not everyone in the scenario where only a few could see it and not everyone?

Next would then be, what if someone were to try to manfiest changes onto someone else? Like lets say for example, I try to manifest someone else's skin to turn purple, or grow wings as well? Would that person see themseves with the changes? Would everybody else be able to see the changes I made onto that specific individual? Or would it just be me who would see just that different version of the person while everybody else only sees the person as they normally were as if my manifestations onto them never happened.

I am so, so, so fascinated with learning about these things. The book that Satori posted on here on Astral Dynamics is a great book and surprisingly actually covers a lot on a few of these questions, but I still want to see how these things work for myself first hand. We are doing another meet up with this group on this experiment next week and I am very excited to see what comes out of it because we got some interesting results from some of the first timers from the past get together.

Nice question Lozenge. If your interested in out of body experiences I strongly recommend the book Astral Dynamics by Robert Bruce. Here is a PDF copy of the book.

https://www.dmt-nexus.me/doc/Astral%20Dynamics.pdf

I experimented with Astral Projection for about 6 months 4 or 5 years ago. This was shortly after my father died suddenly. Reading the book above, I suppose I took comfort from the fact that my father might still exist in some form or that maybe I could even communicate with him again. Looking back now I suppose it was just a way of coping with the loss and it my initial reason for using these methods.

I learned some the techniques in the book "Astral Dynamics." Among some of them there is relaxation techniques to relax the body along with some innovative methods to strengthen and raise awareness of the energy body.

I also learned how to enter the Trance state. It's basically your mind being fully awake while the body is asleep. It's a pretty unique experience when you achieve a deep trance. Your body falls into a state of paralysis and you can feel your energy / subtle body expanding, almost like its a balloon being pumped up with air :) I guess this is what happens when you fall asleep only your usually not conscious of it.

There are many projection techniques to achieve Astral Projection. You use these once you enter the Trance state. The easiest one seems to be The Rope Technique. You just sit comfortably, close your eyes and imagine a rope in front of you. Then you start to visualise yourself climbing the rope with your awareness. Try it now. If you do it properly you can actually feel a pull in the Solar plexus area.

I can't say I was ever successful in projecting out of the body. Not intentionally anyway. Fear always crept in when my body started shuddering along with other weird sensations felt from the mind / body split experience. I also experienced hearing cars horns going off or someone I knew shouting my name loudly at the point of projection :) I think these were just manifestations of the fear I felt at that moment. I guess if I had kept at it I would have eventually overcome this fear.

The only out of body experience I ever had was when I wasn't even trying to project. This was using one of the energy raising techniques. I was lying down, raising energy and suddenly I found myself out of my body looking down at my feet:) I haven't had an experience like that since.

Robert Bruce gives many very detailed personal examples and artists pictures of what he seen and experienced in his out of body experiences. He also says how you feel in the moment has an effect on where you project to. The higher your vibration the more you tend to project to higher Angelic-like realms.

I have traveled many times in the astral. Most were just for fun, some had purpose. Some were used to initiate me to higher levels, like test. Other times I learned from my travel.

So the purpose would have to be all of these. Even when I remember flying over a field with my arms and legs stretched out like a star standing upright I felt I learned something. I think one of the things that I had learned was attention is how you fly. What we pay attention to we are attracted to. If I look far in the distance I travel far on the distance. The farther away I focus the farther away I travel also the faster I move.

The object of astral travel is to discover the flip side to our physical body and to thus realize by experience that we are much more than just physical beings ... and at the same time we come to realize that it's yet another aspect of the law of attraction in action ... yin/yang, negative/positive, physical/non physical and sometimes we may not accept what our non physical body looks like