This will be a long read so here is some peaceful background
music for you.
Anyways, yes I have done it and I'll walk you through it in a second.
But first you must understand a few things. Spirits are
not real, we cannot astral project in a literal sense, it's more of a mind exercise, a method (without the use of drugs) that presents an incredible perspective. The way to "astral project" is simple. But,
do not mistake simplicity, for insignificance.
To
fully understand astral projection
, you must know
the power of imaging. Imaging is the formation of an image in one's mind. You can read "Psycho-Cybernetics" to learn more about imaging and the subconscious mind. But to summarize it's significance, an experiment demonstrated how a basketball team spent time
imagining that they were shooting hoops. They performed just as well (if not better) than the basketball team who
physically practiced shooting hoops (for the same amount of time). I'm over simplifying the study, but it was well done. Very interesting though (also a disclaimer: do not practice imaging of yourself exercising before sleep, because your heart beat will literally begin to race). Moving on, in other studies, there were patients told by doctors that they were "certain to die", but despite this, people have been able to cure sicknesses and even cancer through the power of imaging. They would
visualize the cells in the immune system
vividly killing the cancer cells,
one by one... and it worked. I can give many more examples if you want.
The more vivid you can learn to image, the more powerful it becomes. So you see? The mind and body is connected, and imaging in the mind has great power over the body. The mind is very complex, yet so
extraordinarily simple. It cannot distinguish imagination from reality. Understand the power of imaging and use it to your advantage.
Now that you know the power, you may begin Astral Projection. First, image yourself in the perspective of your "soul" as it resides in the body. As you begin... your soul
ascends. You see your body in the
3rd person. You see yourself sitting there in your room, all the knickknacks lying around, all the little details.. you continue. You see your house from above, and as you ascend you see your entire neighborhood. You ascend
faster and soon enough, you see the whole city, the state, the country, and then the Earth itself as it slowly shrinks away. You keep going, you see the Sun and all of it's solar flares, you see how
microscopic the Earth looks in comparison. You go on to see the entire Solar System as it orbits the sun. And you keep ascending until you leave the galaxy and you see the Milky Way looking from the outside in. As you ascend out of the Milky Way, you see Andromeda, Triangulum, and all the other galaxies... As you continue to ascend, you see the infinite amount of galaxies around you. They slowly shrink away until they look like tiny clusters of dust within our infinite vacuum of space. From this perspective, you realize how
microscopic the Earth really is. You realize how
infinitesimal you are, how insignificant your problems are, how insignificant your worries are... and while your soul is resting here, and as you look around at all the little galaxies, you take in the vastness of the universe, the eternal, and the infinite.
You have reached the astral plane.
Stay here for as long as you desire.
You may return to your body whenever you wish.
The illusion of the self is a trivial thing to explain, but when I realized the significance & legitimacy of this discovery... it was as if I just had an epiphany, it all
clicked, and I felt a great deal of peace like I had not felt before.
First off, I must say I am an atheist. I do not believe in any of the 4000 silly religions, I do not believe in spirits or souls. When talking about astral projection I only use the word "soul" as a metaphor for compression of astral projection. Without this base level of understanding, the significance of this discovery regarding the "illusion of self" may not be understood. To anyone reading this, if you are religious it will be impossible to comprehend what I'm saying. I am up for discussion regarding all of that, but at this point in science it is not even a debate.
Now that we've got this understanding established, let's move on to the
illusion of self. I studied Roger Sperry's
Split Brain Experiment and I recommend you look into it yourself as I won't go into all the details right now. But essentially, Sperry split open the brains of animals to study each hemisphere of the brain. He discovered that each hemisphere was responsible for different things. His discoveries completely changed the study of neuroscience altogether.
Eventually, he did the Split Brain Experiment on
an actual man (for ethical reasons, he had previous complications). And this is when he
also discovered that
each side of the brain could operate independent of each other. When split, e
ach hemisphere became its own consciousness.
We
used to think, you needed both hemispheres of the brain connected to each other to function properly. But that is
not the case. This experiment proved that when each hemisphere of the brain is split, there are basically two sets of consciousnesses controlling the body. Wild huh? A duplicate consciousness in one body (side note: if you find a worm in the dirt, you can take your shovel and split the worm in half, it then becomes two completely different worms.. no problem at all, it's so easy for worms since they do not have a designated brain, but rather, they have neurons that are distributed throughout their entire body).
It's funny, back when religious mythology was our best / only explanations for reality, we used to
think there was
literally something called a spirit. We used to think a spirit lived in a body, and it traveled to an afterlife once the body died. But in order for a "spirit" to even "think" thoughts or "feel" emotions, there must be neurons. Without the neurons, there is no thought. There is no such thing as a spirit (other than the neurons moving in a brain). And there is no self. We think "this is me, this is my body, this is my arm, this is my hand." But who are you? You are nothing but a manifestation of homeostasis, a manifestation of the laws of physics. There is no self, the self is an illusion, it's an elementary concept in order for us to comprehend existence as the brain sends neurons throughout it so that the body will remain in homeostasis.
The same way you can zoom out, you can also zoom in.. The body is made up of cells. Those cells are made up of matter. Matter is made up of atoms. And the atoms are made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. We are all one. And we are all the same.
Humans have come full circle. We used to come up with religious mythology in an effort to comprehend reality. Then we went down the rabbit hole of science and discovered the blatant absurdity of religion.. which sometimes leads people to a state of nihilism and depression. And they no longer feel that sense of oneness. But when you go
all the way through the other side of that rabbit hole, and discover
truth in its entirety, you become enlightened. But this time you don't have to lie to yourself, you become enlightened in reality. And you feel the oneness with the universe once again and "rather than feeling like a lonely i in the bigger universe, there's a sense of being a part of something larger than yourself" - Annaka Harris
Here's some other people who have explained the illusion of self:
Sam Harris (watch from 2:50 - 5:00)
Annaka Harris and Lex Fridman Interview (watch 0:00 - 2:30) Annaka put it so beautifully
Matt Tenney - How Seeing Through The Illusion Of Self Results In Unconditional Happiness (30 minutes if you have time)
