How does the soul leave the body after. Encounter in the World of Souls

Watching myself from the ceiling

Approximately a quarter of the resurrected dead - those who survived clinical death and then remembered their journeys to the afterlife - saw themselves from the outside. Mystics believe that this is irrefutable evidence that the soul exists. After all, besides her, there is no one to look at the temporarily abandoned body.

The most amazing thing is that scientists - psychiatrists, neurophysiologists - have no doubt that a person can look at himself from the outside. The phenomenon even has a name - "out-of-body experience". It has been seriously studied for many years, but is not associated only with near-death experiences.

Studies show that people "lose their temper" under the influence of stress, drugs, during certain diseases. For example, Professor Leonid SPIVAK, a leading researcher at the Institute of the Brain of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg), recorded the phenomenon in parturients. Every tenth of those surveyed by him reported an "out-of-body experience".

As a rule, women saw themselves, and the medical staff, and neighbors in the ward from a height of 2-3 meters, - notes Leonid Ivanovich. - As if from the ceiling. “Soared” suddenly, ceased to feel pain, did not hear anything, experienced peace. They "reunited" with the body in about a minute - just as suddenly as they "parted". The pain returned.

There are thousands of facts of "out-of-body experience" - enough to recognize its reality. However, before the scientists had to believe the "natives" at the word. And there was no way - at least not an easy one - to experience the same. Now it has appeared thanks to a trick used by researchers at University College London.

Eyes from behind

According to the formulation proposed back in 1968 by Celia Greene, who headed the Institute for Psychophysical Research in England, “out-of-body experience” is “one in which objects of perception are clearly located in such a way that the observer experiences a sensation of their perception from a point of view that does not coincide with the position his physical body." A long but very accurate characterization, according to Celia's current colleagues, who published the results of their experiments in a recent issue of the authoritative journal Science. They managed to reproduce literally what the scientist was talking about.

The man was wearing a helmet with video displays on his head. The stereo image was sent to them by two video cameras installed a couple of meters behind the subject. They were like eyes. In other words, the person saw only what these cameras broadcast: himself from the outside. For greater persuasiveness, scientists stroked the "observer" with a stick - the one that he did not see - and at the same time moved the other stick in front of the cameras. It seemed to the subject that they were touching his "virtual body" - as if they were scraping his soul.

Reviews of those who went through a “split personality” are frightened and enthusiastic. Everyone, without exception, felt that they had indeed left their bodies. And some were naturally frightened when the scientists joked: they waved a baseball bat in front of the cameras, aiming it at the groin area. The subjects instinctively covered it with their hands. Like football players in the "wall" before a free kick.

And here's what's even more interesting: after the experiments, the volunteers were asked to show where they were in the room. They showed where their “virtual body” was, but they didn’t remember about their present.

- "Out-of-body experience" is not something supernatural, - concludes the head of the experiments Hendrik ERSSON. - This is an illusion, which may well be generated by certain processes in the brain: it easily takes "deception" for reality.

A similar opinion is shared by Professor Spivak, who believes that the cortex of the temporal region is responsible for the "out-of-body experience".

convolution of the soul

Dr. Olaf BLANKE from the University Hospital in Geneva reproduced the "out of body" and without video cameras, and without clinical death. In an article published in the most respected scientific journal Nature, he described an experiment with a 43-year-old patient suffering from epilepsy. To investigate her illness, the scientist implanted electrodes in the woman's brain that stimulated the right temporal lobe, and accidentally excited the angular gyrus located there - a structure that is associated with the organs of vision, touch and balance. As a result, a completely alive patient saw herself from the outside.

Blanke, amazed, suggested that, perhaps, during stress, the brain also somehow excites this gyrus and, with its participation, sends information about the position of the body in space to the visual cortex. She perceives it in her own way, mixes it with existing pictures and projects it onto the retina of the eye. There is an effect of vision turned inside out, and at the same time it seems to a person that he sees himself from the outside. Approximately in the same way, according to the scientist, the well-known effect of a split personality arises in psychiatry.

By the way, materialist skeptics also refer to recent experiments in English Wales. Local doctors observed the clinical death of 39 patients. At the same time, they drew and placed leaflets with large symbols drawn on them near the temporarily deceased. And none of those who "left their body" "saw" the symbols.

skeptical opinion

Susan Blamore, parapsychologist at the University of the West of England:

The discovery that "out-of-body experience" is a perfectly natural phenomenon does not prove that the astral body, or soul, or spirit, does not exist. But it clearly shows that there is no need to invent them. “Out of body experience” can be seen not as proof of the existence of the supernatural or life after death, but as a fascinating and exciting phenomenon that all of us can potentially experience.

The following factors can lead to the exit from your physical body of the ethereal, emotional or astral double: asceticism, starvation, loneliness, sexual and sensual depression, shock, stress, drugs, prolonged meditation, self-hypnotic suggestions, monotonous singing of psalms, mantras, whirlwind dances, sleep , Kundalini awakening.

At first, these will most likely be unconscious exits, but they may also be conscious. In the early stages of the exits of the subtle double, incomprehensible sounds can be heard inside the head: crackling, ringing, chirping, clicking, voices, noise, which eventually turn into one long or ringing note. Such cacophony usually frightens the student if he is not warned in time. The released astral body cannot cause movement in the physical body. But the etheric body can thicken its substance and have a physical effect on people and objects. Our night dreams are also unconscious exits of astral bodies.

The astral body is the medium of such phenomena as clairvoyance, flights of the spirit, telepathy, proscopia, teleportation, knowledge of the past and future, and others. For example, many scientific discoveries are made in a dream with the help of the astral body. The American inventor Thomas Edison used to make a list of questions in the evening and set himself up to get answers to them during sleep. And often he got what he wanted. The invention of the phonograph, the incandescent lamp, the public power station, the improvement of the telegraph and telephone - this is not a complete list of the discoveries made by Edison with the help of the astral body. In a dream, the Russian chemist Mendeleev saw his periodic table, the German physicist Karl Gauss discovered the law of induction in a dream. And the Danish scientist Niels Bohr, the creator of modern physics, saw a model of an atom in a dream. Albert Einstein established the relationship between space and time while sleeping. The Austrian geneticist Mendel discovered the laws of heredity in a dream. English microbiologist Fleming invented penicillin while sleeping. A banker from San Francisco, Heinrich Schliemann, who never thought about archeology, in a dream saw the location of the legendary Troy, and later - Mycenae in Crete. And this list of world discoveries can be continued indefinitely.

Our seven consciousnesses located in the main chakras are independent of the material body, since the physical brain depends on thoughts, and not vice versa. During the day, we operate mainly with the consciousness of the third chakra, called reason. By inhaling chloroform, one can exit the physical body while maintaining the rational consciousness in two or three of one's bodies at the same time. Being in the astral worlds, a person notices the growth of all his abilities. It seems to him that everything around is illuminated with a translucent light, each object glows from the inside, a feeling of happiness and eternity arises, a feeling of the fullness of being. If the physical body is sick, then here it is healthy, if the body is old, then here it is in its prime. The characteristic feature of the astral body is the absence of its form. But it seems to a person that it has arms, legs, clothes. Because in the astral world to think is to be. The subject's thoughts instantly take the form they wish. However, man tends to identify himself with the situation of the physical world. Therefore, in the astral worlds, he can stretch his arm to an incredible length or try to open the door, although he does not need hands, feet, or doors. He can imagine an animal that turns into a plant. All this will happen. He can easily fly through walls and floors and see through everything. In the astral plane, to think is to act. Think about flying - and you fly. Think about the destination, about the person - and you will find yourself in this place and next to this person. By the way, the same thing happens in the physical world, only much more slowly, since material atoms are thousands of times larger than astral ones. Therefore, in order to push the atoms into thought forms and quickly transform physical matter, a huge concentration of thought is needed. This explains all the phenomena of saints and yogis, shamans and magicians.

The astral body cannot set material objects in motion. Therefore, in the astral world it is impossible to satisfy one's physical habits: drink, eat, smoke, inject, and so on, because there is simply nothing to do it. And people with addictions after death suffer greatly and are nervous because they do not satisfy their unbridled desires. After all, in the astral plane, the power of desire increases thousands of times. Some of these depraved souls are looking for a material intermediary to satisfy their disgusting habits. They inhabit the physical bodies of people whose souls are young and weak, and cannot give a worthy rebuff to the invaders. So the weak in spirit become obsessed.

In the ethereal, emotional, mental and astral worlds, people find themselves in different countries or on other distant planets. But with a sudden exit from the physical body, they remain near him.

Being on the subtle planes of being with full consciousness, people are surprisingly indifferent to their dying body and to the entire physical world. The actions of people saving the body or medical workers for them, looking at it from a two-meter height, are a boring theater stage. And only the suffering of people whom the dying person truly loves can soften his alienation and force him to return to the stiff body again.

Often the thought of returning to the physical world becomes very unpleasant for a person. He sees his native physical body as scary, slippery and uncomfortable. It seems to the astral twin a terrible prison, from which he was lucky enough to escape, and life on Earth seems to be - well, a living hell.

The failure in consciousness during the transition of the traveler into subtle bodies and back into the physical is explained by the change in mechanisms that control gross bodies from the mental worlds.

Strange brain states

The absence of waking consciousness in a person is accompanied by unusual and strange states: somnambulism, sleep, trance, loss of rational consciousness, epilepsy, coma. But a change of consciousness can occur when a person is also in the waking state. It occurs during drowsiness, in a state of intoxication, in serious physical or mental illnesses, and is a natural companion of early childhood or advancing old age. In all such cases, the physical and astral bodies partially do not coincide. Hypnosis, medicine in large quantities, a blow to the head, a high-speed elevator, repetitive actions (long runs, assembly line work, prayer bows) leading to fatigue, blood loss, dancing with fast twisting, self-hypnosis also lead to a rapid displacement of the astral double. When you feel dizzy, know that this is a characteristic symptom of the exit of the double. My exits of the astral body used to be accompanied by headache, nausea and dizziness. But over time it passed. The most convenient postures for exiting the astral body are the inverted postures of the yogis, such that the head is at or below the level of the knees (the purpose of such a posture is to direct the latent pranic currents of the body to the brain). Three of the best ones that I recommend you do every day are Halasana (plough), Sarvanga-sana (candle) and Sirshasana (headstand).

Let us emphasize that the health of the physical body is inversely proportional to the exit capacity of the astral double: the more diseased the body, the easier it is for the double to exit. We also note that extreme cold or heat, fatigue and exhaustion, head trauma, blood loss, shock, illness crisis contribute to a quick exit from the body - all this violates the integrity of the physical body and its astral counterpart. Even Plato said that a serious illness contributes to the appearance of supernatural powers in a person. And William James argued that the temperature of 57 degrees Celsius is favorable for the knowledge of the Truth.

Asceticism, prolonged sexual abstinence, volitional suppression of other physical desires also lead to the release of the astral body.

astral body

The most common method of entering the astral plane, used by seekers to learn the truth, is fasting (fasting). It is the lightest, the most beneficial for physical health and the most harmless to subtle bodies. On the fourth day of fasting, you no longer want to eat. On the thirtieth day of fasting, all the auric layers of a person are cleansed. On the fortieth day of a properly conducted fast, siddhis appear: teleportation, clairvoyance, telepathy, telekinesis, and others.

Insomnia or forced wakefulness lead to other states of the rational mind: three nights without sleep - and the person loses the sense of orientation in space and time. If you do not sleep further, then there will be ripples in the eyes, and then halos or hazy images are seen around objects that can move, expand or contract, as if they were alive. All this is accompanied by a chaos of thoughts, auditory and visual hallucinations. It may seem that huge insects crawl on the skin or gnomes and dwarfs appear, behaving extremely aggressively. Such an average unprepared person is not able to endure, and if insomnia continues, he will quickly go crazy.

There is a great similarity between the psychic fantasies of celibate hermits, the dreams of those imprisoned in solitary confinement to the point of despair, and the hallucinations of those who have been subjected to forced wakefulness. They all see, hear and experience similar feelings in other subtle dimensions.

The climax of the Initiation into the mysteries of the various closed esoteric societies is the exit of the astral body in full consciousness. The initiation is carried out over many months of study so that the adept can experience the experience that will happen to the person after his death. Therefore, in world religions there is a long and monotonous singing of psalms and mantras, causing the disappearance of logical control over the mind. Endless bows, singing, howling - are intended to cause physical exhaustion, reduce the oxygen content in the blood, thereby causing a state of trance. For these reasons, any religion for most common people is a universal means that opens the way to other dimensions.

The use of sexual rites to achieve a trance, to exit the astral double is as old as the world. In the left tradition (tantra, black magic, drug addiction) sex is the most powerful force in the natural plane. Various types of sex (group sex, masturbation, homosexuality) cause stable forms of vibrational energy and these forms generate their charges of force in the etheric planes.

It can be said that many shamans, magicians, priests and mediums have the gift of a spiritualist who leaves his physical body for a while in order to enable another more developed spirit to enter it.

It has long been noted that being outside the body, a person experiences a state of ecstasy, a feeling of indescribable bliss. Poets, writers, artists and other representatives of the arts are familiar with this feeling of ecstatic state, when life-giving inspiration seizes the soul and controls their unmanned creativity. Socrates said that the authors of brilliant works of art are not their authors; the author is the high spirit that entered them at the time of inspiration.

During stellar inspiration, a person enters a trance: he does not feel the body, sounds, time. Cascades of ideas, poems and poems, ideas of novels, monologues, etc. fall upon him. He does not have time, not only to write down - he does not have time to remember them. Coming to his senses, the artist finds that he is unable to explain what he created, and how he created, and why he created it. World writers and great composers, genius poets said: "This is not work - this is eavesdropping."

Strange states of consciousness are sometimes expressed in various forms of insanity, schizophrenia. Most varieties of schizophrenia are self-centeredness and loss of contact with the outside world. Paranoia, schizophrenia - this is when the astral world begins to invade the usual logical consciousness. The patient hears voices, feels the invisible, acts in accordance with internal commands. His body assumes yoga postures for several hours, although in the normal state the patient did not know about them. In the ancient world of Egypt and Greece, these diseases were even considered sacred. Before death, the subtle double often leaves the physical body. I will give examples related to historical names. Countess A. D. Bludova in her memoirs described the appearance in the palace of the double of the Russian Empress Anna Ioannovna (1693 - 1740). When the double of the queen entered the throne room, the guards saluted and reported to Biron about the arrival of Anna Ioannovna. “It can’t be,” the duke exclaimed, “I’m from the Empress now, she went into the bedroom to go to bed.” Biron returned for the empress and the two of them hurried to the throne room. Here they saw a woman strikingly resembling a queen, who was not in the least embarrassed. "Daring!" Biron shouted and called the whole guard. The empress, standing for a moment in surprise, stepped forward, approached this woman and asked: “Who are you, why did you come?” Without answering a word, she began to back away and climb the throne, not taking her eyes off the empress. "That's a cheeky liar! Here is the Empress! They are ordering you to shoot this woman!” Biron shouted to the platoon. But as soon as the soldiers took aim, the woman on the throne once again looked at Anna Ioannovna and disappeared into the air. The queen turned to Biron and said: “This is my death!” A few days later the Empress died.

Another Russian Empress, Catherine the Great, also met her doppelgänger two days before her death. At night, the Empress was awakened by the ladies-in-waiting and informed that a woman, very similar to Catherine, was sitting on the throne. The queen quickly dressed and, accompanied by her retinue, went into the throne room. The door was open - and a strange sight presented itself to the eyes of those present. The huge hall was all illuminated by some kind of greenish-blue light, and Catherine the Great was sitting on the throne. The Empress screamed when she saw this and fell unconscious. From that moment on, her health deteriorated, and two days later she was gone.

Shortly before Lenin's death, the double of the leader of the world proletariat visited the Kremlin and wandered aimlessly through all the offices. The double was seen by enough witnesses, and this case could not simply be hushed up. So that the truth about the non-Marxist episode in the life of Vladimir Ilyich would not come out, it was necessary to confirm everyone in the idea that Lenin really came from Gorki. This is how the official version of Lenin's arrival in Moscow before his death appeared.

The exit of the ethereal double from the body is by no means always accompanied by the death of the owner. Here is an anecdote from the life of the Irish poet and playwright William Yeats (1865-1939). Somehow, the poet urgently needed to convey the news to his friend, who lived in another city. At the very time that Yeats was about to write him a letter, he thought intensely about it. And suddenly his friend saw Yeats among a large crowd of people in the lobby of the hotel where he then lived. Not doubting his reality, the friend asked the poet to come to him later, when the audience dispersed. Yeats' doppelgänger nodded in agreement and disappeared, but reappeared at midnight and gave him the news that Yeats wanted to convey personally. At the same time, Yeats had no idea what was happening, since he was in another city.

Researchers of modern "post-mortem" experience almost invariably turn to the form of literature that claims to be based on "out-of-body" experiences - to occult literature from ancient times from the Egyptians and the Tibetan "Book of the Dead" and down to occult teachers and experimenters of our day. On the other hand, hardly any of these teachers pays serious attention to the Orthodox teaching on life and death, or to the biblical and patristic sources on which it is based. Why so?

The reason is very simple: Christian teaching comes from God's revelation to man about the fate of the soul after death and focuses mainly on the final state of the soul in heaven or hell. Although there is also extensive Christian literature describing what happens to the soul after death, based on first-hand information about "post-mortem" experiences or out-of-body experiences (as shown in the previous chapter on ordeals, this literature certainly occupies a secondary place in comparison with the mainstream Christian doctrine of the final state of the soul). Literature based on Christian experience is useful mainly for clarifying and more visually presenting the most important points of Christian teaching.

In occult literature, the situation is just the opposite: the main emphasis is on the "out-of-body" experience of the soul, and its final state is usually left in uncertainty or is represented by personal opinions and conjectures, presumably based on this experience. Modern researchers are much more inclined to this experience of occult writers, which seems to them at least to some extent suitable for "scientific" research, than to the teaching of Christianity, which requires the participation of faith and trust, as well as the conduct of spiritual life in accordance with this teaching.

In this chapter we will attempt to point out some of the pitfalls of this approach, which is by no means as objective as some make it seem, and to evaluate occult out-of-body experiences from an Orthodox Christian perspective. To do this, we must get a little familiar with the occult literature used by modern researchers to understand the "post-mortem" experience.

Tibetan "Book of the Dead"

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is a Buddhist book from the 8th century, which may contain a pre-Buddhist tradition from a much earlier time. Its Tibetan title is "Liberation by Hearing on the Post-Death Plane" and its English publisher defines it as "a mystical instruction for guidance in the other world of many illusions and realms". It is read at the body of the deceased for the benefit of his soul, because, as the text itself says, "at the time of death, various deceptive illusions occur." These, as the publisher notes, "are not visions of reality, but nothing more than ... (own) intellectual impulses that have taken on a personified form." In the subsequent stages of the 19-day "post-mortem" trials described in the book, there are visions of both "peaceful" and "evil" deities, all of which, according to Buddhist teachings, are considered illusory. (Below, in discussing the nature of this realm, we will discuss why these visions are indeed mostly illusory.) The end of this whole process is the final fall of the soul and "reincarnation" (also discussed below), understood by the Buddhist teachings as an evil that can be avoided with the help of Buddhist training. K. Jung, in his psychological commentary on the book, finds that these visions are very similar to the descriptions of the afterlife in the spiritualistic literature of the modern West; both of them leave an unpleasant impression due to the extreme emptiness and banality of messages from the "spirit world".

Between the Tibetan "Book of the Dead" and modern experiences in two respects there is a surprising similarity, which explains the interest in it of Dr. Moody and other researchers. First, the impressions described there from being out of the body at the first moments of death are essentially the same as in modern cases (and also in Orthodox literature). The soul of the deceased appears as a "radiant illusory body", which is visible to other beings of the same nature, but not to people in the flesh. At first, she does not know if she is alive or dead; she sees the people around the body, hears the lamentations of the mourners, and has all the faculties of sense perception; its movements are not constrained by anything and it can pass through solid bodies. Secondly, “at the moment of death, the primary light appears,” which many researchers identify with the “luminous being” currently being described.

There is no reason to doubt that what is described in the Tibetan "Book of the Dead" is based on an out-of-body experience; but we shall see below that the present post-mortem state is only one of these cases, and we must warn against accepting any out-of-body experience as a revelation of what really happens after death. The experience of Western mediums may also be authentic, but they certainly do not convey real reports of the dead, as they claim.

There are some similarities between the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the much older Egyptian Book of the Dead. The latter describes how, after death, the soul goes through many changes and encounters many "gods". However, there is no living tradition of interpretation of this book, and without it, the modern reader can only guess at the meaning of some of these symbols. According to this book, the deceased alternately takes the form of a swallow, a golden falcon, a snake with human legs, a crocodile, a heron, a lotus flower, etc. and meets with various "gods" and otherworldly creatures ("four sacred monkeys", a hippopotamus goddess, various gods with the heads of dogs, jackals, monkeys, birds, etc.).

The sophisticated and confused experience of the "afterlife" kingdom described in this book differs sharply from the clarity and simplicity of the Christian experience. While this book may also be based on authentic out-of-body experiences, it is, like the Tibetan Book of the Dead, full of illusory visions and certainly cannot be used as a valid description of the state of the soul after death.

The Writings of Emmanuel Swedenborg

Another of the occult texts, which is being studied by modern scholars, gives more hope of being understood, for it is of modern times, is purely Western in mode of thought, and claims to be Christian. The writings of the Swedish mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) describe otherworldly visions that began to appear to him in the middle of his life. Before these visions began, he was a typical 18th-century European intellectual: a multilingual scientist, explorer, inventor, active in public life as an assessor of the Swedish Mining College and a member of the highest house of parliament - in short, Swedenborg - this is the "universal man" of the early period of the development of science, when it was still possible for one person to master almost all modern knowledge. He wrote about 150 scientific papers, some of which (for example, the four-volume anatomical treatise "The Brain") were far ahead of their time.

Then, in the 56th year of his life, he turned his attention to the invisible world and over the last 25 years of his life created a huge number of religious works describing heaven, hell, angels and spirits - all based on his own experience.

His descriptions of the invisible realms are frustratingly mundane; in general they agree with the descriptions to be found in most of the occult literature. When a person dies, then, according to Swedenborg's story, he enters the "spirit world", located halfway between heaven and hell. This world, although spiritual and immaterial, is so similar to material reality that at first one does not realize that one has died; his "body" and feelings are of the same type as on earth. At the moment of death, there is a vision of light - something bright and hazy - and there is a "revision" of one's own life, its good and bad deeds. He meets with friends and acquaintances and for a while continues an existence very similar to the earthly one, with the only exception that everything is much more "turned inward". A person is attracted by those things and people whom he loved, and reality is determined by thought: one has only to think about a loved one, and this face appears, as if on a call. As soon as a person gets used to being in the spirit world, his friends tell him about heaven and hell; then he is taken to various cities, gardens and parks.

In this intermediate spirit world, a person is prepared for heaven in a course of training lasting anywhere from a few days to a year. But the sky itself, as Swedenborg describes it, is not too different from the world of spirits, and both are very similar to the earth. There are courtyards and halls, as on earth, parks and gardens, houses and bedrooms of "Angels", a lot of dress changes for them. There are governments, laws and courts - all, of course, more "spiritual" than on earth. There are church buildings and services there, the clergy there preach sermons and are embarrassed if one of the parishioners does not agree with him. There are marriages, schools, the education and upbringing of children, social life - in short, almost everything found on earth that can become "spiritual". Swedenborg himself spoke in heaven with many "Angels" (all of whom, he believed, were the souls of the dead), as well as with the strange inhabitants of Mercury, Jupiter and other planets; he argued in "heaven" with Martin Luther and converted him to his faith, but could not dissuade Calvin from his belief in predestination. The description of hell also resembles some place on earth, its inhabitants are characterized by selfishness and evil deeds.

One can easily understand why Swedenborg was dismissed as mad by most of his contemporaries, and why, almost to the present day, his visions were rarely taken seriously. However, there were always those who admitted that despite the strangeness of his visions, he was indeed in touch with an unseen reality. His younger contemporary, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, one of the founders of modern philosophy, took him very seriously and believed in several examples of Swedenborgian "clairvoyance" that were known throughout Europe. And the American philosopher R. Emerson, in his long essay about him in the book "The Chosen Ones of Mankind", called him "one of the giants of literature, which entire colleges of mediocre scientists will not measure." The revival of interest in the occult in our time has, of course, brought him forward as a "mystic" and "clairvoyant" not limited to doctrinal Christianity; in particular, researchers of "post-mortem" experiences find interesting parallels between their discoveries and his description of the first moments after death.

There can be little doubt that Swedenborg was in fact in contact with spirits and that he received his "revelation" from them. Studying how he received these "revelations" will show us what realm these spirits actually inhabit.

The history of Swedenborg's contacts with invisible spirits, described in detail in his voluminous Dream Diary and Spiritual Diary (2300 pages), corresponds exactly to the description of communication with air demons made by Bishop Ignatius. Swedenborg practiced one form of meditation from childhood, involving relaxation and full concentration; in time he began to see flames during meditation, which he trustingly accepted and explained as a sign of approval of his thoughts. This prepared him for the beginning of communication with the world of spirits. Later he began to dream of Christ; they began to admit him into the society of "immortals", and gradually he began to feel the presence of spirits around him. Finally the spirits began to appear to him in the waking state. This first happened during his trip to London. Overeating one evening, he suddenly saw blackness and reptiles crawling over his body, and then a man sitting in the corner of the room, who said only: "Don't eat so much," and disappeared into the darkness. Although this phenomenon frightened him, he considered it to be something good because moral advice had been given to him. Then, as he himself said, “that same night the same man appeared to me again, but now I was no longer afraid. Then he said that he was the Lord God, the creator of the world and the Redeemer, and that he had chosen me to explain me what I should write on this subject, on the same night the worlds of spirits, heaven and hell were revealed to me - so that I was completely convinced of their reality ... After that, the Lord opened, very often during the day, my bodily eyes, so that in the middle of the day I could look into another world, and in a state of full wakefulness communicate with angels and spirits.

It is quite clear from this description that Swedenborg was open to communication with the airy realm of fallen spirits, and that all his subsequent revelations came from the same source. The "heaven and hell" he saw were also parts of the airy realm, and the "revelations" he recorded are a description of his illusions, which fallen spirits for their own purposes often produce for the gullible. A look at some other works of occult literature will show us other aspects of this realm.

The "Astral Plane" of Theosophy

Theosophy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which is a mixture of Eastern and Western occult ideas, teaches in detail about the airy realm, which it seems to consist of a number of "astral planes" ("astral" means "starry" is a fancy term referring to "above earthly "reality"). According to one exposition of this teaching, the astral planes constitute the dwelling place of all supernatural beings, the dwelling place of gods and demons, the void where thought forms dwell, the region inhabited by the spirits of the air and other elements, and various heavens and hells with angelic and demonic hosts ... Prepared people believe that they can, with the help of rites, "climb up on the plane" and become fully acquainted with these areas.

According to this teaching, the "astral plane" (or "planes" - depending on how this kingdom is considered - as a whole or in separate "layers") is entered after death and, as in Swedenborg's teaching, there is no sudden change in state and no judgment; a person continues to live as before, but only outside the body, and begins to "pass through all the sub-planes of the astral plane on its way to the heavenly world." Each subsequent sub-plane turns out to be more and more refined and "inward-facing"; passing through them, in contrast to the fear and uncertainty caused by Christian ordeals, is a time of pleasure and joy: "The joy of being on the astral plane is so great that physical life in comparison with it does not seem like life at all ... Nine out of ten return to the body with great reluctance" (A. Powell. Astral body, 1972).

Invented by the Russian mediumist Helena Blavatsky at the end of the nineteenth century, theosophy was an attempt to systematically explain the mediumistic contacts with the "dead" that had multiplied in the Western world since the outbreak of spiritualistic phenomena in America in 1848. To this day, her doctrine of the "astral plane" (for which there is a special name) is the standard used by mediums and other lovers of the occult to explain phenomena from the spirit world. Although the theosophical books on the "astral plane" are characterized by the same "unpleasant emptiness and banality" that, according to Jung, characterizes all spiritualistic literature, nevertheless, behind this triviality lies a philosophy of the reality of the other world, which resonates in modern research. The modern humanistic world view is very favorable to such an afterlife, which is pleasant, not painful, which allows for a gentle "growth" or "evolution" rather than the finality of the judgment, which provides "one more chance" to prepare for a higher reality, and not determines the eternal destiny according to behavior in earthly life. The teaching of Theosophy provides just what the modern soul needs and claims to be based on experience.

In order to give an Orthodox Christian answer to this teaching, we must carefully look at what exactly happens on the "astral plane"? But where are we going to look? The reports of mediums are notorious for their unreliability and vagueness; in any case, contact with the "spirit world" through mediums is too dubious and indirect to be a convincing proof of the nature of the other world. On the other hand, modern "post-mortem" experience is too brief and not convincing to be a sure proof of another world.

But still there is an experience of the "astral plane", which can be studied in more detail. In Theosophical language this is called "astral projection" or "projection of the astral body". By cultivating certain mediumistic methods, one can not only get in touch with disembodied spirits, as ordinary mediums do (when their seances are authentic), but actually enter their realm of existence and "travel" among them. One can be quite skeptical when hearing about such cases in antiquity. But it so happens that this experience has become relatively commonplace in our time - and not only among occultists. There is already an extensive literature that tells first-hand about the experience of dealing with this area.

"Astral Projection"

Orthodox Christians are well aware that a person can indeed be raised above the limits of his bodily nature and visit the invisible worlds. The apostle Paul himself did not know whether he was in the body ... or out of the body when he was caught up into the third heaven (2 Cor. XII, 2), and we do not need to think about how the body can be refined so that to enter Heaven (if his experience was really in the body) or in what "subtle body" the soul could be clothed during its stay outside the body. It is enough for us to know that the soul (in some kind of "body"), by God's grace, can really be lifted up and contemplate paradise, as well as the airy realm of spirits under heaven.

In Orthodox literature, such a state is often described as being outside the body, as was the case with St. Anthony, who, as described above, saw ordeals while standing in prayer. Bishop Ignatius (Brianchaninov) mentions two ascetics of the 19th century, whose souls also left their bodies during prayer - the elder Siberian Basilisk, whose disciple was the famous Zosima, and the elder Ignatius (vol. 3, p. 75). The most remarkable case of leaving the body in Orthodox hagiographies is probably the case of St. Andrew Christ for the sake of the holy fool of Constantinople (X century), who, at the time when his body was clearly lying on the snow of the city street, was lifted up in the spirit and contemplated paradise and the third heaven, and then part of what he saw was told to his disciple, who wrote down what happened (" Lives of the Saints, 2 Oct.).

This is given by God's grace and completely independent of human desire or will. But "astral projection" is an "out-of-body experience" that can be achieved and invoked through certain methods. It is a special form of what Vladyka Ignatius describes as "the opening of the senses," and it is clear that since contact with spirits, except for the direct action of God, is forbidden to people, then the kingdom achieved by these means is not Heaven, but only the celestial air space inhabited by fallen spirits.

The theosophical texts that describe this experience in detail are so filled with occult opinions and interpretations that it is impossible to understand from them what the experience of this realm is. However, in the 20th century there was a different kind of literature devoted to this subject: in parallel with the expansion of research and experimentation in the field of parapsychology, some people discovered by chance or experimentally that they were capable of "astral projection", and wrote books recounting their experience in non-occult language. Some researchers have collected and studied accounts of out-of-body experiences and transmitted them in scientific rather than occult language. Let's look at some of these books here.

The "terrestrial" side of "leaving the body" is well described in the book "Out of the Body" (New York, 1975), director of the Institute for Psychophysical Research in Oxford (England), Salia Green. In response to an appeal made in October 1966 through the British press and radio, the Institute received about 400 responses from people claiming to have personally out-of-body experiences. Such a reaction suggests that such an experience is not at all uncommon in our time and that those who have had it are now more ready than before to talk about it, without fear of being branded as "touched". With regard to "post-mortem" experience, Dr. Moody and other researchers note the same thing. The 400 people mentioned received two questionnaires each, and the book was the result of a comparison and analysis of the answers.

The experiences described in this book were almost all involuntary, caused by various physical conditions - stress, fatigue, illness, accident, anesthesia, sleep. Almost all of them took place near the body (and not in the realm of spirits), and the observations made are very similar to the stories of people who had "post-mortem" experience: a person sees his own body from the outside, has all the senses (although in the body he could be deaf and blind) , unable to touch or interact with his surroundings, floats in the air with great pleasure and ease, the mind is clearer than usual. Some described meeting dead relatives or traveling to places that did not seem to belong to ordinary reality.

One researcher of out-of-body experience, the English geologist Robert Crookel, has collected a huge number of such examples both from occultists and mediums, on the one hand, and from ordinary people, on the other. He summarizes this experience as follows: "The body - a copy or "double" - was "born" from the physical body and located above it. When the "double" separated from the body, a "darkened" consciousness took place. (This is much like like switching gears in a car causes a brief interruption in power transmission)... There was often a panoramic view of a past life, and the empty "physical" body was usually seen from the side of the released "double"...

Contrary to what one might expect, no one said that pain or fear was experienced when leaving the body - everything seemed completely natural ... The consciousness working through the separated "double" was wider than in ordinary life ... Telepathy, clairvoyance and foresight sometimes appeared. Dead friends often appeared. Many of those who gave information expressed great unwillingness to re-enter the body and return to earthly life ... This hitherto unknown general course of events when leaving the body cannot be sufficiently explained on the basis of the hypothesis that all such cases were with us and that the "twins" described were simply hallucinations. But, on the other hand, it can be easily explained by the hypothesis that these cases were genuine and that all the "doubles" seen were objective (albeit ultraphysical) bodies" (Robert Krukel "Out of the Body", 1970).

In essence, this description is identical, point by point, to Dr. Moody's model of "post-mortem" experience ("Life after Life"). The identity is as precise as it can be only when the same experience is described. If so, then it is finally possible to identify the experience that Dr. Moody and others describe, and which has been generating such interest and discussion in the Western world for several years now. This is not an exact "post-mortem" experience, but rather an "out-of-body" experience that is only a precursor to another, much broader experience, whether it be the experience of death itself or "astral travel" (which is discussed below). Although the "out-of-body" state could be called the first moment of death - if death really occurs - it would be a gross mistake to infer anything from this about the "post-mortem" state, except perhaps only the bare facts that the soul after death is alive and retains consciousness; and this is in any case hardly denied by anyone who really believes in the immortality of the soul. (Only a few sects, far from historical Christianity, teach that the soul "sleeps" or has no consciousness after death; such are Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventists, etc.)

Since the "out-of-body" state is not necessarily associated with death, we must be very selective in selecting the evidence provided by extensive experience in this area; in particular, we must ask whether the visions of "heaven" (or "hell") that many now see have anything to do with the Christian understanding of heaven and hell, or are they merely an interpretation of some natural (or demonic) experiences in the out-of-body realm.

Dr. Krukel, who has hitherto been the most meticulous researcher in this field, approaching with the same care and attention to every detail that characterizes his former books on fossil plants in Great Britain, has collected a lot of material on the experience of "paradise" and " hades." He considers them to be natural and, in fact, universal "out-of-body" experiences and distinguishes them as follows: "Those who left their bodies naturally tended to see something bright and calm" ("paradise") , something like a glorious Earth, and those who were uprooted by force tended to fall into relatively gloomy, confused and dream-like conditions, corresponding to the "hades" of the ancients. The former met numerous helpers (including the deceased friends and relatives already mentioned above), while the latter sometimes met with some kind of incorporeal "obstacles". People who have what Dr. Krukel calls a "mediumistic bodily constitution" invariably first pass through the dark, misty region of "Hades" and then enter into a region of bright light that looks like paradise. This "paradise" is variously described (both by mediums and non-mediums) as "the most beautiful landscape ever seen", "a view of wondrous beauty - a large garden, like a park, and the light there is such as you will never see on the sea or on land", "wonderful landscape" with "people in white"; "the light became strong", "the whole earth was in radiance", etc.

To explain these rumors, Dr. Krukel hypothesizes that there is a "total earth" that includes at its lowest level that physical earth that we know in everyday life, surrounded by an all-pervading non-physical sphere, on the lower and upper boundaries of which are belts of "Hades and "paradise". In general terms, this is a description of what in Orthodox language is called the airy heavenly kingdom of fallen spirits or the "astral plane" in Theosophy; however, the Orthodox descriptions of this realm do not distinguish between "upper" and "lower", but rather emphasize the demonic deceptions that are an integral part of this kingdom. As a secular researcher, Dr. Krukel knows nothing about this aspect of the air realm, but from his "scientific" point of view, he confirms a fact extremely important for understanding "post-mortem", "out-of-body" phenomena: "heaven" and "hell" seen IN THESE STATES, THEY ARE ONLY A PART (OR PHENOMENA) OF THE AIR KINGDOM OF SPIRITS, HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE HEAVEN AND HELL, WHICH ARE THE ETERNAL RESIDENCE OF HUMAN SOULS (AND THEIR RESURRECTION BODIES), AS WELL AS NON-MATERIAL SPIRITS. People in a state "out of the body" do not have the opportunity to get to the real heaven or hell, which are opened to souls only by the clear will of God. If some Christians at the time of "death" almost immediately see the "heavenly city" with "pearl gates" and "Angels", then this only indicates that what they see in the airy kingdom depends to some extent on their own past experience. expectations, just as dying Hindus see their Hindu temples and "gods". The genuine Christian experience of heaven and hell, as we shall see in the next chapter, has an entirely different dimension.

"Astral Journey"

Nearly all recent "post-mortem" cases have been extremely brief; had they been longer, real death would have followed. But in the state "out of the body", which is not associated with conditions close to death, a longer experience is also possible. If this experience is of sufficient duration, it is possible to leave one's immediate surroundings and enter into an entirely new landscape, not only to glimpse a "garden" or "bright place" or "heavenly city" but also to have a long "adventure" "in the air kingdom. The "astral plane" is obviously very close to everyone, and some critical situations (medium methods) can provoke contact with it. In one of his books ("The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche", 1955), Carl Jung describes the experience of one of his patients - a woman who went out of her body during a difficult birth. She could see the doctors and nurses around her, but she felt that behind her was a magnificent landscape that seemed to be the boundary of another dimension; she felt that if she turned there, she would leave this life, but instead she returned to her body.

Dr. Moody has described a number of such states, which he calls "marginal" or "ultimate" experiences (Life After Life, pp. 54-57).

Those who intentionally induce the state of "astral projection" can often enter this "other dimension". In recent years, one man's described "journeys" in this dimension have gained some notoriety, which allowed him to organize an institute for experiments in the out-of-body state. One of the researchers at this institute was Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who agrees with Monroe's conclusions about the similarity between out-of-body and post-mortem experiences. Here we will briefly outline the discoveries of this experimenter, described in the book Journeys Out of the Body (New York, 1977).

Robert Monroe is a successful American administrator (president of the board of directors of a multi-million dollar company) and an agnostic about religion. His encounter with out-of-body experiences began in 1958, before he even had any interest in occult literature, when he was doing his own experiments on dream memory techniques; they used relaxation and concentration exercises, similar to some meditation techniques. After the beginning of these experiments, he had some unusual state, when it seemed to him that he was hit by a ray of light, which caused temporary paralysis. After this feeling was repeated several times, he began to induce and develop this state. At the beginning of his occult "journeys" he discovers the same basic characteristics that opened the way for Swedenborg's adventures in the spirit world - passive meditation, a sense of light, a general attitude of trust and openness to new and strange experiences, all combined with a practical eye for life and the absence of any deep attitude or experience of Christianity.

At first, Monroe "traveled" to recognizable places on earth - at first close, then more remote, and he was sometimes able to deliver actual evidence of his experiments. Then he began to contact with "spirit-like" figures, and the first contacts were part of a mediumistic experiment ("Indian righteous", sent by a medium, really came for him!). Finally, he began to fall into strange-looking terrestrial landscapes.

Writing down his experiences (which he did immediately upon returning to the body), he characterized them as referring to three "places". "Place 1" is "here-now", the usual conditions of this world. "Place 2" is "an intangible environment, apparently of enormous size and with characteristics similar to those of the 'astral plane.' This place is the natural environment of the 'second body', as Monroe calls the the physical world, and the laws of thought reign in it: "as you think you are", "like attracts like" to travel, you just need to think about the destination Monroe visited various places in this realm, where he saw, for example, in a narrow valley, a group of people in long white robes, a row of people in uniform, who called themselves “an army on parcels, waiting for orders.” “Place 3” is apparently some kind of earth-like reality that has strange anachronistic properties; Theosophists would probably recognize in it another, more "solid" part of the "astral plane."

After largely overcoming his initial fear of entering these unfamiliar regions, Monroe began to explore them and describe the many sentient beings encountered there. On some "journeys" he met dead friends who sometimes helped him, but just as often did not respond to his appeal, who gave obscure mystical messages, similar to those of mediums who could shake his outstretched hand or stick it with the same success. knife. In some of these beings he recognized the "obstructors" - bestial beings with rubbery bodies that easily take the form of dogs, bats, or his own children, and others who taunted him, tormented him, and simply laughed at him.

The nerve energy stored in the neurons of the brain is usually used only by 4%. People live with a colossal underload, which they don’t even know about. The problem of entering the Astral is, in essence, the problem of subordinating one's own brain. After all, it is he, the brain, that prevents us from "flying"! Interrupting the internal dialogue and leading an impeccable life, we master psi-energy not by 4%, but somewhat more - by 6, 8 or 10%, depending on our progress on the path of the Warrior.

The great astral wanderer was the businessman Robert Monroe we mentioned: he even developed a technique for leaving the physical body. Anyone can experience it, but it is better to have experience of concentration and meditation behind you. Clear and dry weather contributes to such activities, and atmospheric stress and thunderstorms harm. The stomach must be empty. The best time of the day is from 23 pm to 3 am.

Monroe advises taking a comfortable lying position - as if before falling asleep. To “empty” the mind, that is, to completely control thought processes, a simple tool called “finger rest” will help you. Take a smooth pebble and, holding it between the middle and index fingers of one hand, roll it, repeating some mantra to yourself, for example, your own name.

It is even more useful to squeeze several thin, unpolished river pebbles between bent fingers at once, and even better, several quartz crystals 5-7 centimeters long. Thin metal plates or tubes can be used. Hold at least three thin, hard objects between the fingers of each hand, squeezing them almost to the point of pain. In the East, for the same purpose, they sort out the rosary and mutter aloud suras from the Koran. American researcher Wanda Moore speaks of this state of detachment:
- I empty my mind, slow my breathing and pulse, concentrating on a plane of light somewhere in the back of the brain. It takes me from three to fifteen minutes - and I lose my temper!

The muscles are relaxed. Accept that you may not succeed the first time. In this case, after ten minutes of trying, just go to sleep. But in order not to fall asleep prematurely, raise the elbow of a relaxed arm above the bed. As soon as you begin to doze, the hand will fall and wake you up.

Forget about the pressure of the bed and pillow on your back and head - this will help you forget about the force of gravity. In the absence of this power, any person will definitely take off. The main hindrance to leaving the body is the fear of not coming back. Don't be afraid, you will definitely come back!
- Mentally imagine that you are becoming lighter and lighter, that you are slowly rising up, and how wonderful it is to soar in space! Monroe says. - Be sure to think about how wonderful it is, because subjective associations are extremely important ... In the imagination, try to react to the separation in advance, before it happens. If you manage to hold only these thoughts, a separation from the physical body will occur, and you will float upwards smoothly. But the first and second time may not work ...

Lying on your back with your eyes closed, you can think about standing at the head of the bed and watching yourself. Another similar trick:
Lying in the same relaxed position on your back, you imagine your astral body turning on its side, then on your stomach, back again, and so on, faster and faster. In the end, it will begin to rotate around the physical axis. Your flesh lies motionless within a spinning energy cocoon. At one fine moment, the centrifugal force will literally throw the cocoon out.

The moment of separation is accompanied by a growing sharp sound in the head. Remember how Carlos Castaneda described the sound that accompanies the displacement of the assemblage point. The power of this sound can scare you half to death. Did modern day attack bombers fly over your head, reader? If so, then you understand what kind of sound we are talking about.

When this sound suddenly breaks off, you feel a click at the base of your neck or solar plexus, you lose consciousness for a moment and ... it's done - you are in the Astral. Loss of consciousness is of fundamental importance: at this moment, the mechanism of seeing the physical plane is turned off and our psyche is focused on the astral plane. A person becomes a seer, that is, he sees with his entire energy body, without the help of the senses.
“Something very intriguing happened to me. The most accurate way to describe it would be to say that my ears suddenly popped, recalls Carlos. - Following this, I felt a burst in the middle of my body just above the navel, and even more sharply than in the ears. Immediately after that, everything became incredibly distinct: sounds, pictures, smells. Then I heard an intense noise that, oddly enough, did not interfere with my ability to hear the quietest sounds. I seemed to hear the noise from some other part of me that had nothing to do with my ears.

Another way. Try to mentally roll over in bed, as if making yourself comfortable. Don't help yourself with your arms or legs. Start by turning your head and shoulders. Slowly, slowly, softly! If you rush or move in jerks, you can spin like a log on the water. Then you, having lost your orientation, will be forced to grope back to the starting position, continuing to rotate.

However, if you feel that the rotation has become light, and the sensations of friction and heaviness have disappeared, then you have begun to separate from the physical shell. A trained person achieves this in just two 90-degree turns. In this position, mentally stop the rotation, and it will stop. It remains to imagine that you, lying face down, emerge above ... yourself. And again, you will not only hear, but feel the same growing, rather unpleasant roar, loud chirping, ringing, buzzing or crackling. Then he suddenly leaves you with a characteristic click. You will experience an instant blackout and...
“After separation, soar above the physical body without moving further than a meter from it,” advises Monroe. - Do not try to move to the side or even higher. How to determine the distance? You will feel it. Your vision is at zero. You programmed not to open eye. Imagine yourself not far from the physical body - this is enough to really not move away from it.

A very similar method is called the propeller or tumble method. Lying on your back, you imagine that the legs are raised above the head and the body is turned upside down. Cultivate a very precise sense of this reversal. Remember what you experience when going up in an elevator, climbing a ladder, taking off on a swing ... Finally, dizziness will begin, a powerful sound will be heard in your head, and after an instant loss of consciousness you will feel yourself in an astral body.

An experienced Warrior induces astral projection with a method resembling concentration. You can stare at a small portrait placed above eye level. A similar defocus is achieved by staring at a candle flame or a small spot on a white wall. At the same time, the mind lazily and indifferently glides over the surface of the object, as if inviting the subconscious to take the initiative. The same effect is achieved with the help of breathing exercises with mantras, which we talked about above.

But what's next? Having got out into the Astral, a person is at first frightened or goes into shock, but very quickly he is overtaken by a feeling of pleasure. One feels the rapid growth of all abilities, even omnipotence. It seems that everything around is illuminated with a translucent light: in addition to external lighting, each object also glows from the inside. There is a feeling of belonging with eternity, and ailments and decrepitude, which just poisoned life, are hardly remembered.

Many astral travelers have reported not having bodies, but others travel with arms and legs. The reason for this discrepancy is the different advancement of eyewitnesses.

Don't go straight to distant worlds. It's as simple as it is dangerous. Learn first to confidently return to the physical body. Don't be frightened by looking at him, lying motionless in the bed below you. Make sure once again that it is you and no one else. Look around the room. For the first time, that's enough.
“To return, you just need to think about it,” Monroe is convinced. - If you use the first method of separation, then reunion with the body is achieved relatively easily. Once fully back, you will again be able to move any part of the body and resume any physical sensation. Each time you return, open your physical eyes and physically sit down to make sure you are fully "reconnected". This is necessary to maintain orientation and maintain confidence in the ability to return at will, and most importantly, for the consciousness of constant contact with the material world to which you currently belong ... If you are separated from the body with the help of rotation, then in order to reunite with the physical body, slowly approach it and after you feel full contact, do a reverse 180 degree turn. It doesn't matter which direction you spin.

If you manage to get out of the body and back into it, now try to move back and forth above your physical shell. Imagine these movements - slow, without sudden movements. Try to move your arms and legs to make sure they are completely still. Now circle around. Jump.

Do not move more than a meter away from the body. Tune in to this in advance, because you may be at the mercy of fantastic emotions and desires. But do not succumb to horror if you suddenly feel that you cannot return to your body. This will only make the situation worse. Just think of the physical body and come back slowly...

Warrior's First Voyage

Now let's try to make the first trip. Just do not imagine yourself a shaman, otherwise you will be carried far. First, imagine the person you want to visit. Call him by name, and most importantly, call his bright portrait in your brain. Professor Rainer Johnson does believe that a distinct visual image is the key to all astral exits. He comments on this: - A concentrated increase in the desire to see another face leads to the fact that we see the person we wanted to see.

This "concentrated increase in desire" needs to be trained. It all depends on your imagination and will to win. Remember the contemplation exercises you already know and learn a few new ones. Try to memorize a simple drawing: look at the original for one second, and keep it in memory with your eyes closed for another three seconds. Repeat the exercise 10 or 100 times - until the image of the picture completely matches the original.

Practice with more complex drawings, move on to color, and then to volumetric images. Put first a few simple, and then more complex objects on a tray and remember them with your eyes closed, but not with the help of intellectual efforts, but purely contemplatively. Imagine the book you are holding in your hands right now. Go around it with your eyes closed and see all its facets as they really are.

After these exercises, sit comfortably in a darkened room on a chair, and place another chair in front of you. Close your eyes and imagine the back of a person sitting in a chair in front of you. Without getting up, imagine that you move forward with the chair and ... merge with the person sitting with his back to you.

Further, do not worry about which direction to move. Your navigation system is much more advanced than that of the most modern spacecraft. Thinking about who you want to visit, turn 360 degrees. Keep your arms outstretched.

In one fine moment, you will feel the right direction: you will be pulled there, like a magnet. In the Astral, thinking means acting, because your solar plexus is attached to the lines of the world with a bunch of long fibers. It is worth thinking about the destination, and in an instant you will find yourself exactly thousands of kilometers away, next to the person you are interested in.

At first, you will identify your new abilities with ordinary human ones. Deciding to move into the next room, you rush to the door to open it, and deciding to go to the refrigerator in the kitchen, you habitually bypass the ledge of the bathroom ... Very quickly you will realize that there are no barriers for you from now on.

You will see through solid objects like an X-ray machine, and for your penetration they will be no denser than air. You will be able to run on the floor with only half of your "I" on the surface; the other half will hang from the ceiling of the neighbors on the floor below.

As a rule, you will not be able to influence physical bodies and objects in the Astral. You can never drink beer and eat chicken there. The toilet is also completely useless to you. One astral traveler desperately tried to just turn on the light in her house, but could not cope with a single switch.

True, the French researcher Durville set up many successful experiments of this kind. He hypnotized his test subjects, after which he removed duplicates from their physical bodies. D'Urville recorded material effects: his ghosts pressed the bell, knocked down the balance of the scales, and even closed the closet door.

Going out into the Astral, you yourself will be able to experiment. In any case, the colossal experience of the magicians of Mexico is wholly on the side of d'Urville. Only in your own physical body, it is better not to try to change the position of your legs and arms - away from sin. Remember: you are with your physical body in different dimensions.

Astral bodies, like children, are very curious and adore all kinds of spectacles. A company from the physical world appears to them as nothing more than a troupe of actors on a stage. Fortunately, the instinct of self-preservation, nestled in the mind, forces the astral body eventually to return to its place.

Otherwise, millions of people would be in a lethargic sleep. Yes, yes, reader: it is the wanderings of the astral body that explain the phenomenon of many days or even many days of sleep. astral part disidentifies himself with this individual and does not want to drag out a vile earthly existence - after all, there are so many beautiful parallel worlds! It is precisely where they do not know how to distinguish lethargy from death that people are buried alive.

Guru Van Avera from Saratov offers a slightly different scheme for entering the Astral. Take a comfortable position lying down in a dark room. Enter the state of immersion that you have already worked out. Feel your inner energy, but do not focus on it: today we will move much further!

Imagine that your limbs are stretched and thickened. Soon they will become unusually long and thick. Being immersed, it's easy to imagine, although sometimes you have to strain a little ... Did it work? A few minutes will pass, and you simply stop lowering where your own arms and legs are located, you stop feeling their mass.

It will seem to you that the thick limbs that go somewhere far away are raised and spread apart, as if in weightlessness. Convince yourself that they do not obey you, that your arms and legs have become completely outsiders items for you. This feeling of separateness and uncontrollability of arms and legs is very important in order to tear the consciousness away from the habitual image of one's own body.

Imagine now that the limbs continue to swell, their contours blur, dissolve ... Then the same fate befalls your torso and even your head. The body turns into a heavy, hot jelly, into a dense fog, consisting of energy. You lose the physical shell, but the channels and chakras filled with energy remain with you: the immersion continues!

Focus in turn on all of your seven chakras from above, from the skull down to the sacrum. You may notice differences in the frequency of energy that fills each chakra - your attention can fix their different colors, sizes and even density.

In this phase of immersion, strive to lose orientation in space. It’s great if you don’t already understand where is the top and where is the bottom. In general, the familiar physical world exists for you somewhere very far away, and you have nothing to do with it. All that connects you to him now is the memory that you are in your room. Having become a viscous energy mist, you have dissolved into the surrounding energy sea. This is not a hostile or alien, but a sea well known to you, because it is from here that you extract energy when you breathe.

Keep in mind that you have not yet fallen into the fierce energy ocean of Reality, but are "only" in the lower level of the astral world, in a thin layer between the familiar "earthly" world and Reality. If it is more convenient for you, consider the place where you now find yourself as a vestibule, a gateway, a front door or a vestibule of Reality.

If you have really melted here, the assemblage point has already moved from its usual anchor. Focus your attention now on your Hara center. Be sure to be able to achieve this: fixing the consciousness on the Hara will allow you to move in the "thin" energy ocean. Call on all your will to help - strain the will chakra, which is located at the base of the throat, and send an energy impulse from there to Hara. Try again and again until you get what you want. Hara will be your navigator on the eve of Reality.

For further immersion, your "I" must be moved to the heart chakra. This is not so easy, because we are usually used to being aware of ourselves in the front of the brain, closer to the eyes. It may take you a lot of tries. For the first time, you will be able to achieve this, most likely, only for a moment. Try again and again. In fact, you are now pushing the astral body out of the physical, shifting the assemblage point further deep into your cocoon.

Your consciousness seems to make an overkill, turns over: the heart chakra becomes the top, and the third eye and throat chakras are at the bottom. Very strange feeling, right? Repeat it over and over, hold on to it! Call on the rhythm: as soon as the heart throws the consciousness back into the head, again throw the consciousness back to the heart. Back and forth, back and forth ... It takes a lot of time and effort to loosen the ordinary consciousness. The first time around, you may not get what you want. Well, we'll put it off until tomorrow, until the day after tomorrow.

However, if you swing your consciousness correctly, then after a few swings (from head to heart and back) you will suddenly feel that same growing sharp sound in your head - near your ears or in the back of your head. The sound may remind you of the loud crack of a broken branch, the sound of a turbulent waterfall, the roar of a low-flying jet that seems to split the sky...

In fact, this sensation originates in the throat chakra, at the base of the neck, but we perceive it precisely as an unexpected powerful sound.Immediately following this roar, you will find your consciousness rushing through a giant tunnel or falling uncontrollably into a bottomless well.

Your astral body has left your physical body! You keep only a vague memory of the physical body: yes, somewhere in another world there is one. Remember the shamanic universe? You are already wandering through it. You, too, were able to do it - without peyote and fly agarics. And, like a shaman's, your physical body appears to be fast asleep now.

The shaman falls out of his axial well to the bottom of the sea or ascends to sky-high heights, where he fights evil spirits and solves the problems of his fellow tribesmen. But where does a civilized European get to, starting on astral travel from the threshold of the 21st century? Of course, you can first study the familiar physical world (average according to the shamanic classification): any continents, cities, islands and mountains will open to you, you just have to wish it. Any planet, comet, asteroid, satellite are waiting for you. You can even visit the Mir orbital station.

However, what the astral planes offer in their bright "tourist prospectuses" is incomparable with the possibilities of the ordinary world. There are, as we know, a great many of them - completely parallel, non-intersecting, not similar to one another worlds. Guru Van Aver in his wanderings invariably ran into an endless brick wall or a wide river. In other words, the way forward is closed. Having gone to the left, the former military parapsychologist invariably stumbled upon a long, long series of lives (reincarnations) already lived before by his soul. If you come across such a multi-part movie, you can admire the fragments of your former lives to your heart's content.

However, as we said, there is little hope that your soul has already been in the physical world before. Only the soul of the Warrior is able to survive in the ruthless Reality and acquire its own body again. Perhaps it is your soul that is destined for a long life, and your everyday existence now is only the first in the chain of reincarnations!

What awaits us if you choose the path to the right? Most likely, you will meet your guides through the endless canopy of Reality - one or two luminous entities that you can consider as your own guardian angels. Guides will come to your rescue at critical moments, but don't count on them to get you out of any situation unscathed. Remember the saying: trust in God, but do not make a mistake yourself. If you have a Teacher in the physical world, then it is very likely that you will recognize him in the luminous essence of the guide.

But what about a wall or a gigantic, shoreless river? What's behind them? There Reality, reader. There is absolute space, pierced by energy strings. There is the fifth dimension, Astral, where creatures from different worlds collide in mortal fights. This is where the souls of the dead go. During life, only experienced magicians return from there mentally and physically complete. Only the Warrior will stand in the energy nightmare of the Astral.

It is not necessary yet to choose either the path to the left, or the path to the right, or, God forbid, straight ahead. For now, it is important to learn how to confidently go to the limit of Reality - and nothing more! And now it's time to return. Fortunately, it's much easier than coming here. Imagine your physical body lying on a bed in your room. Identify your "I" with this body and focus on the will chakra at the base of the neck.

You will feel the return to the normal state of consciousness as a lightning flight, even a lightning loss of consciousness is possible and ... here you are at home: lying in your own body and trying to get used to having arms, legs and a head. Keep in mind that your members will initially feel not quite native, vague. Don't hesitate, get out of the dive.

Imagine that your body, just so viscous, heavy and hot, hardens and cools down. After a few minutes, you should feel just relaxed. Switch to the things around you, smells and sounds. Do cleansing breathing exercises. Do not eat anything for at least four hours.

At present, not only esotericists, but also quite serious scientists are interested in studying the intangible shell of a person. They consider religious ideas about the aura and chakras from the point of view of a scientific approach. Previously, there was no way to fix all these phenomena, people could only believe or not believe in their existence. But now humanity has a technical opportunity to see the aura with the help of special devices. It is believed that over time this will help us explain many of the little-known and sometimes surprising phenomena.

Thin human bodies

Almost all Eastern esoteric teachings consider a person as a multi-level being. What we are accustomed to seeing every day in the mirror is in fact a vessel for several non-material shells at once. At the same time, they consider the physical as the most primitive, playing a lesser role than other bodies of the subtle plane. In addition to the material shell, bioenergetics and esotericism, there are six main subtle bodies that are not perceived by our senses.

The first of these is called ethereal. It is closer than others to the material side of being and therefore is an exact copy of the physical. The ethereal region is a kind of transitional zone between the tangible familiar world and more subtle levels of existence. Physical health directly depends on the state.

Many people have heard about the astral body. This level of incarnation of a person has the form of a clot of energy. The astral plane is the realm of emotions, desires and feelings. It is created by the imagination and contains all the entities that we have ever invented. The type of the astral subtle body is directly related to and can change depending on the mood. Here, too, there is a close relationship with physical health, because. lingering negative emotions change and weaken it.

Man is the embodiment of thoughts and knowledge, a haven for the so-called thought forms. It is especially developed in people who are prone to knowledge, learning, engaged in active mental work - philosophers, scientists, thinkers. When thinking hard about any issue, this body expands. Its form repeats all the outlines of the physical, but exceeds the latter in size. The color of the mental body is intense yellow.

The described three subtle bodies make up the personality of a person. The fourth, informational, is called karmic. It contains a life program for the future and all the important information about past mistakes and incarnations. Karma is a kind of plan that every person must fulfill. It turns out not immediately, many need to go through several rebirths in order to achieve final enlightenment.

The next two bodies belong to the soul and spirit of man. The first is buddhial or intuitive, it is the main action of intuition, all kinds of discoveries. It allows us to observe the course of our own thoughts from the outside. To connect with your intuitive side, special meditations are practiced to stop the flow of thoughts.

And, finally, the atmanic body is considered to be the highest level of non-material incarnation. It is the embodiment of pure spirit, the very essence of consciousness. It appeared as a result of the development of other subtle plans of man, is able to merge with the cosmos, become one with other worlds and absolute truth.

Astral exit from the body

Many researchers of the phenomenon of out-of-body travel recognize that our subconscious mind is able to leave the body in a dream. In fact, this happens every night. This phenomenon is not something out of the ordinary, everyone has encountered it in their lives. The trick is that people usually don't remember the details of a non-material journey. But the experience of many religious practices proves that a person is quite capable of overstepping this boundary and learning to control his consciousness.

If we discard the religious component, we can see that all the teachings, to one degree or another, touch on the topic of out-of-body travel. Most of all, Buddhists, who have been practicing the achievement of such states through meditation for years, can tell about this topic. But the latter is just one of the ways to get out of the body. Some people call such an experience others believe that these are different things. However, everything is very similar.

There are many techniques for getting out of the body. At the same time, not each of them requires many years of practice from a person, as previously thought. The main factor here is a strong desire, thanks to which you can experience an out-of-body experience in the shortest possible time. Of course, much also depends on the characteristics of the human psyche, so it is difficult to name a clear time frame.

One way to get out of the body

The main thing is to set yourself up for a positive result, inspire confidence in it in advance. No matter how banal this activity may seem, it cannot be neglected. Indeed, in the non-material plane of being, everything depends precisely on our desires and mental attitudes. The method itself consists in thinking only about astral travel for a week, reading relevant literature, stories from someone else's experience. The information received, along with the realization of the importance of the experiment, is deposited in the subconscious, which will ultimately increase your chances of success.

Then you should choose the right time and place where there will be no distractions. It is better to warn all your acquaintances in advance that you cannot be disturbed for some time. It is recommended to carry out such an experiment at home, in a sufficiently warm and shaded room, in a calm state, without feeling thirsty or hungry. Next, you need to take any position convenient for you and focus on your breathing. This may take some time. Gradually, inhalations and exhalations will become even and calm.

Now you need to move your attention to the tips of your toes, focus only on them. You must slowly imagine how your astral body begins to separate from this area. The same is then repeated with the other leg.

At the final stage, you need to imagine how the non-material twin flows around the physical body from the outside. Now all attention should be focused on the point in the center of the forehead. This is where both conscious motivation and a pre-set attitude come into play. All that remains to be done to get out of the body is to wish it as strongly as ever.