What Is The Astral Journey?

What Is The Astral Journey?

Since ancient times, man has tried to define a strange phenomenon, of which almost all cultures speak to us, but of which even today, we hardly know the process. This phenomenon is known as "Astral Travel", astral splitting, astral projection or also OBE (Out-of-body experience, or extracorporeal experience).

Already in ancient Egypt, this phenomenon was represented as a bird, which had a human face, and which they called "Ba". But not only in ancient Egypt did we refer to the phenomenon of astral travel, since in ancient Hindu (Upanishad) writings, or religious passages of the Christian bible, as in Ecclesiastes 12, we can find clear references to astral travel.

Many ancient cultures have incorporated the phenomenon of astral travel into their religious beliefs, and even the Christian bible in the New Testament describes it in the "transfiguration of Jesus." In the case of the "Shamans" of the Siberian steppe, the "Nagual" of Mexico or the "Jibaros" of the Amazon jungle, these trips to the "spirit world" are carried out for therapeutic purposes or clairvoyance

WHAT IS THE ASTRAL TRAVEL?

In this respect, we should refer to the descriptions made by parapsychologists and scientific researchers of the subject, on the one hand, and the descriptions made by the esoteric connoisseurs, on the other, since while the former try to discover the physical and psychic mechanism that Produces, from the esoteric point of view acquires a spiritual dimension.

From the scientific point of view, there are many researchers who since the nineteenth century have dedicated their studies and efforts to discover a methodology that explains and demonstrates the phenomenon of astral travel, arriving at a definition generally accepted and that would come to Be a description similar to the following:

"The Astral Journey occurs when the astral or subtle body is separated from the physical body, without which intervention of the emotional body or mediation of the mental body is necessary, although the mental state becomes necessary for its interpretation."

The situation described is, in fact, similar to what would occur when a person dies, since there are many cases of people who have suffered a "clinical death" situation, that is, they have been clinically dead for a few minutes, and upon taking back the consciousness have manifested this type of experiences, where they have been elevated above their physical body, while they could see and hear everything that happened around them.

However, it is not necessary to reach a state of clinical death or pre-death to be able to experience an astral journey, in fact, the astral journey occurs naturally in each and every one of us during sleep, although in this case It is produced unconsciously.

But astral travel or astral projection can also be done in a conscious and controlled way, in this respect, there are people who even get to experience it spontaneously, even being completely awake and without an express desire to do it. Paradoxically, there are people who despite proposing and try it by various means, the only thing they achieve is to perform a "mental projection", something that we should not confuse with the astral travel, since while the astral travel is free, ie not There is no mental control where the mind or mental body can take any initiative, the mental projection is induced or provoked, directed towards clear and defined objectives, something that in principle, was reserved for spiritual masters, yogis, mystics and shamans.

When a mental projection occurs, the astral body is directed to very specific places of human symbology, where the fears, prejudices, religious precepts and all that the human mind has assumed as moral concepts, acquire a meaning that can determine the physical existence of the individual, since the body or mental state will always remain next to the physical body, reason why in the mental projection, the physical body will be at the mercy of the desires of the mental state.

This feature of the mental projection is what makes it used along with astral travel, by shamans and similar characters, in order to achieve a physical, psychic, medical, animal or material benefit for the person, since being originated from the physical mind, its effects can revert on the physical or material plane, while in the astral journey, the subtle or astral body will remain connected with the physical body only through a "silver cord" and until the Moment of return to the physical body or the moment of death.

From the point of view of parapsychology, astral travel is considered as the way that enables us to connect physical life with the afterlife, but which, however, can not interfere in the aspects of physical life, by not making it possible for us to acquire the Knowledge that could exist on the astral plane in a conscious way, that is to say, with the intervention of the mental body, that is why it is through mental projection that the resources adequate to our needs are obtained.

From the esoteric point of view, astral travel or astral splitting can be interpreted as a bilocation and acquires a totally mystical and spiritual concept, where the phenomenon is used for altruistic or spiritual elevation purposes, since in this case, the unfolding or bilocation, would consist of the faculty of projecting out of the body, being able to be in two places at the same time and in the same space of time. Such is the case of many religious mystics, were through history, we can see how they have projected their body in two places at a time, even being physically visualized.

One of the best documented cases is that of Santa Agueda, who could project her body from the convent of Segovia, where she was cloistered, and appear in Mexico, in order to evangelize the Indians, getting to give them physical delivery of the rosaries that had been guarded in the convent, or the case of Sant Josep Oriol, who was able to be in two churches of Barcelona giving Mass at the same time, as well as in the nearby city of Mataró.

In order for the experience to be considered purely as a bilocation, it is imperative that the subject in question be projected within the same space-time, since if the projection occurs within another space-time, for example, we see ourselves in the pyramids of Gizeh in ancient Egypt, we would be talking about an astral journey or astral projection.

As a conclusion, we will say that it will be an astral journey when it is performed totally independently of the mental body, since a mystical or spiritual experience would be conditioned by our moral and religious aspects, affecting the physical plane.