Index of OBE, Part 2

Ballabene's OBE and Astral Pages

Having been fortunate enough to experience many "average" out of the body phenomenon for many years I found it absolutely exhilarating in recent months to experience three overwhelming incidences of "tunnel effect" projections which usually occur during "Near Death" visions.

The first occurred one evening after I had indulged in my usual practice of trying to encourage an out of the body experience by using an affirmation "I will remain conscious" prior to going to sleep.
After falling asleep I woke up to find myself rising in the air ( I had fallen asleep on my stomach) with an enormous roaring sound echoing all around. It sounded like being in the midst of a thunderstorm.
I was fully conscious and naturally thrilled to be experiencing yet another astral projection. I decided to see how I looked in the bedroom dressing table mirror.
I saw myself dressed in pyjamas and a dressing gown and considerably shorter than in real life. I was conscious that this was yet another example of "astral plane distortion" which frequently occurs during projections.
Then I found myself staring down a tunnel whose walls consisted of vivid black and white squares. At the opening of the tunnel there seemed to be a swastika shape.
Then I found myself moving backwards through this tunnel at an enormous speed with all the attributes of roller coaster sensations being present. This was an extremely enjoyable feeling and I wished that it could have continued for hours.
Then I decided I would like to visit a scene of a former home approximately thirty miles distant.
I immediately found myself floating above the street where this was and after a few seconds found myself moving at great speed along the road leading back to where I actually live.
I then had a Lucid Dream ( and was aware of it as such) with various members of my family acting out surreal situations. My arms were crackling and sparkling with blue sparks and I had the sensation that they had some sort of power.
I then found myself back in my physical body. As usual I noted the time and proceeded to write up the report of my astral journey in a diary I keep for that purpose.

A few weeks after this episode I woke up one evening with a strange "tingling feeling" in my head.
Then I was aware of looking down a tunnel with strangely coloured walls. It was decidedly zig-zagged, disjointed and not so clearly patterned as the previous example.
At the opening of the tunnel there was a window where a lot of what can only be described as massive "television snowy interference" was occurring. There was a shape of some being , something like a Catholic Priest or Pope behind the window. Accompanying this was an indistinct fuzzy sound.
I found myself unable to move and then remembered to use a "spinning technique" and found myself spinning round towards the floor and then I rose to look at my slightly distorted bedside clock face. I noted the time and then found myself in the midst of yet another lucid dream which entailed members of the family acting out incidents which had correlations with things they were at that time and earlier on during the day busily involved in.
Then I was "awake" in my astral body again and I told myself to lift my astral hands and arms so that I could see them. I was excited to note that they were transparent and I brought them together to clap and experienced a slow , as though moving through treacle, example of this action.
I then tried to speak to my wife who was fast asleep beside me and whom I could see perfectly normally.
The sound came out as though speaking through a container of water - all bubbly, slow and indistinct.
I then tried the spinning technique so that I could move - succeeded, noticed the time and found myself looking at the world from my physical body.

The third example of a tunnel effect astral experience happened recently when I found myself waking up with all sorts of spinning sensations predominating. Instead of a clearly defined tunnel there was a strange pattern of wavy and bending white lights at the corner of my bedroom wall. I decided to raise up my legs ( which were facing that direction) and noticed with some excitement again that they were transparent and rather slow in motion like the previous example. I then raised my astral arms and hands and found that they were identical in texture and appearance as before.
I then noted the time on my bedside clock which, again, had a slightly distorted shape, "woke up" in my physical body and checked that the time was the same as from my astral viewpoint - which it was- and proceed to note this down in my "astral diary".
I have pondered for some considerable time to try to understand why these tunnel visions have occurred.
The possible causes were my usual attempts, prior to sleep, at attaining an astral projection and thereby trying to programme myself to wake up and find myself in my "astral mode".
I had used , spasmodically various meditation/concentration techniques as outlined in Robert Monroe's book "Journeys Out of the Body" whereby one concentrates prior to sleep on an imaginary point between the eyebrows. I had also used examples of techniques given in V Van Dam's "The Psychic Explorer" such as imagining a spinning triangle . Israel Regardie's meditation technique as outlined in "The Middle Pillar" was also used.

However I feel that these practices were not very well done or consistently applied. As meditators will readily admit, it is extremely hard to keep up these periods of concentration. The mind persistently wanders and I feel that I am a particularly good case of a bad meditator!
We are, however, increasingly aware of such "tunnel effect" visions occurring and being reported by many people in all sorts of contexts.
As we approach the a millennium, the period when many seers predict there will be a host of experiences whereby people are aware of leaving their bodies and the etheric/ astral perception capabilities come into play is it likely that these experiences are somehow controlled from out-with ourselves?
Many projectors, such as Twitchell, Bulhman etc. have mentioned in their works that no astral projection occurs without a "guide" being there to assist - mostly in the background and unperceived by the projector.
I can only mention that I have only had a very vague feeling that there was "someone" or for that matter "something" in the background during my most recent "tunnel" projections.
But this was all too vague an intuition to corroborate even to myself.
There does, however, seem to be in the population generally a statistically significant increase in reports of out of the body and near death experiences .

Whether this is due to the expected "millennium" push whereby etheric/astral bodies are loosening their attachment to the physical body as a result of an etheric evolutionary programme engineered by "guides" and providing spiritual experiences of all kinds remains to be seen .
This aspect of how such experiences are being promoted is perhaps one of the most interesting esoteric questions we can ask ourselves .
By achieving some sort of consensus we may be able to participate more efficiently and knowledgeably in promoting such fascinating and exhilarating in the population at large.

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Alfred Ballabene