*Opening Your Astral Eye* Q: One of the things that I do in a waking state - physical waking state - is I will imagine myself moving out of my body, sometimes above it, above the rooftops... B: Yes. Q: I can move around. When I re-engage with my body, I get a rush, like a rush of energy is occurring. B: Yes. Q: And in this state I don't have a visual perception. It's more of a knowingness perception, where it's as though it's dark out and I can't see anything, but I just know that I am above the tops of the roofs... B: Yes. Sometimes because, once again, simply out of the habit of being in physical reality, it may take a little while for you to get used to the idea of how to open your astral eyes. Q: Okay. B: To really know that you are seeing. Because, understand, you are not seeing in the same way at all. Because you do not have eyes, as you understand them in the astral state. Q: Right. Well, that bears on a related area of this question; which is that while I'm doing this, I also have full perception of what my body is experiencing. I can still feel my body lying or sitting, touching, tasting, whatever it might be. B: You can form relative degrees of disassociation from your physiological reality. Q: Well, what I'm saying is that I'm doing both at the same time. I'm aware of being out, and also in - not really in, but out and still feeling. B: Yes. Q: Is this technically astral projection? B: It can be; because, once again, technically, your body is /inside/ your consciousness. And therefore, it is always contained in any expansion of consciousness. Let's look at it this way, physiologically, as a mechanism: think of your consciousness now as a sphere. All right? Q: Yes. B: Think now, that when you are physically focused, that the sphere, let us say, is simply in the shape of your body. All right? Q: Okay. B: Then when you go out of body, it is not that you are actually exiting the body, it is that you are expanding the sphere, so that your consciousness is now out here, further and further and further. You follow me? Q: I do understand that concept. B: Your consciousness, therefore, is actually always 360 degrees around your body, which is at the center, so to speak. Or physical reality, in a sense, because it is so dense, represents the center of your consciousness. You collapse and condense inward to form a solid reality. You expand and go outward like a bubble to go into a more ethereal realm. This is why, when you expand the bubble of your consciousness, you can travel here and there, and here and there, with absolutely no time involved between traveling, because your consciousness is everywhere, 360 degrees. And all you're doing, when you go from this point on the bubble to this point on the bubble, is closing your eyes here and opening them over here, to see a different point of view. So, if you, perhaps, use this mechanism in your imagination and consciousness to expand the bubble, and assume that you and the consciousness always move with the skin of the bubble, and yet, at the same time, can always be aware of what is contained within the bubble, then you can jockey, as you say, back and forth, back and forth. Or remain in the skin, or go into the physical reality, or expand the bubble as large as your wish, or as tightly as you wish. This is a direct mechanical analogy of astral projection. It is not simply just the idea of a spirit leaving the body. It is an expansion of your entire consciousness, so that your focal point is now /on the skin/ /of the/ /bubble moving outward./ You follow me? Q: Yes, I was aware of this concept. Yes. And when I said I was leaving my body, I didn't mean to imply that I thought my consciousness /was/ actually my body. B: Oh, we do not mean to imply that you were implying that. We are simply giving you, perhaps, the idea of a mechanism to explain the /effect/ you are feeling. Q: Okay. And when I asked, is this technically an astral projection, you said that it /can/ be. So, how would it /not/ be? B: We simply mean that it is one way to describe it. Q: Okay. B: So, technically, yes. Q: Technically, I'm astral projecting. B: Yes. It just depends upon the idea of where you choose to focus the mainstay of your consciousness. Many individuals, in other words, would assume that it is not completely astral projection unless you lost the realization of the focus of your physical form. Q: Yes. B: It is still astral projection, but it may simply be that your consciousness is not focused in the skin of the bubble, but throughout the entire thing. Q: Multi-focused, certainly. Well, I understand that the whole phenomenon of perception, anyway, is the selection of a viewpoint... B: Yes. Q: ...in a created space. B: Yes. So astral projection is simply /one/ of those viewpoints, in the sense of being completely disconnected from the body. That is simply another point of view. Q: Okay. Well, you're saying that astral projection technically would require this disconnection, or apparent disconnection, from the sensations of the body? Or does... B: It doesn't have to. Q: Oh, okay. B: But because of the habit your society is in - and I'm not saying that in this way it has to be with you - many individuals will not allow themselves to believe that it is has actually been done, unless they are capable of forming that apparent disassociation, to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they actually can shuttle their focus of consciousness back and forth between the physical and the non-physical. Q: Okay. B: When you are, quote/unquote, physically dead, that is when the disconnection apparently happens naturally. Although, again, when you elevate to higher and higher levels, you will once again re-form the connection that you are feeling now. So, in a sense, what you are doing, in order to feel the connection, is you are expanding astrally to a much broader realm than the immediate sphere just around your planet. You're actually passing through that, so that you can maintain an awareness of the connection all the way through the different levels. Q: Okay. B: You follow me? Q: Yes. So how would one go about opening the astral eye, as you said? B: Again, there can be many ways. You can use the analogy of your own physical eye; and while you are expanded, simply begin, bit by bit, to remove your focus from the physical. One thing that can assist many of you is to assume that you can also turn around on the skin of the sphere and look outwards. Q: Wow! Certainly. B: See what that does. That is one way. Use your imagination, as always. Q: Okay. B: And also there are many suggestions within some of the literature on astral projection - that individuals in your society have already written about. Q: All right. Thank you very much. B: Thank you.