Out of Body Travel And History
Various cultures have recorded out of body travel, including the ancient Egyptians. Kha is the word they used to describe the soul or astral body, while they also included images of the astral body as if hovering just above or even beyond the physical body. The astral body was depicted as a haloed, airy translucent being.
Fascinated by the astral body the ancient Egyptians experimented with various techniques in order to control the ability to travel in the astral body to other planes of space and time, while their physical body stayed put where it lay. This is also known as astral projection. Perhaps, during such experiences they learned the skills required for building the pyramids, using the materials they had on hand. The building of the pyramids is something that has long been a puzzle to scientists.
Meditation is the first element that the ancient Egyptians used for out of body travel. They recorded this as concentrating on nothing more than the visions they would see with their eyes closed and being nearly asleep. The flashes of patterns and lights that they would see represented the beginning of their journey to another plane in space and time while traveling in their astral body.
After passing this state, the astral body entered into an emergence phase. This caused the humming and tingling of the physical body and then the feeling of heaviness followed. The feelings of tingling and then heaviness the ancients believed was the feeling of the astral body pulling away from the physical body, while initiating the unknown out of body journey to other planes.
This could be accomplished in various ways. However, the most common practice was that of simply walking out of ones physical body. This would begin through the minds eye, then followed by the shoulders, chest, hips, legs, knees and then the feet until two entities of a astral body and physical body appeared.
After this separation, the astral body could freely pass through solid objects that the physical body could not. It could also fly and hover without becoming influenced by the lack of oxygen or changes in the atmosphere.
The ancient Greeks also recorded instances of out of body travel, and expanded on the strictly meditatively-induced state of the ancient Egyptians to include out of body travel by way of physical or mental trauma. The ancient historian Plutarch of Queroneia, for example, cited the case of Arisdeu who, after suffering blunt trauma to his head after a fall slipped into a coma for three days.
While in the coma, Arisdeu had the experience of seeing his physical body lying there immobile on the ground, yet he could move about freely, hover, and travel out of body to previously unimagined places. Once acclimated to his new environment, Arideu was met and was assisted by his spiritual guide, who then advised him regarding the projection of his astral body into other dimensions.
After some time exploring and learning what he could about this altered state of existence, he felt himself forcibly pulled back into his physical body, where he then spent the rest of his life trying to apply the information he learned while on his out of body journey.
The ancient Egyptians and ancient Greeks aren’t the only ones with recorded history of out of body travel. Native American history is also full of several accounts of similar experiences, often featuring spirit animals and/or guides meeting and advising an individual’s astral body. For centuries, Native Americans have burned certain plants and inhaled their smoke in order to ease the mind into the state necessary to begin out of body travel.
The ability or the human body to explore various spheres of space and time is possible. The ability to do so has been recorded since the time of the ancients. Channeling our consciousness into a spiritual body is possible. However, along the way many have forgotten how to do such a natural thing. Knowing how to alter our consciousness to the point that we can release it from the confines of our physical limitations, seems lost to so many modern individuals. However, with patience and practice we can relearn how to astral travel to meet our spiritual guides on the higher astral planes.
The door is within each of us, we simply need to remember how to reconnect with the higher more spiritual side so that we are once more about to journey out of body to those higher planes. The possibilities are unlimited. It is a natural process and once we rediscover this inside ourselves we can gain in the potentials of understanding our higher self.