Welcome to part 3 of a 7 part series in which I interview author, teacher, healer, and Astral Projection Master Robert Bruce.

In this series of articles you’re going to find out everything you’ve ever wanted to know about Astral Projection, OBE (Out of Body Experiences), Kundalini, and much, much more.

In this article:

Let’s begin:

Astral Projection techniques

Michael Frank: What are your best and favorite astral projection techniques? What techniques would you recommend for someone to have their first conscious out of body experience?

Robert Bruce: Well first of all there is a lot of good articles and information in regards to techniques on my website Astral Dynamics and on my forum, I also recommend you read The Treatise on Astral Projection and get a copy of my book Astral Dynamics. That’s a good idea just to get started.

The rope technique

Robert Bruce: The rope technique is my favorite and it’s where you simply imagine and feel (without physically moving) your astral hands reaching up and pulling on a rope.

You can practice it before you fall asleep or have your astral projection attempt, lift your hands up and pretend you’re grabbing a thick rope and climbing hand over hand pulling yourself up and out of your body.

Then do it without physically moving. Just imagine your astral arms pulling on a rope dangling from the ceiling a few inches above you, left hand over right hand, right hand over left hand continuously, until you pull your astral body outside of your physical body.

Going down the elevator

You can also imagine that you are falling. Imagine you’re in an elevator that’s going down and feel the world rising around you as your bed sinks down the elevator shaft. Imagine something that has a downward falling motion.

Jump out of a plane

You can even imagine that you’ve jumped out of an airplane. You’re floating down on a parachute or something. Use your imagination. As long as it’s downward it’ll work.

Alter the techniques in succession

I recommend changing techniques about once a minute, or once every 30 seconds or so. I use a combination of the rope technique, then I imagine and feel myself rolling out of the right and left sides of my body, from one side to the other, and then I shift to imagining myself floating out of my body.

Imagine you’re floating out of your body towards the ceiling so that your attention is up above the physical body. And then go back to the rope technique. And vary those techniques every half a minute to a minute or so, and then go back to climbing the rope out of your body again. And if it all goes well, as you start climbing the rope you’ll feel a heaviness come over your body, and then your body will start to vibrate and tingle. You’ll get a whole body buzzing vibration. It’s quite pleasant but it’s unusual to say the least, because your body is vibrating, and then you’ll feel a falling sensation as your astral body rises up out of you.

Remember that when you’re astral projecting you’re suddenly introducing an awake conscious mind into the process of falling asleep, and that takes some getting used to.

The best sleeping position for Astral Projection

Robert Bruce: These are the actual techniques, but before you get to that point you need to put the physical body to sleep, and the best way to achieve that is to lie in a recliner chair at about a 40 degree angle.

Imagine the angle you’d be at if you were in a hospital bed about to eat breakfast in bed. You’d be sitting up at about a 40 degree angle with several pillows behind you, and your head would be relaxed on the pillow. Historically that is the best angle for astral projection and it makes it a heck of a lot easier at that angle.

Michael Frank: Why is the recliner angle of 40 degrees easier and better for astral projection than lying flat on your back?

Robert Bruce: I don’t know. I have no idea. I can only guess. I just find astral projecting on my back a lot more difficult than astral projecting if I’m propped up or if I’m sitting up, I just find it a lot more difficult.

The recliner angle just seems to make your body more sensitive, I also think that if you’re sitting upright or at a 40 degree angle, there’s a little bit of pressure on your spine that isn’t there when you’re lying down, and your body is a little bit less comfortable than it is when you’re lying down on your back or your side.

Lie on your back, not on your side

If you’re astral projecting, you want to be lying on your back, don’t lay on your side, most people find that lying on your side just doesn’t work. Lying on your back is the best. I’ve done experiments with this. I’ve had multiple astral projections within a half an hour period and I find that if I’m lying on my back, within seconds of laying in bed that the vibrations startup and I feel my astral body start to come out. On my right side I can’t astral project, and on my left side I start having a lucid dream, so I go back to my back and instantly the astral projection starts up again. So being on your back slightly upright at roughly 40 degrees as if you’re about to eat breakfast in bed is probably the best position.

The best time to Astral Project

Michael Frank: What are the best times to astral project? Do you recommend it before going to bed? Or waking up early in the morning? What times have typically been the most successful for you?

Robert Bruce: The easiest time for anybody is in the early hours in the morning around 4am, because if you try to astral project the night before after a long day, you’ll find that your body and mind is tired and wants to sleep and regenerate itself, so you don’t have a great deal of energy trying to astral project.

Most people find that if they set their alarm for 4am, after going to bed at a reasonable hour, they’ll wake up feeling refreshed and restored from sleep.

At that point get up and empty your bladder and have a glass of water or something, stay up for 10 minutes before going back to bed, but don’t go back to your own bed, go lay on the couch, or if you have a spare room, go and lay in the spare room.

Wake up at 4am, and then go to another room

Most people have a 1000% better chance of having an astral projection by moving to another bedroom, the spare room, or the couch is a popular one. On the couch you’re adding a little bit of slight discomfort because it’s a different position. It’s not as cozy as your bed that you sink into each night. It’s slightly harder, and your physical body has a little bit of discomfort, not enough to keep you awake, but enough to help keep that body mind connection going, to help to keep you mentally awake. So set your alarm for 4am, get up for 10 minutes and wash your face and wake yourself up a bit, and then go back to bed in another room, and do your astral projection attempt.

The reason astral projection is easier in another room is because the body seems to get used to it’s own habitual surroundings and its own bedroom, and it seems to fall asleep quicker and deeper in your own bed.

You have to put yourself out a little bit, nobody wants to get up at 4am, but it works, it really does.

Belly breath to get into a deep altered state

And typically for an astral projection attempt, you want to let yourself wind down with some belly breathing where you focus on feeling the rising and falling of your belly as you breath. By focusing your body awareness on your breath you can use it to clear your mind and to get into an altered state of consciousness, and that will help your physical body to fall asleep.

And then as you start to feel a warm heavy wave come over your body, that’s an indicator that your physical body is now asleep, and you can now use the rope technique to imagine and feel yourself climbing out of your body.

Hemi-Sync recommendation

By the way there’s some very good Hemi-Sync tapes, binaural beats invented by Thomas Campbell for Robert Monroe which are very, very effective at putting you into a deep altered state of consciousness. The ones I recommend are Hemi-Sync Support for Journeys Out of the Body. You can download them or buy the CD’s from the Monroe Institute. If you use those CD’s or soundtracks, they will save you years of work. It’s about the only good shortcut that actually works.

Vibrations

Now some people may experience very heavy vibrations. It may feel like you’re strapped to an industrial concrete vibrator and your body is shaking itself to pieces. You might feel strong chakra pressures like pressure on the forehead, or the whole head, or in the chest. You might feel like you can’t breath, and these are symptoms of chakras awakening out of dormancy, because you’ve never really used them in this way before, because consciously coming out of your body is a very, very big event. On a spiritual scale of 1-10, this is a 9/10.

Sleep paralysis

Michael Frank: I’ve never experienced sleep paralysis but I’ve spoken to many people who have. What is sleep paralysis and what causes it?

Robert Bruce: Well sleep paralysis is caused by the astral body separating. Now it can partially separate, just by a few millimeters, like what happens for insomniacs, or it can fully separate into a proper astral projection.

Now when the astral body separates, it takes like 50 percent of your consciousness energy with it. So suddenly half your energy’s gone and your physical body will no longer respond to you when you have an astral projection going, it’s designed to immobilize you.

What happens to your physical body when you’re out of the body

When you fall asleep your astral body will usually come out a few seconds after. It just floats out. And typically for most people, it hovers about half a meter above the physical body, mimicking the sleeping position, and this is why a lot of times you’ll be lying in bed feeling that you’re wide awake and your partner will nudge you “you’re snoring” and you’re like “No I’m not! I”m still awake!” You might actually speak, because you’re somewhere in that gray zone between being asleep and being awake.

You’re awake in your astral body, which is starting to move out of you, but your physical body is indeed snoring. The person perceives themselves as being awake because their mind is working, and they’re still thinking, they don’t understand that your astral body comes out.

As you rise up out of your body you’re now in the astral. It’s crucial to realize what’s going to happen to your physical body mind when you do get out of the body.

Now there is a connection between your astral body and your physical body. Your physical body can feel what your astral body is feeling, and your astral body can feel what your physical body is feeling. There’s a connection between them.

But when the astral body separates, it takes like 50 percent of your consciousness energy with it. So suddenly half your energy’s gone and your physical body mind, which could still be awake in the bed below you, is going to suddenly feel really weak and will no longer respond to you. It’s like another big heavy wave comes over you and you feel paralyzed. You can’t move a muscle. You can’t move. You can’t even blink. You’re paralyzed. They call it sleep paralysis, or waking paralysis as I call it, and it’s caused by the astral body separating. Now it can partially separate, just by a few millimeters, like what happens for insomniacs, or it can fully separate into a proper astral projection.

Now once you’re out of body, the instant your astral body misaligns with the physical body, it disconnects, and an event that I call the mind split effect occurs, and now from that instant, even just a millimeter misaligned, your astral body is functioning completely independently from your physical body mind, so you can still be awake and thinking in your physical body, and your astral body is also awake and thinking and active separately, and there are now two of you that exist. The saying “There can be only one!” (The Highlander) is completely not true when it comes to astral projection. There are now two of you and they’re disconnected.

You’re not aware of what the astral body is doing, and your astral body is not aware of what you’re doing. So the physical body will feel suddenly weak and it will think “Oh, I failed again” even though it’s been a successful astral projection, everybody does this, they think “Oh, I failed again” and because it’s not working and I feel so tired I’m just going to have a sleep, and within 10 to 15 seconds, the physical body mind goes to sleep, and then it nose dives into deeper and deeper levels of sleep, very, very quickly. Within 30 seconds it’s gone to stage one, two, three, four, sleep.

Don’t panic if you can’t get back in your body

Now when you get into a deep sleep, sometimes even an alarm clock or somebody shaking you will not wake you up. You know, it’s difficult to wake a person that’s deeply asleep sometimes. And sometimes when your astral body comes back, maybe an hour later, and it tries to get back into the physical body again, it can’t get back in, because when the astral body tries to get back in, it causes like a tingling sensation, which if you are awake and conscious you’ll feel it, but when you’re deeply asleep, it doesn’t respond. So your astral body can’t get back into the physical body.

Now this often results in very fear inducing experiences because people don’t understand what’s happening, and you get a person who dives on top of their physical body and they’re banging on their chest saying “Let me in!” and it won’t. Now your physical body because you’re touching it, trying to claw your way in again, will feel very cold and clammy. It’ll feel very damp and cold. It feels very dead. So most people in that situation, they put two and two together and come up with seven. “Oh my God, I died!” “I’ve had a heart attack!” or “The astral projection killed me!” “Why did I do this stupid thing for! I’m dead!” And they panic. And that panic is often enough to cause your physical body mind to wake up and bring you awake.

But what usually happens is a truck goes by, somebody in the distance honks their horn, or a telephone rings in the house next to you, just enough noise to wake you up so that the astral body can reintegrate with zero memories of the astral projection.

Remembering the Astral Projection

However if you time it just right with the truck going by and everything, you’ll wake up with full memories feeling wonderful thinking to yourself “I’ll never forget that!”

Forget what? It’s gone. You’ve been awake for 30 seconds and you’re going through the memory and it was so cool. You’re so happy. And then it’s gone. And then suddenly it comes back. And then it’s gone again. And then it comes back again. And then it goes away again. And then it comes back again. And then it goes away again. “Oh God, thank you! I’ll never forget! This is such a cool experience!” And then it’s gone again and it never comes back.

Write down and verbalize your experience ASAP

This is a very important point: When you woke up, you remembered that you had a really cool experience, and then it went away and you lost the memory. And then you remember it coming back and then you remember it going again. The actual content of the memory is missing, but you remember it being there and going away and then coming back and then being lost forever.

You remember those events but you don’t remember the actual memory. So obviously there’s something special about that memory. You have it and then you don’t have it. You have it and then you don’t have it.

And this is why every astral projection teacher tells you to have a large pad of paper, not a small one, a big A4 pad and a pen or a pencil beside your bed within easy reach, because the first thing you need to do when you come out of an astral projection is to verbalize a keyword from the experience. It might be that you had an experience in the astral with highway men, the keyword would be “highway robbery”, and then you write down “highway robbery” “horses” “the coast” “pirate ships” and a few keywords like that, and then from those keywords you start writing down the whole story of the experience you had, but you lock it in with the keywords because these memories are very subtle and fickle. Imagine you’ve got a little memory cloud balancing on your head and the slightest puff of wind in the room around you and it’s gone.

Michael Frank: It might be a good idea to record the memories into your phone, because I think most people can speak faster than they can write.

Robert Bruce: Yep. A lot of people prefer that.

So as soon as you wake up in your physical body start verbalizing the experience and write down keywords, because often when you do and you see the keyword later, the whole memory comes back and you remember the whole experience in great detail.

How to remember your Astral Projection

Much of my work in teaching astral projection revolves around teaching various techniques to be able to remember the astral projection. Because remember that you have them every time you sleep, but of course 99.99% of them are forgotten because there isn’t usually a very strong memory in it. But I discovered many years ago, that if you form a very strong memory, like psych yourself up and get passionate and shout out a couple of key words from the experience to represent it, you’ll remember it.

If you’re having an OBE (Out of Body Experience) and you look at your hands, they will instantly melt. It’s a reliable phenomena that if you look at your hands they will melt. Imagine your hands are made of snow, and you suddenly apply a powerful blow torch to them, your fingers will disappear in two seconds and you’re down to stumpy little wrists and it looks like melted candle wax.

So look at your hands melting and then dive back into your physical body passionately, savagely, screaming: “Hands melted!” “Hands melted!” “Hands melted!” trying to really psych up that memory. And then you will wake up in your physical body and you’ve got to verbalize it immediately with those keywords “Hands melted!” “Hands melted!” “Hands melted!” over and over again, reaching for the pad that’s on your bed and writing down those keywords “Hands melted!” or whatever your keywords are, and then if you still have the memory, flesh it out and write down the rest of the experience and the other things that happened.

This is why I focus on memory recall because memory, not technique, is the main problem in astral projection. You can get the technique on half a page of text. Sit down, relax, close your eyes, belly breath, feel yourself falling, wait until you’re almost falling asleep, and then use an astral projection exit technique like the rope technique, and most people can do that if they practice a little bit, and they’ll often get out in within a couple of attempts maybe, but it’s remembering the experience that’s the main problem.

This is part three of a seven part Masterclass on Astral Projection.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Robert Bruce is the author of several groundbreaking books: starting with his magnum opus Astral Dynamics (200,000 books sold worldwide), followed by the books: The Psychic Self-Defense Handbook and Energy Work. Robert also coauthored the classic: Mastering Astral Projection: 90 day guide to OBE, and the Mastering Astral Projection CD audio package coauthored with Brian Mercer.

Robert Bruce is a true spiritual pioneer of our times. He has spent his life pondering the big questions and exploring the great mysteries, such as: The Afterlife Experience, the human energy body, the out-of-body experience, Kundalini, psychic security, the nature of nonphysical realities and spirit beings, and how everything fits together in the greater reality.

Robert began having Out of Body experiences at the age of three, and he raised his Kundalini to its full in his early thirties, and many times since. His experience-driven approach, that he calls ‘The Way Of The Master’ has resulted in profound contact with his higher self and the spiritual hierarchy.

Robert Bruce currently resides in Western Australia. He lectures internationally, conducts workshops, and creates video-based training programs, which are available through Astral Dynamics

Find our more about Robert Bruce at Astral Dynamics and on his Astral Dynamics Forum where you will find a wealth of information and free tutorials.

When not writing or lecturing, Robert is often found diving enchanted coral reefs, in deep meditation, or exploring the wild and lonely places in search of Grace.