By Hakeem Alexander

READ Day-5

(Exercising Your Mind) I have adventured in many so-called “Astral-Projections” or “Out-of-Body Experiences” (OBEs). If you had the opportunity to read my article on lucid dreaming, you may remember that my lucid dreams started as spontaneous occurrences.

That is, I did not will them or want them to happen. This is because I had no idea that there was anything different about dreams than being awake or lucid within them. Not knowing that I was dreaming has always been an alien concept to me.

In the same way, my journeys with astral-projection began. However, there are some major differences that I will be communicating in this writing, as well as the similarities.

One of the main differences is that, only four out of every one-hundred OBEs that I can remember, have I had some control of the experience. The control that I did have was very weak and limited compared to the control that I am able to exercise when lucid dreaming.

Upon retrospective analysis, or dwelling on past OBEs, I have come to the conclusion that they have only occurred while I was in poor health due to malnutrition.

It seems that for some reason, I have only been able to project my astral-body when my blood sugar is out of its optimum.

This may seem strange to some Metaphysicians, but my out-of-body experiences have only happened because of a change in my physical condition, rather than from some prescribed techniques or methods to achieve the effect.

In my Sleep Awareness Week article “Orthomolecular HypnoAthletics“, posted on March 7th, 2012, I wrote:

“I experienced the negative effects of unhealthy eating choices including: defects in carbohydrate metabolism, hypoglycemia, which led to, pre-diabetic, keto-acidosis, that promoted diminished kidney function and pain, insomnia, sleep-paralysis accompanied by sleep-apnea, irritability, lethargy, cognitive decline, depression, inability to focus and concentrate, memory impairment, paranoia and delusions, as a short list.”

It has been under the very specific circumstances of sleep-paralysis accompanied by sleep-apnea, that I have had the majority, if not all of my OBEs. Because of these circumstances, it is easy to dismiss these experiences as symptoms of neurological impairment.

I will fully agree that the unhealthy eating contributed to some type of unhealthy physical condition of the brain that caused changes in my mental experience.

However, because of several circumstances concurrent with these experiences, I must insist that out-of-body experiences are a fact of being as described by many spiritualists and other like minded persons.

My hypothesis is that somehow the physiological changes created from poor nutrition, tune my sensory channels to a parallel reality that is just as real, but invisible under biological circumstances that are healthy for me.

This is equivalent to a television channel as normal perception, or good health, and then getting interference from other concurrent programs when in poor health. The channels are always there, but I am not always tuned in because I am normally in good health.

The ideas about astral projection or OBEs that I have come across mostly agree that in the astral world, it is basically an exact replica, reflection, or mirror image of the physical world, at least in architecture, structure and form.

For example, when I have “walked” through a hallway in my house in my astral body, the same Bruce Lee poster hung on the wall, and my cat’s scratching tower and all other objects remain in the same positions as when I am in my physical body.

Another interesting feature of my OBEs has been that a lucid dream with themes of conflict and terror almost always precede the the projection. It usually begins with some person or entity that I am struggling with more than I would be in lucid dreams where I generally dominate my circumstances and opponents.

Instead, before I have an astral projection, I do not have the upper hand when suddenly, I am overcome with an overwhelming terror, physical body paralysis and difficulty or inability to breathe. As I struggle to move, usually to sit up or lift an arm or leg, I realize a great tension, as if powerful rubber cords are attached to every atom of my physical being.

If I am only able to turn my astral head, I realize that I see two arms, one of my physical body, paralyzed and still, while my astral arm frantically struggles to be free.

Other times I completely sit upright, only to look down to see my lifeless physical body remaining still. When I have this experience, I have usually been stunned enough to quit fighting and let the rubber cords take over and slam me back into my physical body as I jerk and twitch into an awake state, glad to be able to move and breathe freely.

Quite a few other times however, I have looked around my room, or whatever room I am in, visited neighbors homes, and even projected out into deep space, only to come crashing back down in an instant.

I can not say that the majority of my astral projections have had a pleasant start, and many have been down-right terrifying! Indeed though, they have all been quite fascinating regardless of how the were initiated.

Since I have mostly corrected what I understand to have been blood-sugar problems, I have only had one or two experiences like this in over a year. This is quite a relief because I was accustomed to having at least two or more each night!

Before I made these dietary adjustments, I did learn some very useful coping skills that helped to make the astral projections more pleasant and useful for exploration, rather than trying to free myself from suffocation and paralysis.

The two main skills I learned were deep breathing in and relaxation; followed by conscious projection – in that order.

I chose breathing first because it was obvious to me before I ever heard the term sleep-apnea, as it may be to you, that breathing is very important. It was not necessary for me to be completely in control of my emotions, only enough to be able to focus on inhaling.

Perhaps it would be useful to know that this is a really good first step to overcome sleep-related breathing difficulties. I concentrated all of my initial efforts on breathing in.

This is because when I usually became conscious while in this paralyzed state, it became apparent to me that I was always out-of-breath, and so it seemed reasonable to focus on reclaiming a bit of oxygen.

Once I was able to manage this, a combination of the morale victory of getting in a breath or two, and the physical relief were enough to bring me to step two – relaxation.

I would automatically begin to relax knowing that with a little effort, I would be able to breathe and that I was not going to end up having a heart attack, brain-dead in bed or some other oxygen-deprivation induced injury.

It may be no surprise to you that frightening thoughts invade one’s mind who is abruptly awakened to being suffocated and immobilized. Soon after I had a few victories of inhaling and relaxing under my belt, I was then able to consciously project and do a little exploring.

Most of the explorations consisted of simply being aware of what my physical body was doing and what “hallucinations” if any were present. The hallucinations took on a few distinct forms.

These were being restrained in my bed by demons or evil-spirits who would either basically rape me and / or ask me to join the forces of Satan.

Other times there were aliens or extra-terrestrials who would restrain me and perform genetic breeding experiments, either in bed or abduct me to do so elsewhere. I have never had a pleasant entity visit me under circumstances where I was immobilized and suffocating.

My exploration of astral projection as a more controlled phase of my experience is not in its very beginning stages. For now I have to figure out how to view these other realms without being unhealthy or weak.

I do realize that physiological changes affecting my brain and therefore my cognitive experience have a great deal to do with these scenarios of OBEs and astral projection. However, I am not convinced in any way that they are merely “hallucination” produced from an overactive imagination.

I have good reasons to believe that other people have significantly similar experiences from books I have read and interviews I have conducted. This is a subject I will continue to explore and investigate

I will be sharing the results of my findings very soon. In fact, I already have a great deal of information compiled. Enough has been revealed for now.