Each of us would like to feel free and have greater possibilities. Many people sense that the world is something more than what they are usually permitted to experience – that they themselves are something more.

And indeed, these feelings are true: we are something more. The abilities of most people have been put to sleep, hidden. But we can reclaim them. This article explains how.

Reality is multilayered, and in the world of matter a human being uses only a fraction of the power and essence they truly are. But one can feel freedom by reclaiming part of one’s powers through mastery of the mind’s own abilities and the non-material part of oneself – the ability for astral travel: freely traversing space, reaching invaluable knowledge, and discovering new places, and sometimes their inhabitants.

What Are Astral Travels?

The Astral World is the name given to the space of existence beyond our physical dimension. Other terms include the spiritual world, the non-physical world, the non-material world, and so on. There are many levels of the Astral World – from those close to our physical reality that mirror it, to very distant spaces that people sometimes identify as worlds of highly evolved spiritual beings, worlds of high vibrations, higher planes, the space of the higher Self, etc.

Some philosophical paths and classification systems distinguish between the astral world and other worlds such as the mental, buddhic, atmic, and so on. In my view, however, this is a misleading practice, because in reality the term “Astral World” should refer to the space of existence on all levels. The astral is in a sense a synonym for “Universe,” but concentrating on what we perceive as non-material or spiritual.

There are no signs anywhere reading “the astral world ends here and the buddhic world begins.” These demarcations were created by people to help identify different states of consciousness – just as we might look at a thermometer and its scale. Different points are marked on it, but this is only to help us identify the temperature; they are not separate, isolated dimensions. So for the purposes of this article, I define the Astral World as the entire space in which our non-material consciousness can exist and have experiences.

In other words, Astral Travels refer to journeys through different levels of existence and different places in this space of existence – which we can accomplish by an act of mental focus, an act of will, and the right techniques.

OOBE – Out of Body Experience

One of the most spectacular and emotionally charged forms of astral travel is OOBE – Out of Body Experience. The name accurately captures what the experience is: it is characterized by the sensation of complete separation from the physical body and finding oneself outside it. In this state, a person has the ability to travel in astral form – simply by thinking where they want to go, which immediately sets the astral body in motion.

The greatest researcher of OOBE was Robert Monroe, who wrote the celebrated trilogy: Journeys Out of the Body, Far Journeys, and Ultimate Journey. OOBE provides the strongest of all types of astral travel – the sense of actually existing outside one’s material shell.

OOBE can be learned, but it is not as straightforward as most people would like. In reality, only a small percentage of those who attempt it achieve OOBE, and among those only a small percentage can partially control the experience. Having experienced OOBE many times myself, as a practitioner, I consider it not the optimal form for astral travel – especially not as a starting point.

Why? Because for OOBE to occur, a series of conditions must be met. The experience is quite energy-intensive and relatively difficult to control once outside the body. When there, the mind functions differently: thinking about something (such as going to a particular place) causes immediate movement in that direction. Imagine a situation where every thought happens instantly. This may sound appealing to some, but in practice most people “trying to think” find themselves immediately experiencing manifestations of their thoughts and even subconscious intentions.

There are also factors related to the sense of safety in such travels. The actual feeling of being completely outside one’s physical body naturally triggers certain concerns, and few people feel fully confident in this situation. Fear also very easily displaces the traveler in this state, tuning consciousness to the layers of space that reflect that fear. This can be mastered, but few in practice manage it. It is a prolonged process of learning and practice, resulting in only a small number achieving desired success. Nevertheless, OOBE is a very important phenomenon and a powerful experience – it gives certainty that one can exist outside the physical body, which is itself enormously significant.

Mental Journeys

Mental Journeys are the type of astral travel that occurs without losing contact with one’s physical body. They take place through an act of concentration and focusing the mind on a place one wishes to reach, receiving images and information related to that place.

The researcher, known practitioner, and promoter of this method was Bruce Moen. Participating in Robert Monroe Institute courses, Moen was unable to travel outside his body in the OOBE state, but discovered that by focusing his mind he could perceive what people in the OOBE state perceived and reported. His books provide a fascinating complement to Monroe’s trilogy.

The problem with Mental Journeys, however, is that the human mind has very considerable creative capacities in the form of vast imagination. Our brain is built to facilitate running simulations before we act. When we want to be somewhere and do something, we can imagine it. The problem with mental journeys is that it is very difficult to distinguish what the mind perceives in the course of an astral journey – objectively existing information, places, and people outside ourselves – from our own imagination.

Moreover, the mind is typically so trained and accustomed to triggering this imagination whenever real information is lacking but there is some point of reference, that the brain tries to fill the gaps by imagining something based on information already gathered. Remote Viewing was developed precisely to solve this problem.

Dreams

This overview cannot omit mention of dreams and dreaming, because dreams actually unfold on various planes of the Astral World. The most typical dream takes place in a space that forms and dissolves over time – like a Star Trek holodeck in astral space. That is why it is possible to visit each other in dreams: the dream world genuinely forms in astral space for a short time. Our spiritual guardians and guides can also sometimes enter the dream space.

Things become considerably more interesting in the case of dreams in which we have the sensation of visiting some foreign world, places completely different from any we know, and encountering exceptional beings. All of this usually constitutes part of the Astral Travels that a part of our consciousness undertakes during sleep.

We generally do not control these experiences, although tuning ourselves toward certain qualities before sleep can help us journey in sleep toward something that corresponds to that tuning. Dreams also sometimes provide knowledge and insights – and that is also part of what we can call an Astral Journey of part of our being.

As you may already suspect: dreams are something that happens very spontaneously, and it is very difficult to perform genuinely planned Astral Travels by this means. One can develop Lucid Dreaming techniques that help us gain control over dream content – but this is still too different a state of consciousness to be easily controlled by our logical-analytical mind. It is also very difficult from within a dream to be certain – even in a lucid dream – that we are going somewhere in the objectively existing regions of the Astral World rather than our own imagined creations.

Shamanic Journeys

Shamans for centuries have entered the space of the Astral World, traversing it in search of answers to solve the problems of the human world – such as healing illnesses – and also encountering Guides there who helped them in their tasks.

It must be remembered, however, that being a true Shaman involved a very long and often arduous path of preparation and a very serious process of learning. Shamans often used various plants and substances to induce visions, but one must be aware that they did so after years of preparation and very careful study of their craft. We presumably don’t hear today about all those shamans who failed or were harmed in this process – not because there were none, but because history simply forgets them quickly.

Shamanism today carries very romantic associations, but it is a very demanding path. One could attempt astral journeys using consciousness-altering substances as the old shamans did – but I consider this very risky without years of preparation.

In any case, we now possess techniques that allow us to enter the astral world without resorting to consciousness-altering substances. It is time to practice New Shamanism – one in which there is no need to resort to various substances, based instead on knowledge and awareness of how the mind works, where appropriate techniques allow us to achieve desired results.

Remote Viewing

Remote Viewing is the fruit of U.S. intelligence taking seriously the research into extrasensory perception during the Cold War, in order to develop optimal techniques for what this article collectively calls Astral Travels. It should also be noted that Astral Travels also enable perception at a distance of places and objects in the physical world – hence the name Remote Viewing, or in a broader and more accurate designation, Remote Perception.

Remote Viewing incorporates elements of what I described as Mental Journeys – in the practice of Remote Viewing the person does not lose contact with their physical body. The technique also does not require entering any altered state of consciousness, only focusing attention on a specific activity.

Remote Viewing stands out by conducting its investigation in a way that eliminates the previously described problem of imagination activating when a person already knows in advance what the subject of investigation is. Through experiments and practice, it was discovered that to investigate a given target, it suffices to provide the perceiving person with something that will be an identifier for that target – without the person needing to know the target directly.

To illustrate: if we know we are to focus on the dark side of the moon, our imagination activates because we instantly recall everything we know and believe about the moon – all films, books, overheard stories, and assumptions. In Remote Viewing instead, a target such as the dark side of the moon is given an identifier in the form of a randomly assigned series of digits – for example, “46931.” The perceiving person receives only this identifier, knowing that an actual target has been assigned to it but not knowing what it is. There is nothing to awaken the imagination and provide grounds for guessing.

During the session, the monitor asks neutral, clarifying questions in response to what the Remote Viewer reports – allowing the perceiver to fully relax and focus on what they are perceiving without simultaneously having to analyze and organize it into a logical whole. That is the monitor’s task.

Such an Astral Journey is therefore completely comfortable – it requires no loss of control over one’s physical body – and at the same time provides the greatest possibility of effectively acquiring objective information without the element of guessing or substituting actual perception with imaginary impressions.

Moreover, when sessions are conducted in a group – where independent Remote Viewers investigate the same target without contact with each other during the investigation – the quantity of valuable information obtained in this way is significantly greater than with all the above-described techniques, and also the most reliable, because the element of uncertainty has been eliminated: whether a given perception might simply be one’s own imagination arising from prior knowledge of the subject.

Jakub Qba Niegowski – Extrasensory Awareness Development Specialist

If you would rather train these states with structure, our live online remote viewing course offers a clear, structured way forward.