Weird experience with "astral projection"... (And how I did it)

[neo]

I don't really believe in metaphysics stuff but today I did experience something that I think a lot of people would describe as being "astral projection". The reason this isn't in the metaphysics category is because it's not really metaphysics to me after all, or at the very least it doesn't require any sort of meta assumptions in order to experience this phenomena. So let me describe here the process and if there's someone that has done this before please tell me if this is the same thing as what they call "astral projection". Or even if you're skeptic like me you can still experience this phenomena and it may help if you're struggling with wonderland immersion like I was.
I started by sitting down and closing my eyes, then started to rub my hands together in front of my face and trying to keep my awareness focused on the shape of my hands and arms in front of me. Slowly keeping track of their position and "sculpting" my own arms to get a real good memory of their shape and how it feels to move them without opening my eyes.
Then afterwards I rested my right hand by the side of my body and started to use just the memory of a minute ago to move an imaginary right arm and interact with the real left arm. So it became left arm real, right arm imaginary.
Then I proceeded to sculpt the imaginary right arm with the real one, and then the real one using the imaginary right arm. Going vice versa back and forth.
Then I rested my left arm also by my side and started using both imaginary arms to sculpt each other.
After a couple minutes of that I just put both imaginary hands on the back of my head as if I was going to do a sit up and I just yanked my perspective back by pushing my real head forward with my imaginary arms and immediately started sculpting the back of my head from that new perspective as if my real head was outside of me, then the rest of my real body. I felt completely removed from my body by keeping awareness of it from an outsider perspective, the longer I sculpted my body the more removed I felt from it, and the more intense and overwhelming the sensation of being outside became, it's even a little scary. it's very different from daydreaming and even imposition. Never experienced anything similar and I am now able to recreate this experience this way whenever I want. It doesn't last a lot at first because it's quite overwhelming but that only makes it seem more consistent with other peoples "astral projection" reports that I've seen so far. If this is the same as astral projection then I'm curious as to what to do next. I'm also pretty sure this can be used to force by having your tulpa sculpt you while looking through their perspective as well.
Anyway feel free to share any info you may have on the subject or your own experience with this stuff. I'm quite interested to see what else is there to explore even though I don't really believe in the meta stuff I'm still interested in experiencing these kind of phenomena.
 

[joelp]

I think astral projection is just you perceiving your imagination as reality. Getting the perception of the location of your consciousness out there forces this to happen. 

May I ask you about the time frame wherein you did this? And also if you think it is normal to do this whenever you want? What I mean by this is that a lot of people seem to find astral projection hard.

Edited February 11, 2021 by joelp

[neo]

34 minutes ago, joelp said:

I think astral projection is just you perceiving your imagination as reality. Getting the perception of the location of your consciousness out there forces this to happen. 

Yes but for some reason it's very different from going into wonderland and just forgetting about your body. When you include your real body awareness within whatever you're visualizing and consciously keep track of it from an outside perspective it shifts your perspective in a very different way. It makes you experience all sorts of sensations. I felt genuinely scared of not finding my body if I went too far from it.

 

 

42 minutes ago, joelp said:

May I ask you about the time frame wherein you did this? And also if you think it is normal to do this whenever you want? What I mean by this is that a lot of people seem to find astral projection hard.

Well I visualize a lot regularly so that may be a factor in making it easier, it probably was. I have tried to astral project before learning visualization without success years ago. So I decided to try again yesterday doing it my own way and it worked. I haven't experienced that shift in perspective before. It's something that I didn't visualized or tried to learn, the shift in perspective was sorta accidental. I'm going to try this again today but I think it takes about 20 min or so to get to the right mindset for it.

[theholodoc]

Our body image is very plastic and with intention we may alter it. We may also alter it unintentionally, and then it can be frightening, severely so. Some people have reacted so extremely so as to come to the attention of psychiatrists (who of course call in an halucination and give it a diagnosis of body dysmorphic disorder. I do not think it is 'astral travel' and I do think it is akin to tulpa formation. Dr. Bob

[neo]

2 hours ago, theholodoc said:

We may also alter it unintentionally, and then it can be frightening, severely so.

From what I've noticed so far, what people call "astral body" is your unconscious long term memory of the shape of your body over a long period of time. People will experience phantom limbs when they have to amputate a leg or an arm, and they claim to feel skin sensations and sometimes try to even use the limb forgetting it's gone completely. But as time passes the feeling of using your body daily will create a new memory that will overlap that old memory slowly. This is the reason I think it's hard to keep being "astral projected" because your body it's so used to being aware of where you are and how it feels to have your shape at all times. So you sometimes get "sucked" back into your regular body awareness.

 

 

2 hours ago, theholodoc said:

I do not think it is 'astral travel' and I do think it is akin to tulpa formation. Dr. Bob

You're right but there's a little more to it. The difference between being in wonderland and being "astral projected" is that there are different senses that are not usually present in a regular wonderland experience, or at the very least that I didn't usually include in my wonderland trips. The sense of balance and gravity for instance, the feeling of being actually there and somewhat lost. The way to manifest the stuff that you want is also different, if you just consciously decide to manifest something it doesn't work the same way, you usually have to manifest the thing you want outside your view like behind a door or turning your back to it. And also the information is presented to you automatically and it's resistant to immediate change. For instance I've felt that I tripped on something and fell to the ground and then tried to just "decide" that I didn't fell, but it didn't work, I kept feeling like my face was on the ground, the only way to get up was to actually move my perceived body in the same way I would if I wanted to get up from the ground in real life.

 

Maybe this can all be included in a regular wonderland experience or is indistinguishable from a highly vivid wonderland experience but it is different from what I had experienced so far.

[HollowHaw]

Interesting. I have been doing something similar to help with immersion, where I move my arm irl with my eyes open and visualise all of the mechanical and nerve components. Then I move that visualization into my imagined form. I have gotten the following out of this:

1) Different control mechanism. I feel more like I am moving legitimately, and not "puppeting" my own body. 

2) Minor rare sensory input from whatever I am imagining

3) IRL sense of orientation interacts with dream sense. At the start this is annoying as hell because it makes it impossible to rotate my imagined body, but that effect wears off eventually and allows me to feel a sense of direction and movement.

 

I will definitely try your technique and will post my results if any. 

[neo]

1 hour ago, HollowHaw said:

I will definitely try your technique and will post my results if any. 

Please do, this has been working consistently so far for me and the effects are only getting stronger. 

 

1 hour ago, HollowHaw said:

IRL sense of orientation interacts with dream sense. At the start this is annoying as hell because it makes it impossible to rotate my imagined body, but that effect wears off eventually and allows me to feel a sense of direction and movement.

 

Do you mean you're doing like the WILD technique for lucid dreaming? In my experience with this, it seems to take a little bit of time keeping your body still for like, at least 10 minutes before it gets really strong. But if you do it consistently once early in the day, you can repeat it very easily afterwards.

[HollowHaw]

55 minutes ago, neo said:

 

Do you mean you're doing like the WILD technique for lucid dreaming? In my experience with this, it seems to take a little bit of time keeping your body still for like, at least 10 minutes before it gets really strong. But if you do it consistently once early in the day, you can repeat it very easily afterwards.

No, it's kind of like this:

On 2/13/2021 at 12:01 PM, neo said:

For instance I've felt that I tripped on something and fell to the ground and then tried to just "decide" that I didn't fell, but it didn't work, I kept feeling like my face was on the ground, the only way to get up was to actually move my perceived body in the same way I would if I wanted to get up from the ground in real life.

Except it is my IRL sense of orientation enforcing my position instead of something in the mindscape.

Anyways I am going to try your thing right now, wish me luck.

 

UPDATE:

Did exactly as described in OP (though maybe not for as long)

Worked as well or better than my previous method as far as movement fidelity, and may have helped visual fidelity marginally.

Did not dissociate from the real body which is disappointing(still heard/felt/etc everything) so no dream-like state, however my muscles didn't spasm while using this method compared to the one I used previously where they would occasionally.

It's of course possible I did something wrong. Could you perhaps make a more clear step by step post on the method you used?

Edited February 16, 2021 by HollowHaw

[neo]

1 hour ago, HollowHaw said:

Did not dissociate from the real body which is disappointing

One other thing you could try is, after you feel somewhat outside, visualize yourself spinning around. But really include the sense of balance in it. The sense of balance is essential to the experience of being "outside".
If you feel difficulty detaching the perspective you could visualize that your head is tilted ever so slightly and choose to "identify" with the slightly tilted position instead of the real one and and go nudging the angle really slowly until your visualized perspective match the real perspective position but while looking at a different direction.

Sorta like that, I hope that's understandable I just put it together really quick.

Edited February 16, 2021 by neo

[HollowHaw]

8 hours ago, neo said:

One other thing you could try is, after you feel somewhat outside, visualize yourself spinning around. But really include the sense of balance in it. The sense of balance is essential to the experience of being "outside".
If you feel difficulty detaching the perspective you could visualize that your head is tilted ever so slightly and choose to "identify" with the slightly tilted position instead of the real one and and go nudging the angle really slowly until your visualized perspective match the real perspective position but while looking at a different direction.

Sorta like that, I hope that's understandable I just put it together really quick.

I'll give it a shot.

 

Nope, doesn't work. Same as before. Maybe I just need more practice idk.

For the record it does help with sense of touch if nothing else, though this is preceived more as a second sense than as my real one, if that makes any sense.

Edited February 16, 2021 by HollowHaw