*Astral Projection and the Focus of Consciousness* Q: I understand that on your planet the males, for the most part, have no hair. B: Yes. Q: Have you ever considered going into the business of making toupees? B: No. Q: Well... you haven't got any money on your planet anyway, so you don't have anything with which "to pay" for it... toupee? (Groaning from the audience: "Back to the camera!") (Note: the pun-maker is Ken G., the cameraman.) Q2: One of the things that I do in a waking state - physical waking state - is that I will imagine myself moving out of my body, sometimes above it, above the rooftops... B: Yes. Q: I can move around. When I re-emerge with my body, I get a rush - like a rush of energy is occurring. B: Yes. Q: And in this state I don't have a visual perception. It's more of a knowingness perception, where it's as though it's dark out and I can't see anything, but I just know that I am above the tops of the roofs... B: Yes. Sometimes because, once again, simply by the habit of being in physical reality, it may take a little while for you to get used to the idea of how to open your astral eyes. Q: Okay. B: To really know you are seeing. Because, understand, you are not seeing in the same way at all. Because you do not have eyes, as you understand them, in the astral state. Q: Right. Well, that bears on a related area of this question. And that is that while I'm doing this, I also have full perception of what my body is experiencing. I can still feel my body lying or sitting, touching, tasting; whatever it might be experiencing. B: You can form relative degrees of disassociation from your physiological reality. Q: Well, what I'm saying is that I'm doing both at the same time. I'm aware of being out, and also in - not really in, but out and still feeling. B: Yes. Q: Is this technically astral projection? B: It can be, because, once again, technically, your body is inside your consciousness, and therefore, it is always contained in any expansion of consciousness. Let's look at it this way: physiologically, as a mechanism, think of your consciousness for now as a sphere. All right? Q: Yes. B: Think now, when you are physically focused, that the sphere, let us say, is simply in the shape of your body. All right? Q: Okay. B: Then when you go out of body, it is not that you are actually exiting the body; it is that you are expanding the sphere, so that your consciousness is now out here, further and further and further. You follow me? Q: I do understand that concept. B: Your consciousness, therefore, is actually always 360 degrees around your body, which is at the center, so to speak; or physical reality, in a sense, because it is so dense, represents the center of your consciousness. You collapse and condense inward to form highly solid reality. You expand and go outward like a bubble to go into the more ethereal realm. This is why, when you expand the bubble of your consciousness, you can travel here and there, and here and there, with absolutely no time involved between traveling, because your consciousness is everywhere - 360 degrees. And all you're doing when you go from this point on the bubble to that point on the bubble is closing your eyes here and opening them over there, to see a different point of view. So, if you perhaps use this mechanism in your imagination, and continue to expand the bubble and assume that you are the consciousness always moving with the skin of the bubble - and yet, at the same time, you can always be aware of what is contained within the bubble - then you can jockey, as you say, back and forth, back and forth. Or remain in the skin; or go into the physical reality, or expand the bubble as large as you wish, or as tightly as you wish. This is a direct mechanical analogy of astral projection. It is not simply just the idea of a spirit leaving the body. It is an expansion of your entire consciousness, so that your focal point is now on the skin of the bubble moving outward. You follow me? Q: Yes, I was aware of this concept. B: Yes. Q: And when I said I was leaving, I didn't mean to imply that I thought my consciousness was actually my body. B: Oh, we did not mean to imply that you were implying that. We are simply giving you, perhaps, the idea of a mechanism to explain the effect you are feeling. Q: Okay. B: So technically, yes. Q: Technically, I'm astral projecting. B: Yes. It just depends upon the idea of where you choose to focus the mainstay of your consciousness. Many individuals, in other words, would assume that it is not completely astral projection unless you lost the realization of the focus of your physical form. Q: Yeah. B: It is still astral projection, but it may simply be that your consciousness is not focused in the skin of the bubble, but throughout the entire thing. Q: Multiply focused, certainly. Well, I understand the whole phenomenon of perception, anyway, is the selection of a viewpoint... B: Yes. Q: ... in a created space. B: Yes. So astral projection is simply one of those viewpoints, in the sense of being completely disconnected from the body. That is simply another point of view. Q: Okay. Well you're saying that astral projection technically would require this disconnection, or apparent disconnection, from the sensations of the body? Or does... B: It doesn't have to. Q: Oh, okay. B: But because of the habit your society is in - and I'm not saying that this is the way it has to be with you - many individuals will not allow themselves to believe that it has actually been done, unless they are capable of forming that apparent disassociation. To know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they actually can shuttle their focus of consciousness back and forth between the physical and the non-physical. Q: Okay. B: When you are, quote/unquote, physically dead, that is when the disconnection apparently happens naturally. Although, again, when you elevate to higher and higher levels, you will once again re-form the connection that you are feeling now. So in a sense, what you are doing, in order to still feel the connection, is you are expanding astrally to a much broader realm than the immediate sphere just around your planet. You're actually passing through that, so that you can maintain an awareness of the connection all the way through the different levels. Q: Uh huh. B: You follow me? Q: Yes. How would one go about learning to open the astral eye, as you said? B: Again, there can be many ways. You can use the analogy of your own physical eye; and while you are expanded, simply begin, bit by bit, to remove your focus from the physical. One thing that can assist many of you is to assume that you can also turn around on the skin of the sphere and look outwards. Q: Huh! Certainly. B: See what that does. That is one way. Use your imagination, as always. Q: Okay. B: And also there are many suggestions within some of the literature on astral projection that individuals in your society have already written about. Q: Okay. Thank you very much. B: Thank you. Sharing!