Dear Soul Arcanum:
We’ve corresponded in the past about my spontaneous experiences of astral projection. Recently I had another experience. I remembered you told me not to be afraid, and I wasn’t this time. I rose out of my body and was floating towards my front door. My face was next to the ceiling, and the ceiling seemed soft and flexible. I was floating back down to my body when I saw an orange-gold ball of light zooming all over the room. It had a tail like a comet. As it zoomed through the room, it would cross over its own tail. I wasn’t scared, and I gently floated back into my body. I tried yelling my husband’s name so he could see it, but I was paralyzed and couldn’t speak. I finally managed to shout his name and he woke up but he didn’t see the light. In all the experiences I’ve had, I’ve never seen this before. Can you tell me what the light was? Also, I can’t seem to get out of my house while I’m out of the body. Any advice you can offer would be appreciated!
– Vicki
Dear Vicki:
From our prior correspondence, I know that you’re new to astral projection. Since many of our readers are interested in learning how to have out of body experiences, this is a great opportunity to explore these common scenarios.
Many people have seen things like your racing orange ball of light. This could have been any one of a number of entities from another (metaphysical) dimension. Many times spirits will show up in this way. If you research ghost photography and orbs, you’ll see not only orange orbs that seem stationary but also shooting or racing orbs.
Some people have reported encountering other (living) astral travelers as orange balls of light. In fact, a popular technique for trying to get out of the body is to focus your consciousness into a ball of light and then shoot the ball of light out into the astral, so it’s possible that you saw someone else who was astral projecting.
This fellow projector could have been attracted by the fact that you were out of your body too, or they could have been totally unaware of you. We leave our bodies every night, but most of us don’t do it consciously. When encountered during our regular nightly travels, many of us will seem like we’re sleepwalking, and could pass right by a conscious astral projector as if we’re in a dream.
Some people believe that non-human entities like elves, fairies and nature spirits can appear as balls of light. Others insist they’ve seen angels, spirit guides, and earthbound spirits or ghosts take similar forms.
There also seems to be a connection between bright racing lights and the formation of crop circles. Many people have seen lights like this above fields just before crop circles were discovered. There is even a controversial video that supposedly captures orange balls of light as they create a crop circle. Google “Oliver’s Castle video” to judge for yourself.
This whole subject makes me wonder how we may appear to beings in other dimensions when we alter our state of consciousness and raise our vibration through meditation, shamanic journeying and other spiritual practices. Perhaps as our consciousness follows a guided meditation, in the realm we’re mentally traveling through, we are perceived as some sort of supernatural phenomenon. I know that spirits are drawn to “the light” of mediums in the physical, so maybe we appear as balls of light to beings in other dimensions.
You see, everything we can imagine is real on some level or in some dimension of experience. We can perceive light but we can’t hold it in our hands or capture it in a test tube. There is some light we can’t physically perceive such as infrared or ultraviolet light, but we know this light exists and can affect us.
When spirits or entities become dense and dip into the etheric plane, we may perceive them with our eyes or cameras as lights, orbs, mists, apparitions, etc. Similarly, when our consciousness shifts into the etheric or astral plane during astral projection, we can perceive things there that we can’t when our consciousness is rooted in the physical.
So you shouldn’t assume that everything you see in the astral is there to interact with you for some reason. Seeing this racing ball of light is sort of like seeing a man running down the sidewalk in your neighborhood: while he could be coming for you, he could also be getting some exercise, running away from the scene of a crime or racing to help someone. I’m not trying to discourage you from learning and exploring, I just want to explain that you’ll see all sorts of things in the astral, and many times it will simply be because you’re conscious and you’re there.
As for getting out of your house, initial astral projections tend to be brief and take place close to the physical body. For one thing, the first couple of times someone manages to project, they are usually so shocked and amazed by the experience that they think about it too much, which zips them right back into the body. In fact, just thinking about the body can pull you right back into it, and how do you think about being OUT of the body without thinking about the body itself?
There is also something of a gravitational force that will pull you back into the body if you’re close to it, so it’s wise to try to get some distance, though this is easier said than done. For one thing, when you’re totally new to the whole scene, you don’t yet know how to consciously move about in your astral body, which can make going anywhere tricky.
First conscious astral adventures also tend to be on the heavy side because you’re projecting into a dimension that is denser than the astral. At this level of projection, it’s hard to go far from your body. Also, instead of passing through walls, doors, etc., they may feel solid.
In a number of my first conscious astral projection experiences, I remained in the same room and just jumped up and down, touching the ceiling over and over again, as I was totally enthralled with how it felt to be out of the body and able to do this. Both the floor and ceiling felt solid. It was sort of like if you let yourself float down to the bottom of the deep end of a pool and then shot yourself up to the surface, except instead of the resistance of water, imagine moving through air.
It generally takes a lot of practice just to get out of the body, let alone control what you do and where you go. Despite firmly setting a very clear intention of the various experiments I wanted to conduct once I got out, time after time once I actually WAS out, I forgot all about those plans. Afterward, I would be kicking myself that instead of visiting my husband at work so I could later tell him where he was and what he was doing at that time, I just jumped around in my bedroom!
Since I never gained much control while out of the body, you’d be wise to seek guidance from someone more knowledgeable. There are many great astral projection resources available in books and online. I recommend you start with astralvoyage.com; astraldynamics.com; and books by Robert Peterson, Robert Monroe and Robert Bruce.
– Soul Arcanum