The Biospheric Dreambody
- “The dreambody is nonlocal and hyperdimensional in that it is not bound or limited by the conventional laws of third-dimensional space and linear-sequential time. Not constrained by the apparent rules of our physical universe, the dreambody can synchronistically express itself both inwardly and/or outwardly, which is to say that the dreambody collapses the presumed boundary between what is happening inside of us and events taking place in the outside world. The dreambody nonlocally gives shape to our world as well as in-forming our experience of it. An instantaneous feedback loop, the dreambody moment by moment in-forms itself based on our reactions to it, mirroring back to us ourselves in ever new ways.”
The Lucid Dream Body
- “We all take on a dream body every night; how else could we dream of scaling cliff faces, hugging a friend, running from danger? In a lucid dream, where we know that we’re dreaming, we have the chance of fully experiencing the dream body with conscious awareness. It’s quite something. The lucid dream body is lighter and faster than our waking physical body. It has a tendency to float. It can stretch – we can have ‘normal’ length arms one moment, and Mr. Tickle arms the next. The lucid dream body can transform into an animal or bird. It can fly. It can go through walls without getting hurt. It can grow a new limb if one is hacked off in battle. It can turn invisible. The more thought we give to the capabilities of the lucid dream body, the more it seems that we’re dealing with some kind of superhero.
- “Yet beyond all these abilities, the lucid dream body holds deeper lessons. It can teach us about the way that energy flows through our physical body. It can help us to notice the areas of our physical body that might need healing. The lucid dream body can teach us about being bodiless, because we don’t always need a dream body while we’re sleeping. In learning about how it feels to be without a body, we can learn more about what might happen when we die.”</p
Astral Projection
- “Astral projection or travel denotes the astral body leaving the physical body to travel in an astral plane. The idea of astral travel is rooted in common worldwide religious accounts of the afterlife in which the consciousness’ or soul’s journey, or ‘ascent,’ is described in such terms as ‘an… out-of-body experience, wherein the spiritual traveller leaves the physical body and travels in his/her subtle body (or ‘dreambody’, or ‘astral body’) into ‘higher realms’. It is frequently reported in association with dreams, and forms of meditation…. Some [people] have reported perceptions similar to the descriptions of astral projection, induced through various hallucinogenic and hypnotic (including self-hypnotic) means.”
The Astral Body
- “The ‘Astral Body’ (to give it the popular occult term) is a sort of psychic or spirit body, which is the body one exists in during the ‘Out of Body Experience’ (OBE) or ‘Astral travelling’. This body can thus separate from the lower bodies and journey to other worlds and realms, taking the consciousness with it. After death and separation from the physical body, the personality continues to exist for a period of time in the astral body.
- “The Astral body corresponds to the Egyptian Ba, which is the principle able to leave the body and the tomb and also return to it at will, and the Tibetan Bardo body. As well as the imaginal world (corresponding to the world of Asiyah according to Hayyim Vital, and the Ishraki Barzakh or ‘Interworld’), the astral body can attain to the more material heavens, but the higher spiritual realms are beyond its reach. For that it is necessary to move to a more subtle ‘vehicle of consciousness’.”
Other Worlds: Out-of-Body Experiences and Lucid Dreams
- Lynne Levitan and Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D.: “The worlds we create in dreams and OBEs are as real as this one, and yet hold infinitely more variety. How much more exhilarating to be ‘out-of-body’in a world where the only limit is the imagination than to be in the physical world in a powerless body of ether! Freed of the constraints imposed by physical life, expanded by awareness that limits can be transcended, who knows what we could be, or become?”
