Late last year, the internet in the U.S. was abuzz with plans to organize a raid of millions into Area 51, the stronghold believed to be of extraterrestrial origin. Now, as people are forced to stay home during the COVID-19 pandemic, even going beyond the local park seems too risky, like a lost dream.
But what if there is actually a safe way to explore the entire planet, not only harmless but also more exciting than scrolling through Google Earth? And if we could do that, why not storm Area 51?
According to a group of supernatural enthusiasts on Reddit, all we need to do is learn astral projection.
Somewhere between lucid dreaming and near-death experiences, astral projection is the sensation of detachment from the physical body while keeping your mind awake, as your body remains asleep.
The earliest records of practicing astral projection date back to Roman times. These experiences are felt extremely profoundly, and those who astral project even claim to learn things they could never have known.
Today, there are thousands of people still practicing astral projection. They not only exchange success stories about awakening—a state of exploring an expanded universe—but also build a community to share techniques that help people traverse time and space, using a tool that everyone has: the human mind.
Reddit’s /R/AstralArmy is now a focal point for the spiritually curious, wanting to embark on astral “missions” to locations beyond limits, including military bases, Wuhan, the Pentagon, and even Skinwalker Ranch, a place rumored to frequently experience mysterious phenomena.
The idea is quite intriguing: If you could go anywhere you want, what secrets would you uncover?
***
A 19-year-old boy living in Wisconsin, USA, spoke to Motherboard through an internet call. He—who goes by the nickname Commander XXX—said he created this subreddit (with the motto: projection for protection) after being intrigued by the potential of astral projection.
Here’s how he describes the process of astral projection: The astral projector creates an “astral scene” by vividly imagining a location. But how do you visualize a place you’ve never been? Well, just use your imagination.
Then, all you need to do is connect this visualization with a “sigil“, a mystical symbol energized by your mind. By meditating on this sigil and recalling it in an out-of-body state, you can use it as a shortcut to reach your desired location, similar to teleportation in video games.
The “sigil” can even be shared for others to astral project together, like a private DM group in a game.
In fact, out-of-body experiences (OBE) or astral projection have a long history. They have been described in religious events, even in Biblical interpretations related to the soul, and more recently in 19th-century New Age spiritualism.
Today, there are many discussions on faith forums about whether astral projection is real. These discussions can be allowed within a religious framework, or they can simply be someone raising a harmless question.
But there’s one group that has thought very seriously about OBE: the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) of the U.S. government.
In 1995, the CIA declassified details of nearly two decades of DIA’s psychic research, known as the $20 million Stargate Project. Since 1978, this program investigated the potential of psychic espionage during the Cold War. One of the strangest accounts of the “remote viewing” technique involved visiting living civilizations on the red rocks of Mars.
Skeptics ultimately criticized this project harshly. But its data archives continue to fascinate parapsychology researchers and are clearly inspiring astral projectors on Reddit.
In 1961, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Keith Wigner outlined a thought experiment demonstrating one of the lesser-known paradoxes of quantum mechanics. The experiment shows the strange nature of the universe allows two observers, called Wigner and Wigner’s friend, to experience different realities.
“Most people, basically, are astral projectors,” Commander says, with a mocking explanation. He states that the mission of astral projectors like himself isn’t necessarily to visit a physical location that exists in the real world. That mission may simply be to enchant their own mind by influencing the link between thought and reality.
His argument is: You never know if anything in this life is objective reality, an idea about competing forms of perception, is not really as far-fetched as when it first appeared.
(In 1961, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Keith Wigner outlined a thought experiment demonstrating one of the lesser-known paradoxes of quantum mechanics. The experiment shows the strange nature of the universe allows two observers, called Wigner and Wigner’s friend, to experience different realities).
“We choose to believe in what we want to believe, that’s mostly it,” Commander says. “I don’t think astral projection is a more unrealistic question than materialism.”
Browsing through Reddit /R/AstralArmy, some users claim they have infiltrated the Pentagon or the White House using astral projection. They say they had to struggle to overcome barriers that wanted to prevent them from exploring further.
And because of the struggle, they also felt physically exhausted; in one instance, someone even encountered green beret guards.
Many others even made more extraordinary claims, stating that they encountered a base on the moon protected by a giant bubble, and talked to Davy Jones—the captain of the ghost ship called the Flying Dutchman, a legend passed down among sailors that was featured in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
I feel that some of these stories are blurring the lines of credible realities. And I have to wonder: Am I falling into a play where everyone else in the crowd is just playing their parts skillfully?
But the group of astral projectors has no intention of convincing anyone, not even me: they just want to discuss their consciousness experiments without being interrupted. Commander doesn’t care whether people believe or not, and he even wishes that mainstream science wouldn’t study it at all.
However, there are still some scientists interested in out-of-body experiences.
Jane Aspell, a cognitive neuroscientist at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, told Motherboard that one of the earliest studies led by Olaf Blanke sought to determine if those who had experienced these experiences had anything in common—such as brain damage.
Blanke found a similar abnormality in 5 patients—4 had epilepsy and 1 had frequent migraines. This abnormality resided in the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), a part of the brain related to consciousness and cognitive function.
The proposal of a link between TPJ and OBE originates from a 2007 scientific paper describing a 63-year-old man suffering from troublesome tinnitus. Scientists implanted electrodes in the TPJ region of the brain in hopes of alleviating his condition.
But instead of relieving the tinnitus symptoms, researchers found that the implantation continuously caused him to have out-of-body experiences.
But the nature of the OBE experience—if they do occur, they happen sporadically—means they are very difficult to study in the lab.
“We think this area is not functioning correctly, perhaps due to damage, epilepsy, migraines, strokes—or any other cause,” Aspell says. “Or by stimulating it, you can also make it function abnormally, so any kind of abnormal activity in this area could lead to out-of-body experiences.”
But whatever is happening, there’s still much we don’t know.
“What people experiencing OBE see can be very detailed,” Aspell says. “They can see objects in the room, possibly even people in the room, and it’s clear that they don’t actually see all those images. But this person’s brain knows those things are in the room, because they have seen them from another vantage point.
The brain, somehow, is recreating what the room looks like from above. It’s as if you paint a picture describing your usual office or bedroom, to have a bird’s-eye view from above—you can consciously make that mental transition.
The brain can do this naturally, in a very rich and vivid way. We don’t know how that can happen,” she adds.
Astral projection has never been proven through controlled scientific experiments, but Aspell doesn’t think many of the people experiencing them are lying. “This experience has existed since humanity began, I think so,” she says, and they may not even be limited to our species—chimpanzees might have them too.
Additionally, there’s a proposed link between quantum physics and consciousness. Dr. Susan Blackmore is said to be the most famous person to experience out-of-body experiences in the history of science. While she herself has been cautious not to equate her experiences with this theory, the ideas about it still persist.
Anthony Peake, author of the book “The Out Of Body Experience: The History and Science of Astral Travel”, took me on a whirlwind tour through theories of quantum physics.
He puts forth a hypothesis based on quantum entanglement. Quantum entanglement is when particles in nature are linked together from the moment they are born, based on certain special properties.
This linkage allows them to communicate with each other instantaneously, regardless of the distance between them. A particle at one edge of the universe could somehow be linked to a particle at the other edge of the universe. And this could be an explanation for astral projection.
If every existing particle has a unique origin (from the Big Bang), then perhaps we can infer that “there are certain fields of information not only present at one location?” From there, Peake suggests this may be what happens when we leave our bodies.
But Dr. Alastair Butcher, author of “Super Smart Science: Astrophysics Made Easy,” says that even if certain particles can communicate instantaneously, we have no way of accessing this information outside. (This means that even if you can project your body to another location, you won’t be able to see and acquire information at that new location).
“These phenomena are indeed extraordinary; they raise questions about the nature of quantum mechanics. Therefore, they are inherently real,” Butcher tells Motherboard.
“There are many interpretations (of out-of-body experiences) using quantum mechanics, each interpretation having its own interesting meaning. However, currently, these hypotheses cannot be proven, or more importantly, cannot be accepted,” Butcher continues.
“It would be fascinating if we just picked a hypothesis and believed it, especially since it could be used to explain consciousness, something we also do not fully understand. However, this is an unscientific approach and in many cases, cannot be proven to determine the nature of things.”
***
Clearly, if there are no other reliable explanations, the only way I see myself able to do is to try it myself.
I can’t stimulate the TPJ in my brain by jamming a sharp electrode into my ear, so I’ll have to rely on other techniques. These techniques have also been tried and experimented with by others. My goal is to perform astral projection next to Zeus, my pet cat whom I’m currently isolated from, and say a “hiya” to him.
And in fact, I have had a personal experience in this field: For about 10 years now, I’ve started having frequent lucid dreams during my sleepless nights.
Overall, I’m quite anxious about them, these disturbances flooding into my dreams. So when I reach that fascinating sensation that astral practitioners often have, related to detachment from my body, I immediately wake up in a panic.
Instead of rolling out of my body to venture into the universe, I roll out of bed and fall hard onto the floor.
At first, I tried the “Wake Back To Bed” technique. You wake up in the middle of the night and then go back to sleep, keeping the idea of astral projection in your head. Returning to sleep is very easy, but that’s all that happens to me; I can’t dream again.
Next, I experimented with a technique that a mod in the /r/AstralArmy group outlined for me, called “half-projection,” somewhat similar to remote viewing.
Following this guidance, I was able to vividly visualize Zeus. But I couldn’t convince myself that I had used my innate astral projection abilities to actually be there, to intrude on a cat’s privacy (like touching him).
Perhaps I was simply imagining an action that I know he does day in and day out: waiting between me filling his food bowl with crunchy bits.
So, I turned to an organization that has perhaps achieved more success than anyone else in popularizing out-of-body experiences, the Monroe Institute, founded by someone unrelated but will remind you of the psychiatrist Marvin Monroe from The Simpsons cartoon.
Monroe here refers to Robert A. Monroe, a former radio executive and author of the book “Journeys Out Of The Body.” He had out-of-body experiences and was obsessed with the mysterious OBEs.
Since then, Monroe has solicited funding to conduct research to explore OBEs more deeply, particularly with a technique using sound that he has personally experimented with.
Monroe discovered something called “binaural beats” that could facilitate the occurrence of out-of-body experiences. This technique has even been patented for the Monroe Institute under the name “Hemi-Sync.”
According to Luigi Sciambarella at the Monroe Institute UK, a binaural beat consists of two separate sine waves played independently into each ear. To adjust for this difference, the brain creates a beat of its own frequency.
For example: if you play a beat at a frequency of 100 Hz in the left ear and 104 Hz in the right ear, the brain will neutralize the opposing sounds and leave you with a 4 Hz beat, but this beat isn’t actually in the audio file being played to your ear; it’s generated by your brain.
Sciambarella claims that through practicing with binaural beats, listeners can easily drop into a state of “mind awake—but body asleep” after about 10 minutes.
Anyone can try a free sample audio. But you have to pay hundreds of USD for more samples—or dig around to see if anyone has uploaded them illegally on YouTube.
Source: Vice