Observing Yourself from the Outside

I originally wrote this exercise for Astral Projection: Entering the Astral Plane. However, it extends far beyond the astral, so I decided to present it as a separate practice, while retaining its emphasis on astral projection. If you practise leaving the body, please keep this in mind.

The best time for this practice is immediately before going to bed at night, although you can also practise at any other convenient time.

How to practise

1. When you decide to go to sleep, prepare your bed as you usually do: fluff up the pillow, shake out the blanket, and so on.
2. Now stand on the bed at the end where your feet normally rest. If, like me, you sleep on the floor, this will be easy. If you sleep on a sofa or bed, you may need to make a little effort to balance and stand comfortably, depending on its firmness. If you wish, you can place a chair opposite that spot and stand on it.
3. You are now standing where your feet would be, looking towards the pillow. Imagine yourself lying in bed, asleep. You have lain in bed so often in your life that imagining yourself there will be easy. You have done it thousands of times, every night, so the image of yourself in bed will appear almost automatically as soon as you think of it.
4. Stand there and contemplate yourself in your imagination for about a minute. Imagine yourself turning in bed, lying on your left side, then your right, on your back or on your stomach. Imagine the various movements of your arms, legs and head, pulling a slipping blanket back over yourself in your sleep, and so on.
5. All the while, you stand watching yourself like an invisible guardian: an eternal, silent witness with eternity behind and ahead, in no hurry to go anywhere, wise and majestic, powerful and all-knowing.
6. After a while, you will stop feeling like merely a human being. The human being will be lying in bed, while you look on from outside, like an invisible presence, an observer. Seek this feeling. It will inevitably come, sooner for some and later for others.
7. When this feeling of being an observer arrives, something like compassion will arise for the one lying in bed. You will feel something like a mother's love for this strange creature, so fragile and helpless. There it lies before you, without the great abilities possessed by other Beings in the Universe, without Knowledge or universal wisdom, like a convict shackled by insatiable desires. For now it rests and sleeps peacefully. But dawn will break, morning will come, and it will wake once again in this material world, leaving the astral world to plunge back into the bustle of life. And so it will continue until the end of its days.
8. Some may experience this moment so deeply that tears appear. This is normal. It means you have entered deeply into the spirit of the practice.
9. You may also have experiences of your own as you practise. I am not describing them; I am simply saying they may arise. There can be many, different for each person. Do not push them away: experience them. If you practise daily, different experiences may come. Allow yourself to live through them all; they will all be useful and necessary for you at this stage.

After the practice, lie down in bed. As you do, you will experience something else unusual: you will feel that you are still standing there, looking at yourself lying in bed. Try to remain in both states at once. Feel yourself both lying in bed, just about to fall asleep, and standing at your feet, observing yourself in bed.

This practice allows you to step outside the circle of bustle and see yourself from the outside. Moreover, this effect becomes established. If you practise regularly, it will take root, and you will always have some distance from the bustle. This is very important on the path to Enlightenment. It can also help in ordinary life: you will stop getting drawn into quarrels, and in moments of danger you will make decisions instantly instead of panicking, and so on. This practice also allows you to acquire extraordinary abilities, because you can easily move beyond the confines of the physical shell, which is precisely the “brake” that prevents your potential from developing fully.

Notes

• You can already see that this is also an excellent technique for astral projection. As you fall asleep, your consciousness may easily leave the body, and you can be aware of this and remain fully conscious.

© Author: Sergey Veretennikov (Om Shanti)
Practice given on 12 October 2010.

Return to the practice: Astral Projection: Entering the Astral Plane.

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