Navigating the Out-of-Body Experience

by Graham Nicholls

  Does this mean that we have a spirit that simply moves from one body to the next? Or is it possible to receive information from a remote source, such as the mind of someone who has passed, much the same as with telepathy with the living? While I don’t see the idea of a literal soul or spirit as having much weight when viewed through the lens of what we have learnt about psychic abilities, I do see that the forms of experience that our senses and awareness create offer something very close to a spirit. It becomes simply a matter of how we interpret what we experience. If the brain is in some ways like a receiver, as discussed earlier, then reincarnation would simply be the receiving of information from the mind of someone no longer physically alive. Maybe this information is stored in the interconnected nature of the universe, in some kind of morphic field, or in the akashic records. At this point in time, we simply don’t know. But as physics and other areas of science learn more, we are given clues to how our own experiences might relate to our unfolding knowledge of the universe.

  Accessing the Transphysical Levels

  You will find a technique for reaching the transphysical levels or planes in the appendix (see page 208), but next let’s explore some of the important factors beyond techniques and consider the awe-inspiring possibilities these levels hold.

  Accessing levels beyond physical existence, in my experience, is best achieved through preparation over an extended period of weeks, during which a focus on someone who has passed over can be developed. It is best to have a particular goal in mind, such as connecting with a loved one, or, more generally, with those in the in-between states who may not be fully conscious of their circumstances. Based on research into reincarnation and my own experiences, the period up to sixteen months after death is the most effective time to do this work, especially if the deceased experienced a violent or unexpected death. If you are already exploring being out of your body, you may find that you are naturally drawn to a person who has passed on.

  Your energy levels, focus, and goal should be paramount. What you are attempting to do will have a profound impact on your life, should you succeed, and is one of the factors that extinguishes the fear of physical death. When I first encountered someone who had recently died while out of my body, I was filled with a sense of awe, disbelief, and relief all at the same time. It was not until that moment that I really believed that consciousness continues—and not just to an afterlife, but maybe to a new physical life as well. I reached that point after hearing a lecture on the subject and considered for the first time that we can use the OBE as a tangible way to investigate for ourselves whether there is some continuation of consciousness.

  I believe it is quite possible to access these nonphysical realities; it simply requires a degree of focus and energy that the more general out-of-body states do not. It is a matter of stretching your awareness and energies further than you ever have before. I would break down the process as follows:

  Step 1: Begin with meditation during the morning and in the evening. Prepare with a visualisation practice and thirty to forty minutes in the Ganzfeld state.

  Step 2: If you are able, induce the vibrational state but do not exit your body right away. Build up the state, allowing the energy to reach a kind of critical mass, and then allow yourself to lift up.

  Step 3: Keep lifting, trying not to focus on your environment. Focus on your goal of reaching a particular person and try to keep the momentum going until you sense that you have reached as far as you need to, or can.

  Step 4: At this point, you may experience a connection with the person in a whole range of ways—from images connected to them to what appears to be their physical appearance. This is a very subjective point in the process, and you should try to allow whatever form it takes to happen as naturally as possible. Don’t force the process or cloud things with preconceptions about what will happen.

  Step 5: You may find that the process will come to a conclusion in its own time and you will regain body awareness again. If not, you can focus on your body and request in your mind to return. This should be all that is needed to return, as with other OBEs.

  While I have personally found this approach effective, you may want to adapt it a little if you have experience in other areas such as mediumship. Those who have this kind of background tend to find that linking with these levels is much easier than it is for the average person. If you have had other paranormal experiences, you might also find that your sense of awareness is more attuned. Whatever the case, use my program as the blueprint, but don’t be scared to change elements and combine other techniques from the appendix if you’ve found they tend to be more effective for you.

  My experiences with the transphysical levels

  The energy that arose in my body was different from normal; it felt distant, even foreign, as well as subtle and hard to define. I seemed to sink into the experience, like my body was melting away and all that was left was a strange grayish mist, beyond which I could make out maybe a hundred or more figures moving along what seemed like a boundary. There was nothing visible holding them back, but they were all spread out along a sharply defined line. Behind them was a source of light, silhouetting them in relation to my vantage point. There was also a yellowish radiant light coming from the figures themselves. It was hard to make out clothing or genders. They appeared to be human and to know where they were going, but they seemed to have no awareness of me. I sensed that some of them might have been there for some time.

  Was this an “in-between” location, between our physical world and an adjacent one? I don’t know, but somehow it didn’t seem like the fully “aware” levels of radiant light that we might imagine when thinking of an afterlife. As with other experiences on this level, I was unable to make these figures aware of me, or get close enough to communicate. The experience concluded with me being drawn back to my body after I sensed I had seen enough.

  More recently, another experience took place when I saw a truck crash and saw the consciousness of the person in the truck seem to exit his body. In the following days, I searched online for news of the crash in the general area of North America where I had guessed it might have happened, and I did find a report that matched what I had witnessed in my out-of-body state.

  I couldn’t come to any definite conclusions from these experiences. Each one was a fleeting glimpse of what may have been the levels beyond our physical understanding, but the exact nature of those levels, and the beings I encountered there, is still a mystery.

  During the writing of this chapter, I had an additional experience of the transphysical levels, in which I felt myself lifting up from my body through layers and layers of what appeared to be delicate misty moments of reality—like spiritual strata falling away as I passed through. With each new layer, rich colour flowed around me, like the pure colours hidden within sunlight revealed through the prism of my consciousness, before I finally reached a place of rich oranges and reds. It seemed like a kind of “summerland,” a place in which our human awareness is made primal again, as if the raw environments of the Earth are here separated into their parts or elements, much like the colours in sunlight. Again I was aware of people at a distance. I felt different; I had a very strong sense of a body here. I felt like a spirit being, not the point of consciousness that sometimes dominates my perception.

  It’s easy to imagine that if the peoples of the past experienced something like this, why they would have put forward such elaborate metaphysical explanations for the origins of the universe and spiritual immortality. I remember my first teacher, when I was still in my teens, telling me his view that the rich, vibrant colours of Indian costume or the beauty of the grand stained glass of the world’s cathedrals mirror the radiance of the layered reality beyond this one. These textiles and works of art are attempts to come closer to the divine or infinite. My own experiences have allowed me to witness the universe with my entire consciousness, not via the filte
rs of my senses, but through a direct apprehension.

  The Summerlands

  The concept of the afterlife having an appearance much like an idyllic Earth environment, enveloped in light and vivid colour, has entered the popular imagination and is now common in movies as well as literature. The term summerlands has come to public awareness via the various Neopagan and Earth-centered spiritual philosophies, but like much of New Age and contemporary spiritual thinking, it has its roots in much older belief systems including some Native American beliefs.

  Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish scientist who later in life became a mystic, described summerland-type environments as part of his otherworldly journeys. Swedenborg has fascinated me for many years; I would often walk past the Swedenborg Society or the Swedish Church minutes from where I grew up in London and think of him. He spent most of his life in London and actually died there; he was buried in the Swedish Church at its original location before his body was moved to Uppsala in Sweden.

  But beyond Swedenborg’s impact on descriptions of the transphysical levels, he was also well known for his psychic abilities. There is a famous story that tells of a startling experience of his, which in modern terms sounds very much like remote viewing. In 1759, Swedenborg had just arrived in Göteborg, Sweden, after a trip to England. Shortly after, he was having dinner with a group of friends and peers when he suddenly “became aware” of a fire raging in Stockholm close by his home there. He was visibly concerned by this, since all of his most valuable manuscripts and possessions were there. The story goes that he exclaimed, “Thank God! The fire is extinguished the third door from my house.”1 At the time, long before the instant communications we have today, there is no feasible way he could have known of a fire in Stockholm, some 250 miles away, at the time it was happening. When reports of the fire did reach Göteborg, it became clear that Swedenborg’s statements had been accurate, and his reputation continued to grow.

  C. W. Leadbeater is another individual who has had a major influence on the popular conception of the afterlife and the astral planes. An influential Theosophist and noted psychic artist, he described a plane of reality he called the summerland, but in his case referenced from Spiritualist ideas. He saw it as an illusory level of the astral plane, where the dead could spend “a number of years.”2

  In fact, the summerland concept appears in many traditions as a kind of in-between level that the dead occupy as they go through a transformation to the higher, less physical levels. It is not surprising to me because, if consciousness does continue, as it seems to, then what environment would be more natural for our awareness to surround itself with than the beauty and grandeur of an Earthlike landscape? If this level is the first step in our spiritual evolution after death, it seems a very fitting one.

  My own experience of the summerland levels happened quite early on in my OBEs. I lifted out of my body to see the subtle light of the moon coming through my window. There was nothing to suggest about my physical surroundings. I then began to feel myself rising up at a very fast rate. I don’t know what caused this; it seemed to come from nowhere, leaving me startled and surprised. A moment later, I was met with a vision of indescribable beauty. I lifted up over a vast meadow of vivid green, infused with rich amber undertones. Surrounding the meadow were trees, rich with colour and foliage, reds and deep greens. Above was an intense indigo-blue sky, highlighted by billowing white clouds.

  It took a few moments to become accustomed to the scene, since my perceptions were not used to such grand visions of nature. Yet it seemed so peaceful and somehow familiar. I wanted to find somewhere to rest and take in the beauty and feel the warm energy that pervaded every leaf, flower, and blade of grass. Almost as soon as I thought it, I felt myself lift up again and float forward, through a shallow avenue between some trees, finally drifting to the ground at the foot of a large tree at the center of a clearing. As I sat there, the warmth of the energy seemed to rise and swirl around my body. I felt any tension or resistance evaporate like mist. My sense of well-being grew and I could feel in that moment a smile arising from a deep inner peace. There was nothing but the sensation of awe, beauty, and peace.

  I don’t know how long I spent there, but it felt long enough to let go of much of the anguish that existed in some part of my being. It was a place of pure catharsis and release, but it was time to return, so I let myself drift up into the air. I wondered how I would relate to the city and the world again. Moments later, I was back in my body, yet I didn’t open my eyes. I tried to hold the image of this wonderful summerland in my mind. I didn’t know if I’d ever return there, and I wanted to hold some sense of the awe of that place in my consciousness, to take it with me into the world.

  The Out-of-Body Experience

  and Spiritual Development

  Throughout the ages, mankind has sought to understand the nature of the spiritual realm, to know whether we truly are immortal and, if so, what awaits us on the other side, the next level of existence. The out-of-body experience, like no other practice, can give us personal, tangible, and life-changing answers to our spiritual questions. It can lead us down a path toward a fulfillment of our spiritual longing. So profound is this experience that, after more than two decades of exploration, I still pause by a roadside or in a silent circle of trees and sense the life running through my being, alive and unfettered by any of the limitations of physical reality, totally and completely free. And even more than that, I have a sense that not only is this state of being eternal, it is also outside of time altogether. I have little doubt that if we wish to learn who we really are, to reach the core of ourselves, the OBE is one of the most powerful ways that we can do it.

  Over the years, I have practiced many spiritual disciplines. I have found that as I’ve matured spiritually, I’ve slowly stripped away the unnecessary beliefs that come along with many spiritual practices. I have learnt that with any insight into the transphysical, there is a responsibility not to be drawn into the trap of certainty or exaggerated beliefs. The OBE has reminded me of this, for despite the many ideas that are repeated in New Age circles, direct experience cuts through them with a clear crystalline precision. As I outlined in my first book, Avenues of the Human Spirit, my understanding of spirituality is of an inner core, an awareness, free from negative influences, coercion, and conflict. It is the part of each individual that is most free, the part that is closest to ourselves if we were truly our own architects.

  If we focus our attention on this simple, unfettered core and work with nothing that does not enhance our understanding of this simplicity, we can progress much more truthfully toward our personal spiritual maturity. We must fill our lives with nurturing influences, the approaches that are simplest and which encourage us to look deeply at the parts of ourselves that are always there—our heartbeat, our breath, the stillness behind our emotions and thoughts. These are the places to put our attention; from these will arise a genuine spiritual understanding. It is good to remember that the Buddha was not a Buddhist; he was an explorer into spiritual nature. This is what we must become.

  The out-of-body experience was a purifying process for me. It took a boy from the inner city, defined and limited by his environment, and slowly dissolved those limits. Each time I left my body, I was brought into contact with a pure perception, far from the preconceptions of my culture and upbringing. Suddenly the importance of the superficial choices that had dominated my life until that point became of no importance. I gained a powerful sense of will and drive because I could see that the things that dominated the lives of many of those around me led nowhere. In fact, they often led to self-destructive patterns.

  Reading, learning, and experiencing through the OBE essentially reeducated me to see great benefit in growth-based ideas, rather than ones that lead to bad health and a limited worldview. Much of Western culture is based upon destructive patterns like drinking heavily and overconsuming in terms of food as well as resour
ces and products. These are the things we are socialized to crave, yet they bring us little lasting benefit. The OBE, on the other hand, has brought about a sense of peace, happiness, and freedom in my life. I am not just talking about a sense of wanting to improve; I mean a total shift in the things I am drawn to and what I want in my life. Being aware of the actions we take on a day-to-day level is often missed when we undertake a new practice—the result being that we reach a point where we are in a state of conflict between the new, beneficial ideas that have come into our lives and the desire to fill our lives superficially through things.

  Some traditions discourage the active practice of out-of-body exploration, believing that these things should arise naturally through more general spiritual practices. In this context, the OBE would be considered a siddhi or psychic/magical power that arises in the spiritually advanced. While I understand the reasoning for focusing on the meditational practices first, it seems to me that in Western cultures, exploring the OBE relates well to our understanding of the world and our cultural heritage. Both clearly lead to a flowering of awareness, as I have shown, so there seems little doubt that both paths are valid and workable.

  Whether you are interested in spiritual development, developing practical psychic awareness, reaching a loved one who has passed on, or some goal totally your own, I hope that this book will not just allow you to achieve out-of-body experiences, but also, through this profound nonphysical state, to find a sense of spiritual evolution, inner peace, and freedom. As we stand at the edge of a world of infinite possibility, it is almost impossible not to be humbled and filled with a sense of how small we really are, yet how much potential exists within us. Many of the limits that we place on ourselves are arbitrary, and it is only by experiencing what lies beyond them that we are able to understand this. As you step out into the unknown in the tradition of the great seekers throughout the ages, fear only that which diminishes the human spirit. Remember that I am just like you; I am standing next to you in the street, sitting beside you on the bus. We are all human beings, searching and learning. The beauty of this shared humanity is that we can understand each other and attain the same heights. Look into the mirror and see greatness; see the expanse that is your consciousness. You are free and limitless, a child of the universe, looking with wonder at the source.