Sex, Drugs, Money and Astral Travel

Ken Korczak:

In my 20 years of dabbling in and writing about astral travel, or out-of-body experiences as I prefer to call them, I have received literally hundreds of e-mails and letters from people asking be all kinds of intriguing questions — and today I am going to share some of my answers right here on Unexplained Mysteries! So Let’s jump right into the OBE Mail Bag:

Question: What about drugs? Are there drugs that can help induce OBEs, and do you recommend using drugs to trigger an OBE?

Ken’s Answer: Can drugs trigger an out-of-body experience? The answer is clearly “yes.” The famous Robert Monroe, author of Journeys Out of Body and founder of the respected Monroe Institute, once induced an OBE by sniffing glue! And one has only to read books by Terence McKenna or Ram Das to find accounts of fabulous hallucinogenic experiences which include out-of-body experiences. (Please, though, do not sniff glue!!! It can easily cause permanent brain damage — even the first time!) Furthermore, I think using drugs to induce an OBE is an extremely poor idea. I don’t say that because drugs are so dangerous — which they are — or because I’m some kind of real square — which I’m not — but because drug-induced OBEs add a whole new element to your perceptions which you can never be certain about.

When you induce out-of-body experiences like I do — without the help of mind altering drugs — then you deal with only what you have encouraged your body to do within the realm of its natural chemistry. But if you introduce a foreign substance, then you have to ask yourself questions like, “Perhaps this particular molecule from the mushroom I ate bonded with this particular chemical in my brain and …” or “maybe when I was totally loaded on pot, my brain-body connection was severed and I had a kind of waking dream or hallucination…” You see? I’m not for a minute saying that a drug-induced OBE is any less valid than a non-drug induced OBE. I’m just saying it adds a lot of confusion to the event. Couple that with the facts that drugs are dangerous and unhealthy for the most part, and you have enough reason to avoid them as a method of astral travel.

Even so, I should tell you that I did have an out-of-body experience once after taking the prescription pain killer oxycodone, a narcotic more commonly known as Percodan. I received the drug from a doctor for extremely bad headaches, which have plagued me for years. After taking a Percodan tablet and lying down, I found that my headache was even worse 20 minutes later. I took a second Percodan and went back to bed. In about 15 minutes, the bed started swirling, the walls seemed to shift, and I was feeling terrific! My headache was gone, and soothing feelings of warmth and bliss flowed through my body as if I were bathing in a river from heaven.

At this point in my life, I had already been studying and practicing out-of-body travel quite intensely, so when I started to drift away from my heavily drugged body, I didn’t panic. I just let the experience happen. I rose directly upward from my physical form and then floated across my bedroom, all the while, feeling drugged and blissful.

I drifted through the wall and into the apartment of the guy who lived next door to me. I floated around in his room and saw him watching TV. I floated back into my bedroom and then out the window. I floated up and caught the top of a street light before some kind of solar wind seemed to catch me and send me sailing out across town. All the while, I was a bit out of it, but still lucid enough to command myself to stay awake and to stay with the experience, just as if I were on one of my regular OBE trips. I ended up in a park on the other side of town. It seems I became snagged in a large elm tree, and there I hung and swirled like a captured kite, all the while feeling giggly and wonderful.

I don’t remember how I got out of that tree, but my next memory is of being back in my room, still out-of-body and floating around like a lazy helium balloon. I floated out the window again and was shocked to find myself in a thick tropical jungle which definitely was not Minnesota. This kind of thing went on for three or four hours. I kept waking up and drifting out, falling asleep and finding myself here and there. To say the least, it was a great time.

Even so, I have never tried to induce a Percodan-based OBE again. For one thing, Percodan is a highly addictive drug, and even if I wanted to keep experimenting with it, I would have had to find a way to obtain more of it with or without a prescription. But more importantly, I have a strong personal commitment to practice out-of-body travel only from a standpoint of nonintoxication, and I strongly urge you to do the same. Still, many people have an almost religious devotion to certain hallucinogenic drugs, especially marijuana and mushrooms. I think this is fine for some people. I think what separates “good” hallucinogenic drug taking from “bad” hallucinogenic drug taking is the way in which a person takes the drugs, and for what purpose.

Question: Will a special diet, or taking certain vitamins help me achieve an out-of-body state more easily?

Ken’s answer: I really don’t think so. Some prominent books and authorities on astral travel swear that only people with a vegetarian diet can expect to have a successful OBE. This is simply not true. Although I generally favor a low-meat diet, I am not a vegetarian, and I have had many hundreds of OBEs. So, to all the people who say you must be a vegetarian to have an OBE, I would say, what about me? I’m not a vegetarian, and I can practice astral travel. Case closed.

As far as vitamins or diet supplements are concerned, I have heard that increased doses of vitamin C and especially niacin are conducive to more OBEs. While taking a bit more vitamin C will probably be good for you in general, I doubt it will make much difference in your ability to have an OBE, nor will any other supplement. I have seen studies which show that taking a massive dose of the vitamin niacin will cause you to have truly explosive dreams — but it works only once — for biochemical reasons I won’t go into here. But again, I don’t recommend for anyone to take a massive dose of niacin.

Jane Roberts, author of the Seth books, and psychic explorer D. Scott Rogo both talk about special diets and food in their books which are more conducive to astral travel. I have personally tried these diets and have had no improved results from them. If you want to try them, however, you will find ingredients for such a diet in Rogo’s book, “Leaving the Body,” published by Prentice Hall Press (1983).

Question: What about astral sex? I’ve heard it is unbelievable. What can you tell me about astral sex and how to have it?

Ken’s answer: When it comes to astral sex, I have a don’t ask don’t tell policy.

Question: I have heard that there is a “doorway” at the top of the head, which provides an easy way for you to slip out of your body. Have you had an experience with this?

Ken’s answer: I have heard of the doorway at the top of the head, too, and I know a person who says she is able to get out of her body this way easily, and all the time. The great Jane Roberts also reported that slipping out through the top of your head was an excellent way to get out. I have no doubt that this is a valid experience. Personally, I can’t for the life of me find my own doorway in my head, although I’ve tried. My OBEs are direct exits out of my whole body, as if a duplicate of myself were rising up and out. But usually, I enter the OBE state from the lucid dream state.

Question: Do you need someone to watch over your body while you are out? Isn’t your body vulnerable and unprotected while your are away — and can’t “evil spirits” possess your empty body?

Ken’s answer: In a word: No. You do not need someone to watch over your body, and your body is not subject to attack by evil spirits or anything else. First, of all, the fact that you are out of your body does not mean that all communication between you and “it” has been severed. For example, once I was in an OBE in New York City, but I could still hear my body breathing while it was back in Minnesota. Also, as I have said elsewhere, even the slightest disturbance to your body, such as a sudden noise in the room, or a foot falling asleep, abruptly ends the OBE, and you wind up back where you started. So even when you are out, you maintain intimate contact with your body at all times. And consider the fact that during the OBE you may not be going away at all in an objective sense, but rather are traveling “inward” to the astral world, to parallel universes, or wherever.

Question: Ken, sometimes you seem rather flippant about out-of-body travel. Isn’t this a spiritual practice that should be treated with respect, holiness or reverence?

Ken’s answer: If you want to approach astral travel with a serious or religious attitude, that’s okay with me. Personally, I am not a very serious person, I’m not religious, so naturally I bring that attitude with me to my practice. I truly believe that NOT taking astral travel too seriously is conducive to more OBEs and better success with them. But if you want to treat it as a reverent act, that may be the right approach for you.

Question: I have heard that certain times of the year are not conducive to OBEs, especially the wintertime, which some people call “the Dead Time” of the year. Also, many people say you should only astral travel when the moon is waxing and not waning. Is that true?

Ken’s answer: I doubt it. I have a strong tendency to disbelieve that wintertime or periods during the waxing moon have any affect on astral travel. To me this sounds like questionable folklore, although there are always some grains of truth in most folklore. It has been proven, for example, that less sunlight in the wintertime affects the body chemistry of many people, and actually produces illness and depression in those people. Such a disease is called SAD, or seasonal affective disorder. So if the amount of sunlight we get can change our body chemistry, it could also affect our ability to astral travel, I suppose. Personally, I do notice that summertime seems to be more conducive to my successful out-of-body travels, although I have had successful out-of-body trips in every month of the year and during every moon phase.

Question: I attended your astral travel lecture last May in Minneapolis. When I was hanging out after the lecture, I noticed that the host handed you a roll of $20 bills, which I assume was your speaking fee. It made me think: This guy is just doing all this for the money. Why do you accept money just to talk about astral travel? Shouldn’t you offer this amazing information for free?

Ken’s Answer: I get this question all the time. Look, do doctors and nurses make money for healing the sick? Do school teachers make money for instructing children? Does, say, a Lutheran minister, get paid for ministering to his congregation? Do social workers get paid for helping the poor? Of course they do. Why shouldn’t I make money for doing something that I love and has value to other people? The fact that I make money by selling articles and lecturing doesn’t make me a fake. Have you ever heard that saying: “Do what you love and the money will follow?” That’s the way I look at being paid to write or talk about astral travel.

CLICKER HERE NOW FOR “THE LOST OBE ESSAYS”

Ken’s OBE Interview — Part III

NOTE: This is part three of an interview I did several years ago with a reporter — please go to the “astral travel” link to find parts I and II of the interview, or just scroll down!! And — hey! — thanks for visiting my blog today! Don’t forget to help yourself to the free tea and cucumber sandwiches in the lobby!

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SASHA: You say that time travel and even interdimensional travel is possible via the OBE. Could you describe one of those experiences for us?

KEN: Sure. One night I suddenly awoke from a deep sleep to find myself rising up out of my body. Before I could think about it, I was sucked into a Starry Tunnel. (Note: See other posts for a description of the Starry Tunnel). As usual I was blasted along—it was a rough ride at great speed. I popped out in a place that I immediately thought must be the surface of the moon. Blazing white mountain crags protruded like broken teeth on a near horizon. I could see many craters, and at my feet was the dusty waste of the lunar regolith. But to my amazement, the dust wasn’t pristine—it was covered and compacted with the tracks of heavy machinery!

In the distance I saw a number of artificial structures, obviously human-made, but futuristic looking. I jumped into the sky and flew in for a closer look. I quickly found myself among some kind of large-scale industrial operation. There were many people — men and women wearing close-fitting space suits that looked to made of flexible, plastic-metal. They were moving about…operating heavy machinery.

I surmised it was a futuristic moon mining facility. I investigated further and noticed a large metal and concrete plate on the surface—it was actually the roof of an underground dwelling environment. I floated over to it and passed through it, and found myself in a common area from which hallways led to a variety of long corridors with many doors.

I moved over to a large display on one of the walls of the common room, and there, among other things, I saw an electronic readout, including the time and a calender, saying the date was 2065. So I assumed I was about 70 years in the future at a mining operation on the moon. After exploring around a bit more in utter fascination, I returned to my physical body on earth.

SASHA : So this is not only an example of time travel, but space travel as well.

KEN: Yes, but remember that scientists tell us that space and time are actually two parts of the same thing, called space-time.

SASHA: Well, how is it that you ended up on the moon in the year 2065? Did you choose that destination before you induced your OBE?

KEN: No, that’s the mystery of the Starry Tunnel. It just takes me where it wants to. Where I end up is a kind of cosmic crap shoot. I have no control over destinations. I just accept and react to where I land, so to speak.

SASHA: Aren’t you afraid you’ll wind up somewhere horrifying or even deadly? I mean, you sound like a child playing with some kind of giant machine you don’t understand.

KEN: No. And in many years of Starry Tunnel travel, nothing negative has ever happened to me. I have been scared at times, to be sure, but I accept these situations as a positive challenges.

SASHA: What about the parallel universes you have mentioned?

KEN: Yes, one of the most fascinating aspects of the out-of-body experience involves alternate or parallel universes. As the theory goes, these other universes are removed from us spatially by additional dimensions.

In the field of quantum mechanics, scientists call alternate universe theory the “Many Worlds Interpretation.” It was first proposed in 1957 by the physicist Hugh Everett III. He came up with “Many Worlds” to deal with some of the more perplexing aspects of quantum mechanics. Everett suggested that whenever numerous viable possibilities exist, the world splits into many worlds or universes, one universe for each different possibility.

For example, if you get up this morning and can’t decide if you want to have coffee or tea for breakfast, the Many Worlds Interpretation says that for each choice made, an entire universe is created to accommodate each choice. In one universe you choose coffee. In another you choose tea. In a third universe, you decide on neither. In still another, you go with orange juice. Each universe is as real and valid as the other. It’s just that each goes its separate way from the point of decision.

So right now, there is another you—or actually millions and trillions of you—in other universes going their own way and making their own decisions.
As far as out-of-body travel goes, I’m saying you can visit these other universes where you find alternate versions of not only yourself, but of your family members, home, country—everything. Many things will be the same, but eerily different in some respects. And the further you remove yourself from your own reality, the more different each universe gets.

There was once a TV show called “Sliders” that did a good job of representing this, and science fiction writers have been writing alternative universe stories for decades. The Many Worlds Interpretation is nothing new to them and to scientists, but the general public knows very little about it all.

SASHA: So, in the out-of-body state, you have been able to enter other universes and meet yourself?

KEN: Yes, many times.

SASHA: What’s that like?

KEN: Mind blowing, difficult and fascinating. I am unable to hold the stability of the OBE state for long in these situations, but sometimes I am lucid and stable long enough to ask questions and explore what life is like in these other worlds.

SASHA: Can you elaborate?

KEN: Yes, but it would be difficult to sum up these kinds of OBEs without using up several thousands words — when my book on all this comes out, I’ll talk about it in more detail.

SASHA: Okay, and we are getting to the end of my interview here. Perhaps we’ll talk more about all this in a future session?

KEN: I’d love to. We’ve only scratched the surface of this whole topic.

SASHA: I bet! But thanks for telling us some of your stories and insights about the fascinating topic of out-of-body travel.

KEN: My pleasure. Happy flying!

CLICKER HERE FOR THE LOST OBE ESSAYS

The OBE Interview: Ken Talks Astral Travel

NOTE: Here is an interview with yours truly, Ken Korczak, conducted by a fellow journalist Sasha Spilman. This interview originally appeared in the now defunct Rural Road Press. Sasha asked me about how I got into the strange “hobby” of astral travel.

SASHA: How did you first get interested in out-of-body travel, or OBEs as they are called for short?

Ken: I had a serious accident when I was 10 years old that caused me to have a near-death experience. I experienced myself leaving my body, among other things. Since then, I have been compelled to learn more about what is beyond the physical body.

SASHA: So you have been having OBEs since you were ten?

KEN: No. I only learned to travel outside my body in a controlled way years later when I was in my mid-twenties. It was at that time that I made a conscious decision to study this phenomenon more deeply, and see if I could induce an out-of-body experience without needing to almost die.

SASHA: So basically you decided one day to teach yourself how to have out-of-body experiences?

KEN: Exactly right.

SASHA: How does one go about doing that?

KEN: I began with reading everything I could find about the topic. There are dozens of books about out-of-body travel. This is nothing new, you know. People have been experiencing and writing about out-of-body travel since ancient times. Even Plato wrote about what he called “soul travel.” There’s plenty of information out there to show you the way.

SASHA: How long did it take you to induce your first OBE?

KEN: Not long. I studied a number of different techniques, many of which were just crazy nonsense, but others had merit. I eventually stumbled into something that worked for me.

SASHA: Tell me about your first successful OBE.

KEN: Sure. I was living in Minneapolis at the time. I was lying flat on my back on the floor of my apartment. I was just relaxing and not really trying to do anything when I suddenly felt myself lift off the ground and float toward the ceiling. At first, I thought my whole physical body was floating up, but then I looked back down and saw myself—my physical body—on the floor! It was a wild experience!

SASHA: I bet! Weren’t you afraid, or freaked out, or something?

KEN: I would describe it as a totally stunning and exhilarating experience, but I wasn’t scared because I had done my homework. I knew that out-of-body travel was safe… no one has ever died from having an OBE, just like no one has ever died by having a dream about flying.

SASHA: What happened next?

KEN: I floated up to the ceiling and bounced right off of it! Once again, this was a truly bizarre experience. I found that I was able to move in any direction I wanted to simply by willing myself to do so. I floated to the wall on the right, bounced off, and hit the opposite wall. I bounced back and forth between the walls … kind of like a weightless astronaut in the space shuttle, just bouncing around, free of gravity.

SASHA: What were you thinking while this was happening?

KEN: (Laughing) I was screaming inwardly to myself: “Yippee!! Yahoo!!! This is fantastic!!!” I mean, it’s difficult to describe the feeling of utter and complete freedom and breathless exhilaration that hits you when you realize for the first time that you are — or might be — more than just a physical body… that there is another greater part of yourself that has tremendous abilities and freedom.”

SASHA: Well, I’ve heard that people can pass through walls and other physical objects while out-of-body, but you say you bounced off the walls?

KEN: Yes, but let me explain. In the out-of-body state, physical objects are what you decide them to be. If you think a wall is solid, then it will be solid. But if I tell myself I can pass right through a wall, and believe it, then I can pass right through a wall.

SASHA: So have you done this?

KEN: Oh yes, hundreds of times. I took me a while to develop the ability, though. It’s hard to overcome your belief that a wall is wall—you know, something solid. You just have to relax and tell yourself that a wall is not something that can limit or hinder you. I’ve many times experienced the ceiling and even the rafters passing right through my head and body—it’s a wild experience at first, but then you get used to it.

SASHA: Hard to believe you could get used to something like that!

KEN: Yes, but melting through the rafters is only the beginning. There’s no end to the amazement of out-of-body travel. I can tell you about flying into outer space, back in time, into other dimensions, through tunnels or star vortexes, meeting beings from other world and dimensions … it’s endless.

SASHA: I’d like to hear a lot more about all of these things.

KEN: I’d be glad to tell you about them.

PART II — INTERVIEW

SASHA: So your first OBE took place within the confines of your living room. When did you start to go further?

KEN: Very soon. It wasn’t long after I learned to leave my body somewhat frequently that a phenomena I call the “starry tunnel” appeared.

SASHA: What is the starry tunnel?

KEN: One night I was in bed attempting to induce an OBE. I felt myself swaying from side to side while my physical body was completely still and asleep, although my mind was awake. Suddenly, I detached from my body, and was stunned to see, in the floor next to my bed, a whirling vortex—a kind of black whirlpool filled with bits of light which looked to me like distant stars in outer space.

SASHA: That sounds frightening! What happened next? Did you panic?

KEN: No. To be honest, I was not afraid. That’s because part of the training I underwent to develop this ability dealt with handling and controlling fear… I looked at the vortex with wonderment and awe. Rather than be afraid of it, I plunged toward it.

SASHA: Yikes! What happened then?

KEN: I was sucked right into it and immediately found myself being pulled along at an enormous rate of speed. There was a whining sound all around me, and also around me were bits of light that looked like sparks from a camp fire. These were blurring past at enormous speed. I hate to say it, but the effect was very much like the “worm hole” you see in some science fiction shows.

SASHA: How long were you in this tunnel?

KEN: Well, I have traveled the starry tunnel many times. The trip usually lasts just seconds, but sometimes as long as several minutes.

SASHA: And does it go somewhere?

KEN: Yes, it usually goes someplace weird or wonderful, but oddly, there have been many times that I have traveled the tunnel for several minutes, only to pop out right back in my bedroom… like a feedback loop, or something.

SASHA: Tell us about one or two of the more “weird” tunnel destinations, to use your word.

KEN: Yes, well, the first time I traveled the Starry Tunnel I ended up in the middle of vast, empty outer space. I assumed I was far from Earth. I could see no bright stars, or sun, or moon. There were millions of stars, but all a huge distance away from me. I was just floating there.

SASHA: That’s it?

KEN: No. In a few minutes two white energy forms—they looked like large glowing snowflakes, appeared out in the upper left quadrant of my field of view. They hovered out there in space with me, and I felt that they were intelligent and were trying to communicate with me. It was almost as if they were wondering what I was doing there.

The trouble was, at the time, I was very new to OBEs, and I had yet to learn the kind of communication techniques that can be helpful in that situation. I had read much about others who has encountered such “energy beings,” and I assumed that’s what these things were. What I tried to do was project feelings of love and friendship toward them with my mind. Just as I did this, I felt myself yanked… as if a rubber band was tied to my waste… and I was suddenly sent screaming back through the tunnel again, and I ended up back home in bed… back to normal reality.

SASHA: You must admit, all this is pretty hard to believe. I’m sure a lot of readers by now are thinking, “Yeah, right!” How do you know you are not simply having vivid dreams, and not actual out-of-body experiences?

KEN: That’s an excellent question, but the answer is complex. OBEs may be dreams, as you say, but if they are, they represent a special category of dream event. Some scientists have studied people who claim the ability to leave the body in a laboratory setting. One of the best examples is the late Robert Monroe of Faber, Virginia, who was tested by the famous psychologist, Charles Tart. In some cases, the scientific results seem to support the reality of the OBE, while others support the idea that what is actually happening is a form of dreaming called “lucid dreaming.”

Sleep researchers at Stanford University are on the cutting edge of this kind of research today. One scientist there, Stephen LeBerge, is convinced that OBEs are really extremely vivid lucid dreams. Others disagree, and the debate goes on.

SASHA: But perhaps you are just making all this up?

KEN: That’s the most obvious question, and I think a journalist like you needs to ask it. My honest answer is that I am not making any of this up, but at the same time, I willing to admit that all this could be only dream experiences on my part, and not actual OBEs. The bottom line is, I don’t know.

I do know that my out-of-body experiences seem real and they truly don’t have the “feel” of dreams. I ultimately don’t care. I’m interested mainly in the experience. I let the scientists and philosophers wrangle about the nature of the reality of it all.

My attitude is this: You don’t need to be a Chrysler engineer to know how to drive a car, and you don’t have to be an expert in the out-of-body experience to make it happen for you. I just do it and have fun.

SASHA: Now, you have also said that you have traveled to other planets, and have learned to communicate with “strange beings,” among a lot of other far out things.

KEN: Yes, and I think some of the most amazing experiences of out-of-body travel involve travel to other dimensions, or parallel universes as some would call them. Time travel is also a somewhat common experience… the possibilities are endless when you are involved in this kind of experience.

SASHA: Could you tell describe a few of these, perhaps one of your parallel universe experiences?

<>KEN: Yes, I’d be glad to.

<>NEXT POST: THE REST OF THE INTERVIEW!

The Starry Tunnel Ride: The OBE Path to Adventure

Ken Korczak:

In my ongoing experiments with out-of-body travel, the experience that has frightened, surprised and delighted me the most is something I call “the starry tunnel ride.”

Once I learned to control my fear of this strange experience, the starry tunnel ride has become an exhilarating, swooping, roller-coaster kind of trip for me. I use the term “starry tunnel” for lack of a better description. I’m not at all sure what this thing is, or even if it is a tunnel, per se. I’m not sure if the screaming points of light inside it are real stars. Just let me describe the experience to you, and I’ll let you make your own speculations.

Very often when I “detach” from my physical body and find myself “out” and floating above or beside my bed next to my sleeping body, I usually plummet right through the floor. Every time this happens — every time — I have the feeling that I should smash into the floor or get a mouthful of dirt beneath the house. (Note: I do not always detach from my body and just float up into the familiar surroundings of my bedroom, although I have experienced this many times. On those occasions when I do find myself hovering above my bed, it usually is not long before I get sucked into a tunnel. I have no idea why or how this works, I just know it happens.)

Once in the tunnel, I find myself being hurled along at tremendous speed in outer space — except it is not exactly open space; it is more like a tunnel through space.

Although I’m reluctant to make this analogy, the tunnel is much like the “worm hole” described in some science fiction books and movies. It almost seems to be a warp in space, although my starry tunnel is not quite as dramatic and psychedelic as the one depicted in the Star Trek movies .

I make the comparison with much reservation because I don’t want to strain your credulity. I’m not for a minute suggesting, nor do I even want to leave you with the impression that my starry tunnel is, in fact, a warp in space. That’s just too cute and too much like a pat science fiction convention. I’m just struggling for words here and for some everyday comparisons that will best relate my experience to you. Science fiction’s worm hole is just a handy, fictional invention (based on scientific conjecture) that seems to serve best here for descriptive purposes.

As I fly through the tunnel, I see and hear millions of tiny sparks, or points of light which stream by with a high-pitched whine. It’s a mild electrical sound not loud enough to be irritating or scary.

Sometimes the “stars” are quite vivid and appear as pinpoints of light. At other times they seem much less substantial. They can appear blurred and take on a liquid, run-together look.

Even though I now look forward to the crazy fun of the starry tunnel ride, sometimes hurling through this bizarre corridor is no picnic. The first few times I encountered it I was frightened out of my wits. I screamed, struggled against it, and always ended up aborting the experience by waking myself up — that is, waking up my physical body. (My mind is almost always awake and lucid throughout this entire experience).

One of the difficult things about the starry tunnel is that it’s hard to breathe inside it. It’s like being seated in a dive-bombing jet pulling “heavy G’s”. There is a feeling of being squeezed or pressed on the chest. It’s an out-of-control kind of event, like falling and not being able to grab onto anything to stop myself. But really, the starry tunnel is a tenuous place. I find I can abort from it with remarkable ease. In fact, if I fight the tunnel even slightly, it releases me immediately. (It’s interesting to note that this out-of-breath feeling is common to the sleep paralysis experience, which lends credence to the theory that the OBE is actually more akin to a lucid dream than actual out-of-body travel).

Anyway, it wasn’t until I learned to control my fear that I realized that the starry tunnel was nothing to fear at all. Instead, I’ve found it is a dazzling, delightful gateway into an infinite number of realms and universes — both our own universe and (seemingly) alternate ones.

Controlling fear is the key to successful use of the starry tunnel. (In fact, controlling fear is a major key to all aspects of out-of-body travel). And where does the starry tunnel lead? That’s the best part of all! In my next post, I’ll describe some of the mind-blowing, astounding locals the starry tunnel leads me to in the out-of-body world! Stay tuned!

Out-of-Body Travel: Key is to Accept Strangeness

Editor’s Note: Today we here from famed out-of-body travel expert Cory Gann! This is a fascinating tip on out-of-body travel.

By Cory Gann

Once you develop the ability to have frequent out-of-body experiences, you start getting accustomed to strangeness. In fact, your ability to meet and handle unworldly, weird, bizarre, inexplicable and even nonsensical situations will be a measure of how successful you will be at exploring on this frontier.

Of all the things you need to handle the nonphysical environment, flexibility of mind is the greatest. You need to accept things which your “normal” sensibilities will just not want to.

I have had occasional trips which are so bizarre that it would be impossible to describe them in words. I don’t mean that as a cliche’ — I mean some experiences literally have no translation into terms which are describable with human language, except perhaps for some kind of experimental poetry.

I think most human minds have a strong tendency to simply ignore some of the most outlandish inputs that greet them. Because of that, many experiences out-of-body travelers confront are not counted as valid and are often forgotten. This is a mistake. Staying with the very strange and struggling to understand what these experiences mean is where the cutting edge of new knowledge is, and perhaps points the way toward higher evolution of the human mind.

Besides the bizarre beyond-sense experiences, there is one particular trip I went on which I count as especially strange, and I’ll share it with you here:

I went to bed setting my intention to have an OBE. I woke up sometime in the middle of the night feeling my body swaying from side to side. I waited, stayed with the motion. Soon I was swooped up into an exhilarating ride through a very speedy starry tunnel. I traveled what seemed to be great distance before I popped out of the tunnel way out in the middle of vast, empty outer space.

I was just out there — alone and adrift among billions of unimaginably distant, hard, unblinking stars. I thought to myself: “Well, here I am out in space … so what?”

I don’t want to give you the impression that I was bored. I was actually feeling quite awed, and I had a tremendous feeling that I was many, many light years away from Earth. It was a remarkable sensation.

Then I suddenly noticed I was not alone. Drifting into view in my upper left hand field of vision I saw two large patches of light that sort of looked like blurry, fluttering snowflakes. It was difficult to tell just how big they were or how far away they were since I was just out there in space with no physical reference objects against which to judge size and distance.

I really had a sense, however, that these two globs of light were intelligent living beings of some sort, although utterly inscrutable. I watched them for a minute or two and they seemed to be watching me. Then I tried to establish communication with them. I arbitrarily formed thoughts of love and peace in my mind and tried to project these thoughts through space at the light creatures, assuming they were something alive.

Nothing happened.

I just floated there and they floated there. They flickered and hovered about a little bit. The most exciting thing that happened was when one of the giant snowflakes flew away suddenly out of my field of view. A few minutes later it came back. The one that stayed near me really seemed to react to the other snowflake when it came back. I got the impression they were communicating with each other, but were as confused and stumped by my presence as I was about them.

After a short while I was blasted back into my body, and I awoke instantly with my trip into outer space fresh in my mind. I was very clear-headed throughout this trip. I recorded the event in my dream/OBE journal and went back to bed. After I dozed off, I found that I was slipping in and out of my body a lot. I floated around my room, but this time I was unable to find a tunnel to get me out of the house. I had extraordinary control of my movement in and out of my body that night, but with the exception of my journey into deep space where I visited the two inscrutable energy forms, I couldn’t get get beyond my living room wall.

I don’t know why I offer this particular story as one of the strangest things that has ever happened to me in the out-of-body state. Although it was a rather simple experience compared to others, that particular trip had a quality of wonder about it that has remained special to me.

There’s one more strange but brief out-of-body experience I want to tell you about.

I was sleeping soundly, in a very deep sleep, when I felt myself starting to come awake, and it seemed a long journey from my deep level of sleep to where I was going. Suddenly I popped out of my body and found myself floating above my bed in the darkness of my room. I could clearly see my body in bed, covered with blankets. As I looked away from my body, I was startled to notice a large triangular doorway looming at the foot of my bed.

It was a large isosceles triangle with sharp edges clearly marking its border between my normal bedroom space and the penetrating blackness of its interior.

I was feeling a strong invitation coming from this portal, but I was also filled with doubt about where it might lead. I was intimidated by the profound blackness inside the large triangle so I decided not to plunge in. I went scurrying back into my body instead, like a frightened squirrel running for a hole in a tree.

I woke up immediately and got up from bed. I stepped around to the foot of my bed and sort of passed my arms through the air in the space where the triangle had been floating. It was an exceedingly odd feeling. I almost felt as if the the doorway was still there, although in another dimension — the dimension of the nonphysical world.

I wish now that I would have thrown caution to the wind and entered. God only knows what kind of adventure I might have had. I’m sure it would have been strange.

But the point of all this is, and what I want you all to think about this month is that whether you know it or not, you are in a constant state of filtering your reality. At every moment you accept certain information perceived by your senses, and reject other information that is all around us.. It’s not that you don’t “see” or contact this other information. You do. But because it does not fit your “model” of what you believe reality to be, you ignore it, and you ignore it so well, that all this other information is invisible.

It is the brain which sees and not the eye. It is the brains which hears and not the ears. It is the brain which feels and not the fingertips. It is the brain which tastes, and not the mouth. If your fingers touch something, but your brain refuses to process the information, you will not feel it. If a certain kind of light enters your eyes and strikes your retinas, it is up to your brain — the ultimate gatekeeper — as to whether that light signal will be accepted or not.

The brain imposes order on chaos by grouping sets of signals, rearranging them, or rejecting them. Reality is what your brain says it is. The great German philosopher Wittgenstein said: “You see what you want to see.”

We all hold models of reality in our mind. Most of us have not made our own choices about what those models are; rather, they were given to us by our parents and society. I’m not saying you must reject these model. Rather, I encourage you to open up your mind to information which is outside your hardened view of reality.

I said your brain is the ultimate gatekeeper, but that’s not quite true. YOU are the keeper of your brain, and you can program your brain to be more flexible, train it to be more liberal about what it lets through, and what it tries to keep out.

Dreams and imagination are two keys to reprogramming your brain, and making it open up the gates wider to the greater experiences of the universe. Meditation is a third, powerful key to getting beyond your “ordinary” mind to a more expansive and accepting perception of your reality. Next time, I’ll talk more about freeing your mind to help it perceive the greater universe.

Let Me Take You On a Journey …

By Ken Korczak

It’s 4:30 a.m., dark in my bedroom, and my mind snaps awake, but my body does not.

I feel my consciousness — or something — sway from side to side like a helium balloon in a shifting breeze. I loll back and forth, pivoting on my physical body, and move farther away with each swing of the pendulum. Going with the momentum of the next thrilling swoop, I command myself to “roll” out and away from my body and to detach.

First I plummet — right through the floor! — then I recover and soar upward, butterflies exploding in my stomach. I can’t help but feel a deep satisfying laughter. I’m free!

Then comes the inevitable, breathless circus ride — a gasping, exhilarating roller coaster trip through what I have come to call the “starry tunnel,” although the whining, electric “bugs” that zip all around me inside this worm hole aren’t really stars, at least I don’t think so. I’m not sure what they are; perhaps the firings between the neurons inside my own brain.

The best thing about the starry tunnel ride is that I never know where it will end up. It’s a cosmic crap shoot that could deposit me in outer space, or on the shadowy carpet of some dense rain forest, heavily shrouded in foliage, shrieking with exotic birds, humming insects and the organ notes of reptiles.

But this particular time the tunnel exits into my own room, as the tunnels often do, where my sleeping body lies peaceful and breathing gently, evenly.

There I float a meter above myself — how? — in a dream body, looking down on a dream representation of my physical body? As an actual detached consciousness? A soul? A doppelganger?

If you ask sleep researcher, such as Dr. Stephen LaBerge of Stanford University, he would say that what floats above the physical body is a “detached body image,” which has not actually left my physical brain, but rather is a dislocation hallucination resulting from all sensation being cut off between body and brain by sleep induced paralysis.

If you would ask others, such as the researchers at the Monroe Institute in Faber, Virginia, they would argue that what floats above the physical body is true, objectively detached consciousness, free and functioning independently while the physical body waits in stasis, warm and safe for the “essence of you” to return.

In the meantime, there I am, floating with the weightlessness of an astronaut in a space station, wondering if LaBerge at Stanford is right, or if others are closer to the truth. Or maybe the ancient dream yogis or Sufi masters — and then I laugh at myself, a heavy, hearty laugh, because I’m there — a hovering sphere of star dust — but still very much myself, caught up in foolish intellectualizing about the fundamental nature of my existence.

They are the questions which never tire me: What am I? Who am I? Why am I?

Suddenly, the questions begin to fill my being like expanding spheres of light, and I’m abruptly swept away — right through the window! — without opening it! without breaking it!

Outside, about 200 feet in the air, I’m cruising smoothly, briskly through the silent, pre-dawn darkness. I’m heading north, looking down at the gentle silver sheen of the snow-covered plains.

There’s no moonlight this morning, but the starlight is somehow enhanced. The world is bathed everywhere in exquisite silver-white illumination. Every blade of withered prairie grass sticking above the snow stands out sharply, and I think: “So this is how owls see their nighttime world. Gorgeous!”

My speed increases. I have the feeling that someone, somehow is carrying me along or guiding me with unseen hands, a subtle presence just behind me.

I pass swiftly north from Minnesota over the vast plains of Manitoba, and soon find myself in the scintillating snow and ice landscape of the Arctic.

I peer down with my new owlsight and pick out the slippery movement of a white Arctic fox trotting across the snow. From above, it looks to me like a curious fish sliding through a crystal stream.

I feel powerful, even smug, in the fact that my floating, unprotected body is immune to the frigid cold that would turn my physical body numb within minutes.

This is freedom, I thought, as I took in the aching beauty of the crisp night. Freedom from gravity, freedom from painful environmental stimuli, freedom from subjective perceptions of time, freedom from endless artificial limitations.

I look up at the dome of the Arctic sky and see indescribably vivid colors swirling up there. Beaming stars and dancing rivers of aurora borealis, like a melted rainbow poured across sequined velvet.

I’m stunned. I feel a gasping sensation and I reel. I feel I will rip apart in an explosion of rapture and delight.

I float up and merge with it all, losing myself into everything.

To awaken back into my physical body is like emerging slowly from a deep well of mild electricity. The atoms of my body focus to become me. I open my eyes slowly. I feel peaceful and rested. I smile.

I can’t wait to go again.