New Worlds of Body, Mind & Spirit Since 1901
| Knowledgeable astral projectors are aware that their astral bodies may change from episode to episode. At times the second body may be quite "thin." At other times it is "heavier."
This is because the astral body is a composite, made up in varying proportions of a physical (or semi-physical) body and a "spirit" body. During its projection the second body draws "astral material" from the first body through the silver cord that connects the two. The more astral material drawn, the more (relatively) physical the astral body. When astral material (brought to the second body by the latter’s simply "willing" it there) is abundant, the traveler is kept closer to the material world and away from all but the lowest reaches of the astral world. It is in the "heavy" state that the astral body is able to perform mind-over-matter feats. A hand in a "thin" body goes through the door; in a "heavy" one it can open the door. It can knock on walls. It can move, even throw objects about. It can even be seen, but the observer is more likely to conclude that he has seen the ghost of a dead person than the ghost of a living one! The double often has a "smoke-like" appearance reminiscent of that associated with more standard apparitions. On occasion, though, the visible double is so little-removed from the physical that persons who see it mistake it for a normal flesh-and-blood human being. The witnesses may even speak to the double and be spoken to in return, and the conversation may seem utterly ordinary. Well documented accounts of this kind of event, sometimes called "bilocation," are to be found in the biographies of saints and other holy persons who performed healings and other benevolent deeds in their second bodies??"even though the recipients of this charitable attention had not the slightest idea (at the time, anyway) that their benefactors were in something other than their first bodies. There is, however, one very definite risk in this kind of astral-physical border straddling. It is possible in these circumstances to sustain an injury??"a cut, a bruise or something even more serious??"that will register on the physical body at the conclusion of the astral experience. |
