Questions for Experienced Astral Projectors!!

I've recently had a renewed interest in Astral Projection, and have been pouring over articles and fourms regarding the subject. I was wondering if experience APers would mind answering a few questions that I can't seem to find direct info on:

1. When you Astral Project, does it feel different than Lucid Dreaming? - I have to admit, my lucid dream skills are lacking, and I often find myself fighting to remain in my dream, rubbing my hands, etc. When you AP, are you essentially just "out" of your body without the same struggle until you make the conscious effort to return or get jolted back by extreme emotion, whatever?

2. Is it difficult to visit people on the physical plane? i.e: Visit family that you haven't seen in awhile, etc.?

3. If so, do animals in the physical realm see you? Haha. :)

4. Can you "run into" people who you know who might be astral projecting?

5. Can you enter someone else's dream while Astral Projecting?

Also, if you could point me to techniques that have worked for you, I would appreciate it. I keep reading about as many techniques as I can.

1. very much so. While in LD, the level of consciousness may vary... from barely conscious to nearly fully... but in OBE state(astral projection for example, the level of consciousness is much higher than in real life. Higher dimensions than astral feels even more real and level of consciousness is even higher. I think, it is because of concentration required to project. Depending on level of concentration, there may be even "struggle" to stay OBE. I never want to go back from OBE. It returns me whether I want or not after some time. The time depends strongly on concentration and level of dimension and kind of dimension.
2. it depends on what you mean. I try this for long time. -I didn't observe strong connection between astral dimension and physical one. The few small proofs I have, may well be a fluke... Nobody reported even my visit into their dreams or when I pulled someone into astral.While everything looks superreal for me, it may be my illusion easily. r it may be, that nobody is able to report things from shared experiences because of lack of their concentration and memories.
3.I don't remember to see animal in astral dimension, only nonliving things like rocks, houses, cars, plants, or some beings.
4. there may be one time where I met with my brother(who I tutored to project). But while our experiences were a little similar they were quite different in some things. I may be wrong in the assumption that we really did met.
5. I tried to do this, I tried to even pull people into astral. But they didn't report the experience to me. So, I most probably can't, and maybe it is even impossible.

I use modified Shultz autogenic training. Look for last post here http://www.dreamviews.com/dreamviews...e-reality.html

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Originally Posted by Elektra

I've recently had a renewed interest in Astral Projection, and have been pouring over articles and fourms regarding the subject. I was wondering if experience APers would mind answering a few questions that I can't seem to find direct info on:

1. When you Astral Project, does it feel different than Lucid Dreaming? - I have to admit, my lucid dream skills are lacking, and I often find myself fighting to remain in my dream, rubbing my hands, etc. When you AP, are you essentially just "out" of your body without the same struggle until you make the conscious effort to return or get jolted back by extreme emotion, whatever?

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My experiences felt very different from my other lucid dreams. However, I still think that on its surface it is essentially a form of lucid dream. We have some way of getting limited but real extra-sensory information, and we build that into a lucid dream that we call astral projection.

In waking life, I have a tactile mental model of where my body is, and also a largely separate mental model of where other things are. When I experience myself as moving about and interacting with things, my brain is manipulating these models in a way that approximately corresponds to what my sensory input is telling me is going on around me. In an 'astral projection' experience, I'm separating the tactile mental model from where my body actually is. In what I call an 'out of body' experience, I'm projecting my first person perspective to a part of my 'field awareness' that I usually reserve for other people. These are fairly distinct experiences for that reason.

The 'astral projection' experience in particular feels very different from other lucid dreams.

I don't recall ever incorporating extrasensory information into an astral projection or out-of-body dream in a way that I can objectively verify. However, I've done that while having other kinds of dreams, so I believe other people who say they experience this in an astral-projection or out-of-body kind of dream. I doubt that all astral-projection or out-of-body dreams have anything noticeably extrasensory going on though, and would guess that most do not.

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Originally Posted by Elektra

2. Is it difficult to visit people on the physical plane? i.e: Visit family that you haven't seen in awhile, etc.?

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I think the physical vs astral plane dichotomy is an idea which we psychically pick up from other people, and that people tend to experience their astral projection experiences in terms of that idea. I don't think the idea captures the essence of what's going on very well though, and I think that if we had another idea we would experience it differently. I think the astral experience is in your mind, not in another plane. However, you have some way of reaching remotely into the physical plane and pulling real information into your mental experience. But since I have no idea how that works, I can't be too confident about what this may or may not involve. I suspect that not all of my experiences are completely consistent with my stated view on this, even though they are even less consistent with other people's views.

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Originally Posted by Elektra

4. Can you "run into" people who you know who might be astral projecting?

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I think it mostly doesn't work that way, since the astral projection is mostly private a lucid dream. However, I did say that I think that extrasensory experience is possible, and I think that it is possible to affect physical things that way. So I suppose that if someone else is reaching out and touching the world with their mind, another person could sense that, and could interpret that as astral projection. So I guess that means yes, I think that's possible, though I have not experienced that in that manner.

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Originally Posted by Elektra

5. Can you enter someone else's dream while Astral Projecting?

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It is possible to influence other people's dreams, whether or not you explain that to yourself in terms of an experience of astral projecting.

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Originally Posted by Elektra

Also, if you could point me to techniques that have worked for you, I would appreciate it. I keep reading about as many techniques as I can.

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My opinion is that it generally isn't a good idea to pursue astral projection very earnestly. As you intentionally enhance your ability to experience things remotely, you are also unavoidably enhancing your vulnerability to being affected by things remotely, and affecting things when you don't want to. This seems to me to be unhealthy if forced by intentional practice, because in other ways we're ill-equipped to handle more of this sort of thing than we already have. We can't just train it into submission through practice, to a large extent we have to grow into it, and there are limits to how much we can grow in our present circumstances. Once you open the door it is very hard to close it again. This kind of reaching out and touching things happens at a fairly deep and reflexive level, you can't just turn it on and off whenever you want to.

If astral projection is a part of your life, then that's a part of who you are, and I don't mean to suggest that you have to be afraid of it. But I wouldn't pursue it any more than I would try to force a flower to open, or cut a forming butterfly out of a cocoon early, or advise a pregnant woman to strive to give birth in the second trimester. Eventually it is time, and at some level you have to recognize that for yourself, but I think it is better not to push for it otherwise.

I see I skipped a question. I think that animals are fairly sensitive to this sort of thing, so yes I think they can see you, but I don't know if I'm right about this. I also feel that there's something about a human being that is psychically much stronger than an animals like a dog, even though the dog seems to be more perceptive.