John Magnus - Astral Projection and the Nature of Reality: Exploring the Outofbody State

Copyright 2005

by John Magnus Johansson

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work in any form whatsoever, without permission in writing from the publisher, except for brief passages in connection with a review.

Cover design by Marjoram Productions

Cover digital imagery PictureQuest/BrandXPictures.

All rights reserved

Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.

Charlottesville, VA 22902

www.hrpub.com

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2005019900

ISBN 978-1-57174-447-0

Printed in Canada

TCP

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To all the brave souls who project their minds into beauty and bring it back.

And to my wife, Barb, for being.

I would like to give a big hug to everyone who has contributed to the making of this book.

As this book has progressed, I have come to realize that nonphysical people surround us. They visit me in my dreams and astral projections. A few of them have been fiercely interested in the contents of this book and so have unselfishly put ideas in my mind. A huge gratitude goes to these muses.

Another gratitude goes to the astral projectorsAndrew Charles James, Andrew Musch, Barb Lanier, John Floyd, and Julia Melges-Brennerwho have reviewed the contents of this book and provided invaluable feedback. I also thank them for the techniques they have shared.

I would also like to thank the good people at Hampton Roads: Frank DeMarco, Richard Leviton, Sarah Hilfer, Tania Seymour, Jane Hagaman, Anne Louque, Diane Lynch, Virginia Colburn, and everyone else who has pitched in.

And to my wife, Barb, whose soul (I have seen it) is as shining blue as the firmament: Thank you for opening my eyes when they were closed, and for our leaps of faith.

I also wish to send a thank you to all people around the world who make an effort for the benefit of someone else. You probably do not realize what a tremendously positive impact you have on people's lives.

I wake up after an afternoon nap. I have the whole outline of this book in my head. Strange, I never had any special passion for writing such a book, but now I can't wait to get started. I am motivated like never before. The top of my head is tingling like crazy, as if someone or something is feeding me information. Plus, I am irritated, possibly because my logical mind can't make sense of where I am getting the inspiration.

A few years back, seemingly for no particular reason, I became curious about what lies beyond the physical. Could there be something more? I sure hoped so, because if there were not, life would lapse back into the boredom and complexity of modern Western society. Imagine my surprise when, a week later, I stumbled upon accounts of near-death experiences on Kevin Williams's near-death site (www.near-death.com). It was as if I were guided to the information by a helpful energy, and I probably was. Previously, I had been ignorant of and uninterested in the concept of life after death. Because I am somewhat of a procrastinator, I had postponed thinking about death. I reasoned that death gets in the way of living. Literally, it does, but I now appreciate death because it makes life larger and more profound.

The near-death accounts I read about on the site were amazing. There was no doubt that there must be some sort of existence after the death of the physical body. The sheer number of witnessestens of thousandsshould be proof enough to convince anyone but the most hardcore skeptic. In the face of the evidence, death now seemed quite a ride, and I could not wait to discover what was included in that ride. A desire began to grow in my mind. Would it not be awesome to see all these things in the beyond without actually having to die first?

Imagine my second surprise when I stumbled upon something called astral projection on the Internet. Now, this was a far-out subject. Apparently, there are people all over the world who engaged in the very thing I desired: seeing the world beyond the physical. I was surprised to discover that some people spontaneously experienced astral projection, and I was thrilled that others deliberately attempted to induce such experiences, armed with nothing but a meager amount of literature, their experience, and their wits. It seemed possible for me to go where I wanted to go without the hassle of dying after all.

After my discoveries, I practiced astral projection diligently for weeks. I tried out 20 techniques designed for leaving the body, all of which I found on the Web, free of charge. None of them worked as I had hoped. I concluded that there must be something I was not doing right, but what? Then one night, after two intense months of attempting to leave the body, that something revealed itself as if by accident. I fell asleep during a session. When I woke up, I had the surprise (and terror) of my life as I was sucked into another dimension of existence. I had finally accomplished my first astral projection. The missing ingredient had been the state of mind that can only be achieved when waking up after a period of sleep.

The realization brought about by my weird astral experiencethat I was not the body, but something that could leave the body and return to itradically changed my priorities. I started taking responsibility for my spiritual and emotional growth. I grew less interested in material pursuits. My academic labor suffered. It no longer made sense to me to acquire skills (in marketing) that had nothing to do with my spiritual growth. I confess that some of my education in marketing was blatantly contradictory to spiritual growth.

I abandoned the quest for financial security, something to which I previously had been prepared to dedicate my future. I realized that life is not a competition where the person who dies with the most money is declared winner. Life is precious, too precious to be viewed as a battle over money and security. It does not make sense to waste time on collecting resources that you have to leave behind at death anyway. Ultimately, it does not make sense to spend your life pretending to be someone that is not you, doing things that are not in your nature. What makes sense is to be yourself and to create something in life that you can take with you after that life has ended.

I realized that people in general, as I had, succumb to a sort of spiritual tunnel vision to such a degree that they remain oblivious to the immense value of their own lives, and I felt compelled to do something about it. Somewhere in these thoughts, the idea of a book was born, a book that would help people help themselves. A book that would help stressed-out modern men and women awaken to their own larger nature, in which they would take charge of their lives and make them better. It was an idea of a book, not just on astral projection, but also on the nature of reality.

I doubt readers of this book suffer from too much of the mentioned tunnel vision (or you would not be reading this), but at least I might advance your knowing of reality and inspire you to tell others about the awesome experiences that come with that knowing. From now on, with everything you say and do, you will inspire everyone around you to wake up from their state of tunnel vision and find a life truer to our form, as I did.