This Outer Body Experience occurred in 2016 and was recorded as OBE29, the 29th diarised record of an Outer Body Experience since I began journalling them earlier that year.
As a fifteen year old lad, I remember seeing the UK premier of Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' back in 1982 at the Empire Leicester Square. I went with a good school friend and was struck not only by the production and my love for the music but the story line and the psychic creation of the wall, which we as humans often build around ourselves.
In my twenties and having lost both parents, I started to see a wall during my meditations. It is always nice to observe phenomena with the inner eye but it wasn't long before I began to wonder. What did the wall represent? Was there a way through, over or around? One thing I knew for sure was when my wall started to go up. Early life traumas and other difficulties which accompany those years slowly darkened my skies. Once upon a time, the sunshine in any classroom or gathering, I now found solitude more comforting than being surrounded by others.
Fast forward to many years later and after having been a professional teacher for around 10 years, I began to foster the idea of teaching yoga at my old School.
I left school at the end of the first sixth form, age 17, deeply traumatised and emotionally isolated. I was undergoing the stresses of watching my father slowly wither away before my eyes along with the pressures of private school and some other demons in my life at that time, which I hope to write about some day.
Nearly 40 years later (around 10 years ago) and now a successful yoga and tai chi teacher, I grew to know that I had useful skills and gifts to offer back to some of the boys attending my old school at that time. I had tried over the years to ‘find my way in’ but to no avail. Letter after letter, email after email, all falling on deaf ears. I even had the luck of being able to teach at the same school for girls, next door but, in my heart, I yearned to reenter the corridors of my own past in an attempt to redeem myself from some of my 'failures'. Although completely happy with my work and how this unexpected career had opened up for me like a doorway to heaven, I always had this deep itch which needed scratching. Looking back I see my ego attempting to prove itself to the world, while at the same time I think it equally important to honour the inner child who needs releasing from the trauma, frozen in past clutches of space-time.
As I have blogged and written about elsewhere, it was due to the passing of a dear friend that my passion and interest in the practices of Lucid Dreaming & Astral Projection were rekindled around 2015. With a love and keen memory for astral and dream experiences in my childhood, which in many respects helped to steer this ship away from mainstream worldly careers and pursuits promoted by my school, my compass was always aimed at the esoteric landscape which life reminds us of when we get a little too busy with the 'impermanence' of things.
I had developed a rigorous Lucid Dream & Astral Projection (OBE) program for myself. I had a daytime and nighttime practice which had been initiated back in my twenties and now rekindled in my forties.
So that night, before setting off to 'rise to sleep' I asked for assistance to experience another Out of Body Experience. I had learned that asking for help can be a good thing and so I requested that my guru Sai Baba come to help me and/or send a being who could help me to ‘leave my body’. This is usually referred to as ‘separation’, whereby the astral body moves away from the sleeping or meditator's dormant physical body. It is the astral or subtle body which gives rise to all movements of our physical form and when the physical self sleeps or the meditator is sufficiently still, s/he often begins to sense subtle waves of vibration as the astral body continues journeying with any movement or travel it may desire to make.
I had been reading yet another book about Astral Travel or OBE’s while out and about driving for work earlier that day, followed by receiving a wonderful Thai Massage from Dorna, my other half, to help with some of my body’s aches and pains.
I then took a delightful hot bath and did a good amount of intending…. ‘Tonight I will have another OBE’. I focused with strong intent to realign with the feeling of being in the Outer Body State’. I also realigned with the intent itself. To really ‘mean what I say’. This is quite often most of the work needed for many to enjoy an Out of Body Experience.
I began the night with some dreams about T who I grew up with and some of my school friends from my secondary school. We were all play flighting with one of the boys really going for it and over doing it a little.
I then awoke with some buzzing in my ears. If you have never had any kind of Astral Projection/OBE then you may not know that ear buzzing along with the vibratory waves (vibrational state) are common phenomena arising as preludes to an ‘experience’.
At that time in my life, the buzzing was usually stronger in my left ear although in the last few years it has shifted over to my right. The electricity was enough to physically jolt my head and slightly brought me towards the surface of waking awareness. The sound calmed down and I relaxed back upwards towards sleep. I remained calm as I sunk back down, in order to rise upwards, just loving the feeling of knowing that the experience could literally lead any-where. I began to hear the buzzing again and having just pre set the intention not to allow it to jolt me to waking state once more, it persisted beautifully.
You can think of the buzzing as a radio transmitter dialling or tuning in to find a stable transmission station. As the tuning hones in to the signal emission, the disturbance reduces in exchange for less static and more clarity. A short while later I became aware that ‘I’ was readying to consider separation.
‘I’ means that the conscious egoic I self was also tuning in to the ‘Unconscious 95% of the whole, which really steers the ship-self’.
I sensed my astral body beginning to slowly move about and ‘mind’ cogitation of ‘which way out is best?’ There was a moment of uncertainty as my egioic mind was troubled again by the thought that it might have aroused the physical and sleeping body. This was followed by a moment of deeper reassurance that I wouldn’t have started to sense the fluid waves of non physicality had the right conditions not been set. Trust, trust, trust 🙂
My astral body continued to separate by moving outwards to my right, which is quite interesting for me as it’s more commonly the left. This can also be relative to the room one finds oneself in and preset intentions to separate in a particular way. Furniture or walls and doors can get in the way and make separation a little ‘stickier’, especially if one isn’t already fully away from one's sleeping physical body.
Then I heard the voice of the ‘Gremlin’. This has been referred to by some as the ‘Gatekeeper’ between ‘worlds’, between states, between wakefulness and sleep or sleep and the next portal or dimension inwards.
I had experienced this Gremlin quite a few times before. It could be considered part of an alter-ego and the renowned Don Juan Matus taught Carlos Castaneda that this voice was the Dream Emissary coming to help him dream more consciously and cross through the Seven Gates of Dreaming.
My Emissary's voice was at this time deep and ET like, sounding very much like Gollum from Lord of The Rings….
Very often it is the sense of sound which brings the oneironaut (conscious dreamer) to the lucid state of awareness, rather than feeling or sight. The Emissary's constant muttering brought me to increasing lucidity.
I sensed my fear which is common for me as well as the excitement and then I swiftly ‘buckle up!’ and continued to invite the next moment to welcome me. I then felt its long hairy chimp like arms, for the first time since hearing this voice over the last couple of years. All of a sudden I was holding the creature in my arms as I floated out of my body which was lying on the bed in the lounge.
Here’s the thing...
Usually in the past, Gollum would appear when I found myself in the In-Between State. This is the state where the Mind is Awake and the Body is Alseep and which I call MABA. This is a state also where one experiences Sleep Paralysis and a place where many people have faced fears and overcome them while others have experienced some of the worst moments in their life.
On that note I'd like to hightlight that all fear emanates from our own perception of reality, that is, our opinion of what we experience which we project out into this experience. I always use Shakespeare at this point and quote, " There is no good nor bad, only thinking makes it so".
On this occasion I was unaware that following the initial vibrations and buzzing I had then fallen into sleep and a dream. I don't recall what this was about until I realised that I had crossed the ‘Second Gate of Dreaming’ as this all occurred.
That is to say, I woke from one dream in to another.
In other words, I was asleep and dreaming non lucidly. I then had a false awakening. This means that I dreamt that I woke up. At that stage I became lucid or highly aware that I was dreaming and moving away or 'leaving' my body, all be it the dreaming body asleep on the dream bed. I became super aware as I rose from the dream bed in a lounge similar to the one where I grew up, with the chimp dream emissary gollum chattering away to me :).
So for further clarification, this is also known as entering the outer body state from dream, as opposed to from...
- Mind Awake Body Asleep (MABA) state which occurs in the hypnogogic (as we fall asleep) or more commonly hypnopompic (between sleep and waking up) states.
- During a wakeful trance/meditation, i.e, where we are not asleep but our body has become so still that our brain believes the body is asleep.
Without looking at the Emissary I floated out of my sleeping dream body, across the room and towards the window. As I moved the Emissary became more lifeless, like an empty puppet shell which having served its purpose, dissolved completely. It's likely my dreaming body on the bed also dissolved as my awareness moved inwards to the next and deeper dimension.
So, when we say 'Out of Body Experience', a similar expression might be that we say that we 'fall asleep'.
It is perhaps more accurate to say 'Inner Body Experience' and that we, as Sylvan Muldoon so wonderful puts it, "Rise to sleep".
My focus then took me floating through the glass pane of the sliding door. This would have been the door which separated my childhood lounge and the morning room extension at the back of our house. I felt the resistance of the glass as I passed through it (sometimes glass stretches with me like a bubble before I pass through it) and floated through the morning room and then out through the back windows and in to what I expected to be the back garden.
Unexpectedly I was faced with darkness.
I kept floating forward slightly, fearless. This often fascinates me in Waking Reality when I recall and diarise these events, how I would expect some passings to leave me in a cold breathless sweat, while others which I fear I will fear, can be shockingly pleasant. The courage of the second body never ceases to amaze!
I approached a black wall which glistened out of the dark. It was a vibrating living entity and now strikes me nine years on from the occasion as I blog this, that it may have been what Don Juan would term an ‘inorganic being’. Not my first meeting with them….ominous creatures of relatively static pulsating consciousness.
I decided to pass through this wall-sentience before me and as I did I also felt its gelatinous cellular viscosity. The entry seemed to trigger movement; an alien like pulsation of thick liquid black light, like visible dark matter, which oozed an abundance of cosmic chi.
It all got a little scary and I found myself automatically affirming, “I AM THE LIGHT, I AM THE WAY” as I continued to push on through like a bold explorer!
The black mass responded,
“YOU are the light? You are the light? Youuuuu!???
Liar, Liar Knickers on Fire!
Liar, Liar Knickers on Fire!!”, as an instrumental (like the Beatles' 'Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band') kicked off in the background!
I felt a huge excitement sparked by the upbeat tempo and emotion and my heart expanded sending me through to the other side. A ton of grey house bricks crashed down beneath me on to the ground as I floated above them and away towards the horizon and the ‘fade’. I sensed the hypnopompic rushing and I awoke, immediately reaching for my journal.
This was a brief experience but, Energy Rich. As I wrote up my notes I felt such wondrous excitement and appreciation of life in all its multi dimensionality.
That morning I went out to teach a yoga class and then returned home for lunch and some office work. I sat at my laptop, pulled up my old school's office email address and wrote an email.
I realised my previous errors. This time, I drafted a personal summation of my story; how I left school early, lost myself, lost myself further, lost myself completely and then decided to turn this ship around.
The story flowed out of my heart painlessly and I shared how I had been blessed with love and good fortune and was now in a position to help other youngsters like my past self, who needed help.
I drafted the mail in a swift few minutes, which was a little shorter than this blog and hit the send button. I felt good. I felt really good.
I had finally said what I really wanted and needed to say. I had released what I had realised throughout the years; I was just a babe thrust in to a world of craziness and that the many traumas I had been through had scarred and moulded 'me and my' responses.
Many years of teaching and healing had helped me break through the wall.
Five minutes later I received an email reply from the school office.
“Hi Matt,
This is X,
M’s friend from school (M is my big brother).
I have been working in the school office for the last few years now. Please come by and say hi and I’ll introduce you to C and you can talk about helping us with some yoga and tai chi'".
The last time I had seen X, I was 13 years old. My parents were away, my brother threw a huge party and my great friend R (who I saw Pink Floyd's The Wall with), had been dancing on our next door neighbour's car roof after we had both drunk way too much Chartreuse Vert!
So, as they say,
If you can dream it
You can do it.
Matt Gluck ~ Feb 7th 2025
Outer Body Experience ~ Astral Projection Course...
