Christmas Eve 2014 Astral Projection

Last night I had my most successful astral projection-esque experience without the aid of the drugs that would usually induce this. I went to bed after my family's christmas eve party while slightly drunk and pretty stoned. Both alcohol and weed disrupt REM sleep, so these typically reduce my chances of astral projection, lucid dreaming, and other spiritual experiences. However, I did take a small amount of melatonin before bed to help me sleep, so this could be why my experience was so successful.

Anyway, I woke up in the early morning hours and noticed my room quickly filling with steam or fog. My eyes then opened, my room looked normal, and i realized I was in sleep paralysis. I closed my eyes again to see my room filling with steam. I could see all these forms and dark entities surrounding my bed, which I've heard of people seeing during sleep paralysis.  I knew this was a perfect opportunity, so I started meditating as deeply as possible by clearing my mind and just "being." This is a mental state I have learned and practiced while using dissociative drugs. My "astral body" started flying backwards and down at a very high speed, which felt almost identical to the onset of a breakthrough ketamine experience. I was flying past all these floating particles, and it was like i was being sucked into another world.

As I focused more, an environment began to manifest around me. Soon, I was flying quickly through a tunnel made of eyeballs. There were lots of purple, grey, and greenish colors, and everything was so bright and vivid. In fact, these visuals were remarkably more vivid and tangible than the visuals of even my best ketamine trips. I started to feel so amazed at the visuals that I lost concentration. Everything faded, and I was again flying backwards though particles. This is where my past experiences would have ended, and I would have woken up, but this time I quickly brought it back by snapping back into a focused trance.

I was once again in the tunnel of eyes. My movements were now less automatic, and I had to really focus to fly forward and progress through the tunnel. I would start, speed up, then stop. Eventually, I came to the end of the tunnel and was greeted by a giant 3D helical and fractalesque formation. This is the most similar shape i can find through a quick google search: http://www.brainreleasevalve.com/images/kronkel-full.jpg but the one I saw was very colorful and was constantly changing colors. The shape had dozens of entrances to tunnels, and I entered one. I was now in a psychedelic world that is reminiscent to this Alex Grey painting: http://alexgrey.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Alex_Grey_Net-of-Being.jpg except the columns did not have faces, and it was more blue, purple, and green than orange, red, and yellow.

I flew through that world a bit, and then I seemed to fade out of the experience. In my experience, the ability to retain that state of mind is kind of like running long distances. You can train to be able to stay there longer, but you only have the capability to stay there for so long at once. Your mind eventually tires out and needs a rest. It seems like every astral experience I have is deeper and longer lasting than the previous one. I have not had an experience like this without drugs in a long time, so I think my ketamine experiences have helped me here. Whenever I get into a "K hole" I try to meditate and stay in there as long as possible, and I think this skill can translate over to natural experiences. I also think the melatonin helped with the vividness of the colors. Nonetheless, this experience has been my most intense "sober" astral projection, and it even surpasses my ketamine journeys in some aspects.

I am still not sure about the true nature of experiences like this. Whether it is all in my head or actually a spiritual journey is still up in the air. There are many ways in which you can view the universe, and some of them would say that it does not matter if it is "all in your head," because it still exists. I am starting to care less about whether it exists or not, and I am just taking the experience for what it is. I believe spirituality of the human being is just as important as physical and mental health, regardless of it's implications in the grand scheme.

Although my experiences are few and far between, I feel I am slowly getting better and better at entering and navigating the astral world. I will eagerly await my next experiences, and I may try to get back into lucid dreaming to further my progress.