Step 4: Now imagine that ball of energy becoming compressed, like a source of vast power being forced down into a smaller form and, by doing so, becoming brighter and more powerful.
Step 5: Now see that compressed, powerful ball buzzing and sparking as if it is going to explode. Can you feel its energy? Move it directly above your head.
Step 6: Now allow your compressed ball of energy to burst down and become a powerful stream of light and energy surging into your body.
Step 7: Feel your whole body buzz and vibrate as the energy activates you.
Three-Dimensional Doorway Technique
Good for: Everyone, but especially Visual or Physical people
This is the advanced version of my pyramid meditation (see page 129), focused on inducing a state of heightened energy.
Step 1: Find the center of your physical room or space. Kneel down there and put your hands out in front of you, touching at the fingertips, palms together, arms fully extended.
Step 2: Focus on your hands out in front of you and try to project your energy to the point just between your hands. Do this until you begin to see and sense energy generating. (Rubbing your hands briskly together may help you begin to sense the energy.) Spend several half-hour to one-hour sessions working on this until you become intensely aware of your own subtle energies.
Step 3: Slowly stand, maintaining the energy in front of you. Begin to slowly move your hands apart, drawing the energy with them, until your arms naturally lock. Now focus on the energy flowing in a line in front of you, between your hands. Focus on it and intensify it.
Step 4: Draw your hands together to meet at the fingertips as before, but this time above your head, forming a triangle with the energy.
Step 5: Now close your eyes and vividly see the energy in front of you as it flows around the triangle. See it expand until it is in proportion to your body, like a doorway.
Step 6: Focus on the center of the triangle, then focus on seeing beyond it. In a few moments, you will begin to see or sense some kind of location beyond the boundary of the portal.
Step 7: Repeat the process until there are three triangular portals around you. Now sense each portal opening, and how this causes their energy to interact.
Step 8: Now focus your attention on the fourth triangle below your feet, formed by the edges of the others. Once this fourth triangle opens, energy channels will surround you; they will create a fifth portal from their interaction.
Step 9: The fifth portal will give you access to a high degree of energy that can then be drawn into the body, starting just behind the top of the head and flowing down to the feet. Take a few moments to feel it doing so. The vibrational state often begins with a sensation of pulsing energy flowing into the body as you do this.
Step 10: To finish, slowly reverse the process and ground yourself into normal reality again.
Sphere Doorway Technique
Good for: Everyone, but especially Intellectual or Visual people
This is probably the hardest of the techniques you will attempt. I advise working with the Three-Dimensional Doorway Technique, above, for a while before you attempt this version. It requires a high level of mental acrobatics.
Step 1: Imagine a sphere in front of you. I recommend you see it as blue, since this colour has been highly effective for me. See it as around the size of a basketball with a smooth, uniform surface.
Step 2: Focus on the surface of the sphere, in your mind’s eye. Allow it to rotate and move on its axis. Really pay attention to its form as you imagine it floating in space.
Step 3: Move the mental image around you. Try to move it behind you and still maintain a sense of its presence. Move it above your head, again maintaining a sense of its location and how it feels in that location.
Step 4: Now bring the sphere back in front of you and see whether it has changed in any way. Focus again on the surface and see the surface begin to become misty or
slightly transparent.
Step 5: This is the part where you will need to hold the visualisation in mind. See the whole surface becoming a doorway, opening up and allowing the energy of the sphere to come through. Your mind will no doubt become a little knotted by the impossibility of a spherical form opening in this way, but stick with it, and don’t allow your mind to analyse what is happening.
Step 6: Allow the energy to flow out of the doorway to surround you or, if you feel heightened enough, into your body. Note the way the energy feels. How does it differ from that of the pyramid? Does it trigger the vibrational state in your body?
Step 7: To finish, slowly reverse the process and ground yourself into normal reality again.
After a few attempts at this technique, try visualizing two spheres. Go through exactly the same process but let the spheres open, first one then the other. Do the energies mix or affect each other? You can also move the spheres so that they overlap and become totally aligned. This can be very interesting as you, in effect, have two doorways on top of each other.
Sleep Interruption Technique
Good for: Type 2 (sleeping/dream) people
Step 1: Set an alarm for around two hours before your usual waking time, ideally an alarm that does not jolt you abruptly out of sleep.
Step 2: Once awake, do not get out of bed. Lie there for a few moments and think back over the dream you were having when awakened, or any other you can remember clearly. Try to sense how you felt physically in the dream. Did you have any body awareness? If so, how did it feel?
Step 3: Now try shifting your awareness back and forth between the sleep state and the waking state. The Conscious Sleep Technique on page 185 may help with this.
Step 4: Now try to shift back and forth while gradually doing so faster and going deeper.
Step 5: As you find yourself in the in-between state, try to hold your awareness in that state. Reach out with your consciousness until you sense energy and vibrations moving around or down into your body and triggering your vibrational state. It may take a few attempts to reach this point.
Home Immersive Approaches
These approaches can be used alongside the other techniques listed here to reach deeper levels of trance. The idea is to build a kind of “toolbox” of methods and systems that not only bring you into trance while you are using them, but also leave a lasting imprint on your unconscious, leading to a higher chance of having an out-of-body experience at a later date. The more you focus your attention on the idea of leaving the body, and the more you become comfortable with this idea, the higher your chances of success.
Ganzfeld Approach
Good for: Type 1 (waking/conscious) and Visual people
This is the process for making a Ganzfeld set-up yourself. I will outline here how to work with Ganzfeld to benefit the OBE. I recommend a thirty- to thirty-five-minute session, following the steps below.
Step 1: Get comfortable in your chair or recliner, cover your eyes, and turn on the red light and the pink noise. Gaze into the red glow while allowing the sounds to envelope you. Allow your eyes to search in the void in front of you until they become still and you enter a state of inner focus.
Step 2: Let your everyday thoughts evaporate, and focus on the images and forms that begin to appear in front of you. Let them unfold, and allow yourself to be taken with the images.
Step 3: You may find that you are perceiving whole scenes and landscapes. Try to place your consciousness fully into the scene.
Step 4: You may realise that you are out of your body at some point in this process. You may also find that you experience perceptions very much like remote viewing.
Aerial Footage Approach
Good for: Type 1 (waking/conscious), Visual, and Physical people
This approach involves using a large television scr
een or, even better, a projector. You will need to get hold of some aerial footage, but any footage that gives the impression of flying and weightlessness can be used (see the Resources section of my website, www.grahamnicholls.com). I advise doing a variation of this as a form of meditation each day for around thirty minutes.
Step 1: Start the footage and stand in front of the screen in a darkened room. Focus on the movement and try to imagine that you are in the scene, floating across clouds and over vast landscapes.
Step 2: Begin to feel the sensations of the air rushing past and the feeling of your body floating above the ground.
Step 3: Allow your body to move with the movement on screen. This will probably happen naturally, so do not fight it. Experience the full range of sensations.
Step 4: Begin to repeat out loud an affirmation such as, “I am able to leave my body and experience this and any landscape I desire.”
Step 5: Now lie back on a bed or in a recliner and close your eyes. Let the images and impressions you have been watching continue to arise in your mind.
Step 6: Try to shift your awareness so that it syncs with the images you’ve seen. Focus on the sensations of floating and moving. Allow these sensations to lead naturally into an out-of-body experience.
Techniques for Intellectual People
Mirror Technique
This approach is based upon a form of affirmation.
Step 1: Before you get into bed to sleep, hold a large mirror in front of you.
Step 2: Look into your eyes and greet the image in the mirror as your subconscious self. Imagine the image in the mirror as the part of you that can make anything happen.
Step 3: Ask your subconscious self to cause you to leave your body during the night and to ensure that you have full recall of what you see and do.
Step 4: Now place the mirror in another room. Lie down, and keep the image of your subconscious self in the mirror in the forefront of your mind as you drift into sleep.
Step 5: Focus on the location of the mirror and again ask your subconscious self to cause you to leave your body as you sleep and to ensure that you have full recall.
Sunlight Technique
Step 1: Use the Deep Breathing Technique (see page 180) until you feel totally clear and calm. Now imagine that you are walking to the window of the room and that outside it is a beautiful spring day full of sunshine.
Step 2: Now imagine yourself opening the windows of the room. Feel the breeze lightly touching your face and feel the warmth of the sun on your skin.
Step 3: The room that you are in is becoming infused with positivity, light, and peace. Even the everyday objects that you are so familiar with have become somehow lighter. Feel the effect this has on you, and allow yourself to go with this feeling.
Step 4: Now see the beauty of the world outside, the light and the energy. The scene is drawing you out; you are longing to experience what is beyond your window.
Step 5: Feel the energy from the sun rushing into your body and lifting you up with the breeze. Feel your whole being drawn to leave, to reach the world outside. Picture in your mind a person or place you have not seen, or been to, for some time.
Step 6: This approach may result in the vibrational state, or you could simply find yourself lifted up out of your body. You may also find yourself in another location altogether.
Object Technique
Step 1: Select an object that has a lot of importance to you and place it somewhere in your home, as far as possible from where you sleep. It could be something personal, like a piece of jewelry, or even a framed photograph.
Step 2: Now take a few steps back from the object and look at it intently. Observe every detail of the object and note how you feel.
Step 3: Trace your steps back to the usual location of the object. Observe how you feel as you do this and take in as much as you can about the route you walk.
Step 4: Now look intently at the usual location of the object and again note how you feel.
Step 5: Return to the current location of the object and try to pay as much attention as possible to the route you walk. Repeat the process from step 2 to step 5 several times.
Step 6: Go through your usual relaxation and vibrational state techniques. When you feel ready, focus on lifting out of your physical body and reaching the object.
Lucid Dreaming Technique
Good for: Type 2 (sleeping/dream) people
Step 1: Each night before going to sleep, remind yourself that, should you become conscious in your dream, you will have the opportunity to leave your body. Really believe this and try to build an emotional connection to the idea. Also go over the next steps so that you can recall them during your dream.
Step 2: Once you are aware that you are dreaming, say out loud in the dream, “I am conscious that I am dreaming and I wish to have an out-of-body experience.” For most people, the act of saying this out loud in the dream will be enough and you will probably find that you are propelled out of your body.
If you find that you do not have an OBE using this approach, you may still have some apprehension about leaving your body. Try re-reading Chapter 5, “Transforming Beliefs.” It may also mean that you need to reach a deeper level of sleep. Use a relaxation technique before going to sleep, continue practicing this method, and bring in other techniques based on your profile.
Techniques for Visual People
Cloud Technique
Although probably the simplest technique I’m aware of, this has a special place in my heart since it was one that I used often when I was learning to induce OBEs for the first time. It is a very gentle method and is especially good for people who find very complex visualisations difficult.
The idea is to allow yourself to slowly shift from one state of awareness to another. The key is not to get too focused on the peaceful feelings and relaxing visuals, but to try to sense yourself in another location and really shift from one location (in your body) to another (out of your body), rather than just imagining it.
Step 1: Use one of the relaxation techniques until you feel calm but alert. Imagine your body beginning to dissolve.
Step 2: Feel that you are no longer in your room, or on the bed, or wherever you are physically. Feel yourself floating, and imagine that you are lying on a bed of clouds.
Step 3: See clouds and sky all around you. Feel the wind on your body and the sun on your skin. Let yourself gently drift through the air and over landscapes.
Step 4: Intensify this awareness of the the sky and clouds until you reach a peak and find yourself out of your body, or you experience exiting your body. (My first induced OBE used this method; I experienced a jolt, almost like electricity, and found myself floating above my body.)
Body of Light Technique
This technique was popularised by many esoteric writers at the turn of the twentieth century and has been used effectively for well over a hundred years. When coupled with some of my other techniques, such as immersion or the G-Technique, it can be extremely effective.
Step 1: Lie in bed or relax in a comfortable recliner, close your eyes, and go through your relaxation technique.
Step 2: Now begin to imagine a figure standing at the foot of your bed or floating above you. Try to see the details of this figure (it should look like you from behind.)
Step 3: Now focus on the figure and start to see it shining and glistening with light. Try to intensify this to the point that it resembles the vibrational state.
Step 4: Use a technique such as the Bellow’s Breath to intensify this vibrational awareness.
Step 5: Now try to shift your awareness to the point of view of the figure. Try to see and sense as if you were the figure until it becomes so real you realise that you have left your body or you experien
ce the seperation process.
Self-Image Technique
Good for: Type 2 (sleeping/dream) people
This method is based on the idea of reaching your unconscious mind during the process of going to sleep, or shortly before.
Step 1: Securely affix a large mirror to the ceiling above your bed. Alternately, you can draw the outline of your body on a large sheet of paper, or on a bed sheet, and affix that to the ceiling, or use a photograph of yourself.
Step 2: Shortly before you would normally go to bed, lie down on top of the covers and look at the reflection or image of yourself above. If you are using a mirror, make gestures and movements with your face as if you are looking around the room from above. Spend about fifteen minutes focusing on your image.
Step 3: Now get into bed and close your eyes, but try to hold the image of yourself in your mind as you go to sleep. You may find that this technique and the Audio/Visual Immersive Approach work well together.
Step 4: Allow yourself to drift into sleep but, as with the Conscious Sleep Technique, try to hold the image of yourself as long as possible, and be aware of yourself falling asleep.
Step 5: If you intensify this image and process each night, it can lead to an OBE. It can be coupled with the Sleep Interruption Method and an affirmation such as, “I will have a fully conscious out-of-body experience tonight.”
Techniques for Auditory People
Infra-Liminal and Frequency
Good for: Type 2 (sleeping/dream) people
Frequencies have been shown by the Monroe Institute and others to be another tool for influencing our brain state, and thus aiding us in having OBEs. I have worked with subliminal hypnotic techniques and frequencies to induce the vibrational state as well as full OBEs. (I call this infra-liminal technology. See my website for more information.)
Step 1: Using an Infra-liminal track or pink noise, focus your awareness on the sound and begin to sense your awareness expanding outward.
Navigating the Out-of-Body Experience Page 19
