Spectacular Ways to Astral Travel--Or How to Leave Your Body Without Leaving Home

Astral travel is becoming more and more popular from what I hear (and not much reaches my ears that I don't say to myself 'I heard that!') so I am just the person to ask about the subject, seeing as I have astrally-traveled my way around the world several times already and intend to do it several more as soon as I can get flight-clearance.

First, let's get the preliminaries out of the way, shall we? After all, that is where preliminaries belong--out the way.

1. A body (preferably your own).

2. A comfy pair of slippers. (I don't know about you, but I do an awful lot of astral-walking when I travel and a good pair of slippers is invaluable.)

3. A few toffees in case you get peckish.

4. Three cans of mace to fight off those malign entities in the astral-world that won't take a simple 'No' for an answer

There is no one right way to travel astrally. That is the first piece of advice I can give you which is useful, and not all covered in crumbs and lint, like advice other people might give you. I always have my advice dry-cleaned before I even think of handing it out to be passed around and examined.

So if your way to travel is not my way, and my way is not your way, then you take your way and I'll take mine, and I'll be in Scotland afore ye!

The second piece of advice I can give you (for those of you who are counting) is never to astral-travel in your 'birthday suit'. This is paramount and nothing to sneeze at, but if you do please use a kleenex. I don't think I need go into detail here, aside from saying those who are caught without their pajamas or nightie should expect to need those cans of mace I mentioned earlier, in spades. But where you are going to carry them, don't ask me. I carry mine in my housecoat pockets.

The third piece of advice I can provide (yes I know, you are still counting, you little persnickety fudge-pot) is to stay close to home on your first outing. It is not advisable to go gallivanting off to parts unknown until you have some experience with parts known--namely don't leave your bedroom on your first flight. Just float around it, and examine things--like those socks you tossed on the floor thinking your wife would pick them up and of course, being the responsible woman she is, she didn't, knowing you and your sloppy ways are never to be corrected by her picking up after you.

I have a number of other tips, but let us just leave those for now, lying with my dirty socks on the floor, and get down to some actual travelogues of trips I have taken in my vast and far-reaching journeys into the astral-plane.

For those readers who at this point have become curious as to how they themselves may travel on the astral-plane, I have taken many pages of instructions and, using my potato-peeler, reduced them to a few simple steps that you may want to follow to the ends of the earth and beyond.

1. Find a flat place like a bed, a couch, or even the floor, to stretch out on. I don't advise doing this on the subway, as you may leave the physical-plain at Young and Bloor and not return to it until the underground reaches Union Station, and to get back into your body you will have to use another token.

2. Do a body-scan, relaxing all your muscles from your toes to your nose, pausing at your belly-button for short breather.

3. Visualize your ethereal-body. It is easy to do. Just imagine a copy of your body in all it's detail, but a little thinner and less flabby, as you will need a slimmer version in order to get it to take-off on the runway.

4. Extract your physical body from your ethereal body using tweezers, or small pliers, or some other implement ready-to-hand. Be gentle. If you tear your ethereal material it's difficult to get repaired as most tailors charge an arm and a leg to sew back an arm and a leg, (so to speak.)

5. 'See' your body becoming lighter.  See it fill with hot-air (for some of you this will be easier than for others.)  See it rise and set your timer for ten minutes--when the bell rings turn it over for another ten minutes. At this point it should be feeling airy and lite and it should leave your body easily. Allow it to go but make it promise to be home by 10:00 or it will be 'grounded' for two-weeks.

The first time I left my body (voluntarily that is--I have also been forced out of my body against my will--but that is a story for another time) was after I had purused a book called 'Your Body--Your Trip' by Dr. Whare Forarthou. I heartily recommend this book as it covers the subject from head to toe--and if you are going to astral-travel you will need to bring both those body-parts.

The good doctor said in that book (which I no longer have in my library owing to the fact that I took it with me on my first trip and accidentally left it lying on an astral-bench somewhere in Canton, Ohio); so as I was saying Dr. Forarthou said to leave the body it is first necessary to pack up your troubles in an old kit-bag and smile, smile smile. So I did and it worked like a charm. I left and floated North-by-Northwest and ended up in Hollywood where I did stand-in parts for actors who preferred not to be 'transparent' in their roles.

My next trip was even more eventful, as my dog 'Arthur Schopenhauer' happened to tag along when he jumped on me just before my corpus departed the mattress.

He so startled me we circled the earth three times before I was able to find the brake pedal ( I don't recommend Toyota-astral-gears) to enable me to slow us down to a speed where my head wasn't spinning like a child's dreidel at Hanukkah.

After visiting Australia where we caught some Rock Lobsters we went to feed the birds tuppence a bag at Julie Andrew's house. All in all it was lots of fun, but Schopenhauer fell asleep on our trip back to my material-body and had nightmare he was adopted by Barbara Woodhouse.

In conclusion I might say that I highly recommend astral-travel for all and sundry, but the sundry should remember to bring their galoshes and don't talk to astral-strangers unless they first identify themselves by the secret handshake of astrals everywhere--namely a high-five followed by a round of mixed-martial arts. 

(8/18/2010)