Review: Astral Projection by Peter Longley

Review: Astral Projection

by Peter Longley

Today I'm reviewing Astral Projection by Peter Longley. The subtitle is: The ultimate astral projection guide with tips and techniques for astral travel, discovering the astral plane, and having an out of body experience!

I ordered this book a long time ago, so it's been sitting on my book shelf a while; so long, in fact, that I forgot who the author was. The author's name is not on the cover and there's no copyright notice. In fact, it's not anywhere in the book. There's also no information about the author, his level of experience, or where he acquired his knowledge of astral projection. None.

Is this book the "Ultimate Astral Projection Guide" as claimed on the cover? Hardly. The book is only 26 pages long. It's so small, it has no room to cover anything in depth.

The book does have some decent recommendations, like:

• Keep a dream journal and learn to remember your dreams
• Practice in the morning, not at night
• Practice while lying on your back

Longley only gives one technique to induce astral projection, but it's a bit unique, so I thought I'd talk about it. It's basically a variant of my "Almost Move" technique or Michael Raduga's "Phantom Wiggling" technique. The technique is basically this:

After the prerequisite relaxation and such (Longley says to use progressive relaxation) he suggests you focus on any body part and vividly imagine it's moving without actually moving it (as per "Almost Move") but then you switch to a different body part and do the same: imagine that body part is now moving, without actually moving it. So basically, you keep switching body parts upon which to focus the phantom movement. In a way it's almost like Raduga's "Technique Cycling" except you're just cycling through which body part does the "phantom wiggling." Interesting.

There are a few points of confusion in the book. For example, he writes:

"The hypnotic state is also referred to as the 'hypnagogic' state." (pg. 18)

I disagree. The "hypnotic state" is a state of hypnosis, which is a state of high suggestibility. The "hypnagogic" state is a precursor to sleep where people often experience vivid visual and auditory hallucinations. Two very different things.

Another thing I found confusing and mostly irrelevant was in chapter 2 where he describes the 7 sub-planes of the astral plane. He simply numbers them 7th to 1st, but oddly he says the 7th is the lowest sub-plane (he names it "avichi" and says this corresponds to "hell") and the highest is 1st. This is confusing and contradicts most other books.

His frequently asked questions section, chapter 5, is only 2 pages long, and only covers 5 questions, and inadequately. Compare that to the FAQ on my blog from 2019 which is longer than this entire book.

This is not a horrible book, but it's much too small to be of much value. I did find his "almost move cycling" technique interesting, though. I'll give it 2 stars out of 5. Save your money.

Robert Peterson
27 July 2021
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