Problem 9: I Can't Go Anywhere

by Bob Peterson

In this article I continue my series to help you solve out-of-body experience problems. The previous articles in the series are:

This time I'll help you solve another common OBE problem: You successfully leave your body but you can't go anywhere. You seem trapped, can't leave your bedroom, unable to push through doors, windows or walls, or you can't seem to reach a friend.

Understanding the problem

Experienced astral travelers agree: barriers like this are almost always psychological: your progress is blocked by limiting beliefs, fears, or doubts, whether conscious or subconscious. For example, subconscious fears--fears you may not even know you have--can hold you back because of the mysterious unknown: Who knows what's out there? It's a defense mechanism to keep you safe.

To get around these problems, apply a bit of psychology. Here are some possible solutions:

Solution 1 - Try all your options

Sometimes you can't push through a door because, in some deep part of your psyche, you think it might be impossible. After all, you can't do it when you're physical. To your psyche, a closed door may imply a barrier you should not cross. But since you've never pushed through a wall while physical, you may not have that bias.

So if you can't get through a door, try walking through a nearby wall. If you can't get through the wall, try a nearby window. Don't give up until you've tried all three.

Even if you can't push through a door, you can try to open it. Many people find that, although they can't really open the door, they seem to pass right through as soon as they try.

Solution 2 - Leave your astral body

In my previous article (#8 above) I offered this as a solution to astral blindness, but it also works for getting stuck and being unable to leave your immediate surroundings. For the same reasons, I might add. So close your (astral) eyes and use your imagination to try to separate your conscious awareness from your non-physical (etheric?) body into a second non-physical (astral?) body.

Solution 3 - Raise your vibrations

I talked about this, too, in the previous article. Sometimes you can't get through a window, wall, or door because your conscious awareness is vibrating at too low a rate; the same reason that may make you blind during an OBE. Occultists would say your vibrations are too slow and "physical," and collide with the vibrations of the counterpart of the physical walls, doors, windows.

To counter this, try raise your vibrations. Close your eyes and imagine your conscious awareness is vibrating at a given rate, then imagine the vibration gets higher and higher, like turning up a dial. Or perhaps like a musical note that gets higher and higher in pitch. It might help to imagine peace, tranquility, or heaven or other happy thoughts. Or recall a song that really puts you in a good mood.

Solution 4 - Back your way through barriers

Another time-tested trick is to turn around and face away from the barrier (wall, door, window, etc.), then take a step backwards, backing up through the barrier rather than going through it forwards. This is simple, but effective.

Solution 5 - Freedom Now!

Another solution is to strongly insist, demand, or even scream and shout out that you are completely free from obstruction. Yelling "Freedom Now!" can unlock subconscious barriers and set you free. Willpower can overpower even stubborn psychological limitations.

Solution 6 - Think of a place and pull yourself there

I described this technique in a blog article from 2013 called Controlling Your Reality in an OBE. Basically, you think of a far-away place, set a mental anchor there, and pull yourself to the anchor. It's more about intent than actual movement.

Solution 7 - Ask helpers to take you some where

In my experience, there are helpers "out there" during my OBEs who are willing to help, even if you don't see them. In fact, I usually don't see them, but I can talk to them and hear them normally. They never interfere unless you ask them for help. But if you ask for help, they're usually very cooperative and willing to help.

So if you're having trouble, try asking (aloud) for help. Just say (aloud, in the OBE) "Can I please get some help traveling to X?"

Conclusions

Sometimes we stand in our own way and block our own progress. Doubts, fears and limiting beliefs hold us back. That's true in the physical as well as non-physical environments. The best way around them is often to discover and resolve the limiting beliefs that hold you back. That's best done before you go out-of-body.

But once you're in the OBE, use psychology devices like the solutions above. These can get you past the blockage, which, in turn, helps you resolve those limiting beliefs and fears.

It's a spiraling cycle: limiting beliefs keep you inside, but the more you struggle, the more those beliefs are reinforced.

Instead, use these simple tricks to your advantage, and your newfound freedom will break the cycle of "stuck" and prove that you are, in fact, free to go wherever you want. As they said in the Wizard of Oz, you had the power all along.

Bob Peterson,
18 April 2023

Problem 8: I Get Out and I'm Blind

by Bob Peterson

In this article I continue my series to help you solve out-of-body experience problems. The previous articles in the series are:

This time I'm covering another common OBE problem: You make it all the way to a full-fledged out-of-body experience, but you find yourself completely blind and unable to see.

What is non-physical sight?

If you take a step back and look at the big picture, what we call physical "sight" is really just our physical brain's interpretation of the impressions light makes on the retina. Visual data from the eyes gets routed through the lens to the retina, along the optic nerve to the visual cortex at the back of the brain. From there impulses are sent to different processing centers of the brain where we interpret the image in several different ways (threat assessment, facial recognition, pattern recognition, memory processing, etc.). This interpretation is we call "sight."

In fact, the lenses in our eyes present the light onto our retina upside down, but your brain turns it "right side up" for your interpretation. Scientists actually conducted experiments where they gave people special glasses that flipped what they saw to be "right-side-up" on the retina. At first, the people couldn't function at all with the world seemingly upside-down. But after a while, their brains learned to adjust and then they could "see" the world normally again. But here's the weird part: When they removed the special glasses, the world looked upside-down again, until their brains readjusted back to normal.

In an out-of-body experience you don't really have "astral" eyes, retinas, optic nerves, or an astral brain. All you have is a similar interpretation, but of mysterious non-physical data. Our non-physical body schema is really just a framework we use to interpret that data. In fact, the "astral" body can take any shape, such as a sphere, a pinpoint of light, a bird, or a human body. We normally assume human form out of habit because we've been using it so long to interpret sense data.

In fact, you don't really have astral senses of sight, hearing, touch, or any of it. All you have is interpretations of all these non-physical perceptions.

The same can be said for dream senses: When we "see" something in a dream, we are really just experiencing hallucinated inner events, and interpreting that data as sight, sound, touch, and so forth.

My point is simply this: if you don't "see" during an OBE it's not really something to be too concerned about. I've found myself blind in countless OBEs where I just ignored it, walked away from my body and focused on other things, like plotting a course of action, etc., and a few seconds later, without even trying, I realize that I had started to "see" without even trying. My sense of sight somehow just naturally kicked in without effort, and I hadn't really even noticed it.

Different types of non-physical sight

In my first book, chapter 18 (which you can read here) I described four basic types of non-physical sight:

Astral sight - This feels closest to "physical sight" everyone wants to have.
Astral mind sensing - This is more like sensing everything around you in all directions at the same time. It's almost like touching the entire room, and everything in it, all at once.
Body sight - This is where you try to open your non-physical eyes, but instead your physical body's eyes open and you see, for example, your ceiling, but often blurry.
Clairvoyance - This is what people today would call "Remote Viewing", where you receive visual impressions of things, both near and far. Long ago, they used to call it "traveling clairvoyance." Most people don't stop to consider that if you can do it from the in-the-body state, you can also do it while out-of-body.

So when I say I'm "blind" I really mean that I want (or expect) to have the first type, astral sight, but I have one of the other types instead, or none at all. And that's annoying because it's hard to describe what you "saw" in your OBE unless it's that first type. So what can you do about it?

Solutions

Here are some ideas to get you unstuck.

Solution 1 - Get farther away from your physical body

Author and experienced astral traveler Sylvan Muldoon wrote that the physical body has a "cord activity range" that not only pulls you prematurely back to your body, but also interferes with your sense of sight. He estimated it to be 15 feet/5 meters, but some authors say it's more like 10. I've also found this to be true, so I always recommended follow these steps:

Close your (astral) eyes.
Put some distance (15 feet/5 meters) between you and your physical body.
Make an effort to open your (astral) eyes. This is just like opening your physical eyes.

In my experience this is usually enough to restore good eyesight.

Solution 2 - Clarity now!

William Buhlman, author of several books on the subject, suggests you demand “Clarity Now!” to engage your sense of sight. Other suggest you even scream it at the top of your lungs. And it often does bring clarity.

Solution 3 - Engage your analytical mind

I've had OBEs in which my "sight" didn't operate properly until I engaged my analytical mind. I could "see" objects in my bedroom but my vision was extremely limited and I couldn't correctly identify or interpret them. So I started doing math problems in my mind to engage my analytical mind. I started doing simple math problems in my head. Something like this: "1024 plus 768 is, let's see, working from the right to the left, 8+4, is 12, 2+6 is 8, but carry the 10, so 92, and 10+7 is 17. So the answer is 1792." As I did this, all the objects in my bedroom came into sharp focus and I could "see" everything normally.

Solution 4 - Leave your astral body

Try to leave your astral body. Seriously. Like I said before, our non-physical body schema is really just a framework, and if that form is limiting, leave it behind. How do you do that? Just try to escape your astral body like you did your physical; walk away from it or visualize your spirit leaving the astral body, rising up, etc.

The result is that you'll usually find yourself in a different "astral body," one that can see more clearly.

Solution 5 - Raise your vibrations

Occultists of old would probably say that you cannot see because your awareness was associated with a dense a non-physical body, like the "etheric body," or the "lower astral." So you can either leave that "etheric body" and take control of the finer "astral" body, or else just focus on raising your vibrations to a higher level, and hopefully your sense of sight will snap into place.

Solution 6 - Leave "The Void"

Some seasoned out-of-body experiencers describe a place called "The Void" that's a jumping-off point for non-physical excursions. Fred Aardema comes to mind. In "The Void" all you see is blackness. It's like you're in outer space, but no stars or planets are visible.

I firmly believe that many people misinterpret "The Void" as blindness because you can't see anything. Look down at your non-physical hands. Can you see them or are they invisible too? (I've had OBEs in which I could, OBEs in which I couldn't, and still others where I could see them as filmy and translucent).

Either way, refocus your awareness to someplace more familiar, but not in your bedroom or wherever your body resides. In fact, it's usually better to focus on an area outside your house or apartment. Refocus to the roof of your house, out in the street, a garden, a park or wherever you want. Once refocused, your sense of sight is usually restored.

Conclusions

Non-physical senses can be confusing; especially the sense of sight. Hopefully these tricks can help you get unstuck. So go out and see the sights, and write down what you "saw" in your OBE journal.

Bob Peterson,
04 April 2023

The OBE Outlook On Life

Tuesday, April 18, 2023