Re: Astral Projection vs. Religion?
I'll repeat some of my posts from that other thread, for ease of reading:
Paul very clearly reference OOBE here:
I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know--God knows.
2 Corinthians 12:2
He goes on, in that passage, to talk about the things he saw/experienced.
I also found another reference to OOBE in direct Christian experience. This time it was St Catherine of Siena. She was very much a mystic from the word go, and had all kinds of interesting visions and ecstatic experiences, but on one particular occasion she fell into a kind of trance for three days. Some people observing thought she might be dead, so I assume it was a coma or something similar. Some other observers who knew her and knew about her mystical experiences wondered if her soul had actually been removed from her body and she taken to "the third heaven" (not sure what that is, but it crops up from time to time in Christian mystical literature). After three days and nights, she did "return" but apparently she was quite disoriented and maintained that she had, indeed, left her body. She said she could never describe the things she saw and experienced because there were no words to do so.
Now, you really have to take stories of the lives of saints with a grain of salt, but the point is that this is a recognised Christian saint, and she is widely reported to have experienced OOBE. (As an interesting sidenote, Catherine of Siena was also said to occasionally levitate when she was in a prayer trance, and occasionally witnesses would see things around her like a visible aura of light. I don't know what to make of that, but it's interesting.)
There are probably other Christian saints and mystics who have similar OOB experiences, as well. I've only read about the lives of a handful of them, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find more references.
So the notion that Christianity is against OOBE is a gross misunderstanding of Christian spirituality and mystical experience. Certainly there are some sects of Christianity (it's a very, VERY large area, with a multitude of different denominations, sects, traditions, etc.) which would take a dim view of OBE, but given that St Paul, St Catherine of Siena, and almost certainly other saints experienced it, it would have to a fairly ignorant or very narrow-thinking sect, or it would have to be ignorant and narrow-thinking people.
May the light surround you, may you be blessed. May the light surround us, may we be blessed. May love and light surround us all, and may we all be healed and blessed. And so it is, and so it shall be, now and ever after.
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