Greetings to Everyone, especially Maat and Bruno.
I'm amazed at how our Discussions area has suddenly kicked off and gotten really interesting. Maat, I read your introduction about yourself, and I must say how fortunate you are to have been able to take a journey through the Far East. That has been a dream of mine for all my life ever since I got interested in Yoga and Eastern philosophies back in the 1960's. (That's gives you an idea of just how long I've been hanging around this Earth.) I was fortunate to read a book that had some of Patanjali's teachings in Eastern religion, and that got me interested in Reincarnation and Karma, and that theory made a lot of sense to me at that age. Actually the early Gnostic Christianity included that in their teachings. The most important concept was that of us being a Spark of God, made in God's image, which means we are like God, Our Father, the All, or whatever you would like to call it. Yes, modern Christianity has really gotten the Western World on a path that I believe is really quite distant from what Jesus really taught. I refer you to the Nag Hammadi and the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discovered in the mid-1940's, and are filled with teachings of a quite different Jesus from which we all know here in the U.S.
The modern movement in Born-again Christianity has really done the world a disfavor by saying that all you need to do to get into heaven is believe in Jesus Christ. What you should believe in is what he really said as written in the Gospel of Thomas, where he tells us that we are as Gods, in fact, even in the King James version of he Bible he tells his disciples that they can do everything that he has done, and more. Eastern religions, at their core, also have that key idea, that we have this Spark of Divinity and basically that we are here to awaken ourselves to that fact. There are many techniques and practices to accomplish that, such as meditation, which is probably the key technique for getting control of errant thoughts going through our mind all day. Another key concept is realizing that our world or Universe is a multi-dimensional world. When we go to sleep at night, we enter one of those worlds, a portion of the astral plane, that once you become lucid in your dreams, you will begin to recognize, as you return to what is mainly a reflection of the Earthly plane, which the Kabbalists call Malkuth. We kind of think of these planes as stacked on top of one another, but really they interpenetrate each other, and the only difference in one plane from another is its frequency of vibration. Generally, the higher you go in frequency, the closer you are to the more spiritual planes. In the Ksabala, we are taught that there are 10 main planes, but within those basic ten planes there are 40 subplanes, and each of those subplanes has another 40 subplanes. This is where we get the concept that Hermes Trismegistrus meant, when he said, "As Above, so Below, and as Within, so Without," meaning within and without our bodies, or minds. Hermes basically told us that our Universe is mental, and a very good book to read talking about this concept is
The Kybalian[.
Maat, Bruno, one thing you will want to ask you when you begin picking and choosing what techniques you want to follow, is just what is your purpose for Astral Traveling. If you want to begin a journey of just discovering who you are, and just want to meet your guides, might be different from someone who wants to be fully illuminated, and what path you follow will depend on whether you want to follow the Christian path, Eastern path, or just your own inner seeking, and no one else can tell you what path to follow. This site, the LBT, offers much information in whatever path you are attracted to, but if you really want to approach it from a religious path, then you may want to connect with a specific religious group. I can tell you from my own journey, though, that they all lead to the same place. We are all on a spiritual path to return to that from which we became, the All, the Mind, the Source, and there are many planes of existence between us and the the dwelling of the ultimate Creator, and we are on an everlasting journey of evolution, growth before we accomplish that.
You may believe in something else, and that is okay too, there is really no Correct or Incorrect to do it. Your own Soul will determine which way you will go, and as Edgar Cayce, the prophet and seer of the 20th Century said, no one will be left behind, unless as has happened in this Universe, at the end of a Great Dark Age, a person, absolutely refuses to return to the Light, and has accomplished such heinous deeds, then the Angels of God will be given the order to dissolve that Soul Being and all its incarnations into its Primordial Atoms and will be sent back to the Great Central Sun to be reassemilated into the Soul pool, if you will. But that is very, very rare. However, the Creator is Love, and Loves all HIs/Her creations and will do everything in its power to see that no one is left behind, and we are given many many chances to put our deeds right. Anyway, that is what I have found to be True, but there is enough room in this great Universe, for many realities and many truths. I welcome yours and anyone elses opinions and discussions on these matters.