A Conversation With... William Buhlman

The Monthly Aspectarian: Bill, if one was into these kinds of things in the early 70s, you had at least three books -- everybody had them -- Ram Dass's Be Here Now, Casteneda's first Don Juan book, and then there was Robert Monroe's Journeys Out of the Body. There's always been a fascination with out-of-body experiences. Were you involved with these experiences at that time?

William Buhlman: Yes, I was. Of course I was familiar with Robert Monroe's book, which is a modern classic, but I also was quite interested in Paul Twitchell's work that was published back in the 60s.

TMA: For anybody who doesn't know, we're now talking about the Eckankar material.

WB: Yes, I found the Eck materials especially interesting. As a matter of fact, I became a member back in '72, I believe it was. I participated in a lot of the Eckankar activities for about three years.

TMA: What were your other early influences?

WB: It was mostly personal experience. Back in '72 I had my first out-of-body experience. I was not a believer without an experience. I guess you could say I was an agnostic, but I was interested and it sounded intriguing, so I tried the target technique for three weeks. Nothing happened, but into the fourth week I actually had my first out-of-body experience.

The target technique is one of the classic techniques used today. You select three objects that are separated from where you will be doing the technique. Let's say you're going to lie down on your couch. You imagine yourself walking to three selected objects in your bedroom or another home. In my case, I selected things that my mother had that I had made while I was in grade school. They were a metal ashtray, a doorstop and a painting. Every night as I went to sleep, I imagined myself walking to these three objects, touching them, feeling them, being totally absorbed into these objects as much as possible. The key to this, of course, is to focus your attention away from your body as you're drifting to sleep. The premise behind the technique is that it will help to initiate a fully conscious out-of-body experience. Lo and behold, for me it actually worked.

I was really dedicated. Every day I did this as I fell asleep, and into the fourth week -- I was in a small, efficiency apartment -- when I awoke, I felt different. It's kind of difficult to describe, but I felt energized. When I reached out my arm, my arm actually went into the wall. That's when it hit me: Oh my god, I've done it! I thought of standing, and when I stood, I realized I was at the foot of the bed looking down looking down at the lump which was my physical body.

TMA: Often, that first discovery -- "Oh my god, I'm doing it!" -- will slam a person back into their body.

WB: That is one of the obstacles that people run into. As a matter of fact, even being in the vicinity of your body, any identification with it, can generally bring you back to it. In my case, during this situation, I think what happened is that I was so amazed that I didn't think about the body as even mine. My first experience was quite a shakeup for me. It lasted for only a minute or less, but it had an incredible impact upon my state of consciousness. I went from being agnostic to "experiencer" very rapidly.

TMA: Where did you go from there?

WB: I became obsessed with the entire topic. It opened up a whole new world to me. I was in college at the time at the University of Maryland, and this hadn't been on my radar screen anywhere. Suddenly, this whole idea of multiple dimensions and our ability to go beyond the body was opened up and I started to practice it every day, every day for years.

My first book, Adventures Beyond the Body, is the direct result. What I tried to do is chronicle my personal experiences as much as I could back in the early 70s. The techniques I used, how long it took, what sensations did I have, what kind of vibrational state experiences ... this was all new to me. I was a total novice. Just the vibrational state was quite an experience for the first year. I didn't know what all these buzzing, roaring sounds were, and paralysis and all these other things.

TMA: Give us a run-through of some of the major techniques that you discovered over the period of time you've been studying.

WB: I've been studying the topic and practicing it for twenty-nine years. I would say that I have personally used well over sixty different techniques.

TMA: Don't they more or less break down into groups that function similarly?

WB: Yes they do. That's one of the things I write about. There are imaginative techniques where you use your imagination to project your awareness to another location -- like the target technique, which is largely what I consider an imaginative technique. You're using your imagination as a tool. There are other techniques such as motion techniques where you initiate motion of your energy body. A typical one would be imagining yourself spinning as you're falling asleep. Not necessarily fast, but rotating on your axis. I rate about forty variations of this motion kind of technique. Actually, these techniques are done pretty widely. There are self-hypnosis techniques that people use today where they count themselves down and then they self-initiate from there. There are meditation techniques. There are chakra techniques that are becoming more popular where you work on your individual chakras. For instance, you may activate your third eye chakra and then feel or imagine as much as possible your consciousness exiting your body through your third eye.

TMA: A variation of that is to start at the first chakra at the base of the spine and work the energy up through the top of the head.

WB: That's the classic technique. In Secret of the Soul, I write about a few experiences that were initiated from kundalini yoga. It would actually self-initiate an out-of-body experience, often a quite dramatic one. There are different chakra points that people use. Some use the stomach chakra, some use the third eye chakra to self-initiate. It's quite a large variety.

TMA: Of course there's also the lucid dreaming technique ...

WB: There's a large variety of different kinds of dream techniques. Many of the Castenada type techniques ... looking at your hands, for instance, as in a dream.

TMA: That's where you can "wake up" and remember that you're in the dream state.

WB: Which is, of course, a difficult prospect for a lot of people. I've received a lot of letters related to out-of-body experiences, over 16,000 of them. People like the naturalness and the softness of the dream techniques. It's not as abrupt a transition as a kundalini experience would be, obviously. And there are a lot of variations of it. It's also not as effective for many people. It depends on the person.

Different kinds of dreaming techniques can be effective. Some people count themselves down through stepping down steps as they're falling asleep, and then they try to remember any time during a dream that there are steps, or where there are numbers, and they use that as a trigger. Most of the dreaming techniques use some kind of trigger mechanism, whether it be [noticing] your hand or a number or anything like that. One of the more famous ones that I think is effective is any anomaly. That's one of the ones that I teach. Any anomaly in the dream, like a lion under the kitchen table or something that doesn't belong in a dream ... focus upon that and then remember that you're dreaming.

TMA: You get that realization, "Wait a minute, this doesn't happen."

WB: Yes, that can be very effective because all of us have this type of experience. As a matter of fact, I think that's one of the purposes of blatant anomalies in a dream. Such as a cat that talks to you. It's almost like part of your subconscious mind is telling you, "Hey, buddy," knocking you on the head, "wake up. This does not belong here. Become aware in the dream." It's a very effective method if you begin to examine your dreams. Today, many people are doing that.

TMA: Would you consider the trance experience, through rattles or drums, to be the same kind or slightly different?

WB: I consider that to be a different type of approach. A trance induction, which is, of course, a shamanic technique in many ways, is used in most of the shamanic cultures such as in South America, the American Indians ... they would use drumming, which is basically the earliest form of brain synchronization. They enter a self-induced trance state using drums and rattles and other musical devices. From that state, they can and are known to induce out-of-body experiences. I find this fascinating; it's one of the things that I do in workshops.

TMA: They do seem to be of a slightly different nature than what you usually think of as astral projection.

WB: Yes, the whole idea is that there is a direct connection between some of the shamanic techniques that are used today and out-of-body experiences. The problem is the semantics.

Based on the shamans that I've talked to in Peru and other parts of the world, when you talk to them face to face and ask them questions, you see that they are very familiar with out-of-body states of consciousness. It's just not a normal phrase used in their culture, so many people don't connect the two. But many shamans have told me that that's the quintessential skill of the shaman -- to be able to leave the physical body and not only to enter the spirit realm but also to help heal their patient through energy manipulation. This is often done through altered and trance states of consciousness as the prelude to a full-blown out-of-body experience.

TMA: It seems like a lot of people enter into this vibrational state at times but don't know that's what it is.

WB: One of the things that surprised me, based on information I've received from doing the survey for the last five years, was that the vibrational state not only is universal but it's far more prevalent than I thought it was. A large percentage of people experience vibrations, sounds, paralysis during sleep. They may not necessarily have an out-of-body experience, but what they're having is the prelude or aftermath of an out-of-body experience ... but they don't have a context to put it into. For instance, paralysis is a common experience that probably everyone has had sometime in their life. Maybe you awaken but you can't move your body -- unfortunately, what happens to people is that they become terrified quite quickly. As a matter of fact, panic attacks are often a direct result of sleep paralysis.

What I've found, based on the new survey results, was that this is incredibly common in children and it's pretty much universal. But people don't think of sleep paralysis as a prelude of an OBE, and yet that's exactly what it is. During an OBE, we begin to disconnect in a way, or feel out of phase with our physical body. And of course, we must disconnect from the physical body to have that experience. The end result is a paralysis of the body because we've shifted our attention, our consciousness, to our astral body or to our energy body.

TMA: If it's not an experience one is looking for, it can be very fear inducing.

WB: And it often is. It's unfortunate, because people just are not familiar with how natural this is. Out-of-body experiences are natural experiences that occur to all people, but in our physically-based culture and society, we're so identified with the body that the idea of going beyond is, for many people, just beyond their current concept of reality.

TMA: Generally, people think that we're from here and we have the capability of going there. When the fact is, we're from there and it's a bigger miracle that we project into our bodies.

WB: (laughing) That's true. This is just a temporary vehicle of consciousness that we're using for a very short time to gain experience in a dense world, but yet people have a difficult time with that because they're so identified with the physical body.

Some of the other elements of the vibrational state that readers can probably identify with are high energy sensations, which are very common. Buzzing, humming, roaring sounds are experienced by over 80% of people as a prelude to an OBE. Hearing your name called is another one that people have. Hearing noises around them. Being touched. Having a spinning sensation. Having a lifting sensation or a heaviness sensation, also. Many people identify OBEs with floating, this airy-fairy thing, and it's not the reality.

TMA: Your first book is more or less a compilation of your experiences in your earlier years?

WB: Correct. The first two chapters are basically journal entries of my earlier experiences and the second half of the book is devoted strictly to a very in-depth how-to. Preparation, control techniques and different kinds of techniques to self-induce an OBE.

TMA: Over the past few years, you have done an international survey which has resulted in your new book, The Secret of the Soul. Talk about that.

WB: The Secret of the Soul is a direct result of the 16,000 responses to the online survey I've been doing for the last five years. People from thirty-two nations responded to the survey. It took about five years to put it together. What I've tried to do as much as possible is to objectively present the information as I received it. There's a tremendous amount of information about the vibrational state, about what people from all over the world have experienced. What I tried to do as much as possible is not just to go in depth -- I provided 160 different stories from all over the world, from trauma-induced experiences to combat -- I was fascinated by the combat ones because I'm from the Viet Nam era and I personally know people who died there. Those experiences just blew me away completely. Men who were hit by a mortar shell and felt they were watching this panorama but yet they weren't dead as in the traditional near death experience. They were just almost forced out of their body by the concussion. That type of experience. Women who were raped and observed what was happening from the OBE state and received enough details to finally convict the criminal.

There is a broad expanse of experiences that people are unaware of. One of the shocking ones to me was children's experiences. I received so many of them that I had a difficult time selecting the ones to use.

TMA: Were these adults or young adults who talked about their childhood experiences?

WB: They were mostly adults or young adults who were looking back at their earlier experiences, but there were quite a few moms who were transcribing their child's experiences and then relating them to me. There was an incredible variety of experiences, especially vibrational state types of things.

TMA: What were the major things that you learned from the survey?

WB: Number one, of course, is that they are universal. One of the things that surprised me was the young age. Previous to this I always thought, because my first experiences happened in my 20s, that this is only an adult experience -- and many people assume this is so -- but it's not. One of the most surprising results is that the most active people reporting OBEs were in the four to six years of age category. Then the OBEs continued up to the twelfth year. After puberty hit is when there was a marked decrease in the number of reports. It's almost like cultural conditioning took over and instead of having this large percentage of repeating experiences, especially in this four to twelve category, suddenly in their teenage years they dropped off to almost nil. Then the experiences returned. I'm talking about the 16,000 people as a whole who responded to the survey. Then in the twenties, people started having the experiences again. Now, I'm not stating that the experiences only happened in these age groups. This was when people remembered them and reported them. I feel that OBEs happen in infants quite prevalently -- but of course, they don't have the ability to report them. You just look at their eyes and you can see something's happening. The young age was definitely one of the things that was surprising to me.

They have meetings with friends, grandmothers. A lot of the terms come up all the time. "I went to heaven school and met an angel" or "I met a nice teacher" was a common refrain I heard during results of the survey.

TMA: Let's say we grant that people can have these experiences, and, of course, I do. So what? What's it for? Why should anybody want to be able to do it? To what end?

WB: Oh, I'm glad you asked that, because I think that's most important. I think the reason this is so important to all of us is because this is a valid, effective way to obtain answers. Answers to the big questions: What are we? Where did we come from? Where are we going? What is our purpose? These answers are available through fully conscious, and especially self-initiated, out-of-body experiences. You have an opportunity to have a profound spiritual experience with an OBE. It's a direct method. There's no dogma attached to it, there's no religion attached to it. You know how we live in a society where everything's classified. Well, this is just an experience. It's not about belief, it's not about faith, it's not about any of the so-called dogma and traditions that are attached to all of today's modern religions and many of their practices.

TMA: Don't you find, though, that people have the kinds of experiences that they would expect to have? That the experience can be quite subjective?

WB: Well of course it is, yes. Every OBE experience that a person has will be judged by their own conditioned mind. A Buddhist's experience will be different than possibly a Christian's experience would be, or a Hindu's experience. I've learned that very clearly from all of the letters I've received. But there's a commonality that's very clear, and that's what I found exciting. Any spiritual experience we have we of course interpret by our own state of consciousness. So we are the judge of the experience; we're the one classifying it.

TMA: We're also the creator of the experience.

WB: Yes, we are. And the interpreter. Each culture definitely has an impact. But when you cut aside all that, it still gives us that opportunity to have a profound experience. You know, every year, there are 60,000 new books published. There's not a lack of information in our society any more. What we lack is a personal connection with our spiritual self. With our true self ... whatever term you wish to use. That's what an out-of-body experience gives us -- the opportunity to reconnect with the essence of what we are. That is an incredible experience that we can't put into words, and it's readily available. How you interpret your experiences is up to you, and that's how it should be, I feel. An OBE doesn't provide all of the trappings around it unless you wish to believe them, but at it's core, it's just a personal experience. It's a very powerful one, and I feel this is a very essential element of why it's important: We can reconnect with our spiritual essence.

TMA: Have you noticed that there are infinite levels that you rise to or fall through due to the rate of vibration that's going on? For instance, if you're out of your body and you're seeing the physical, that is what some people would call the etheric realm.

WB: Correct, that's what a lot of people term it. In both of my books I write about various energy levels, but I don't necessarily buy into the traditional metaphysical concepts that have been presented.

TMA: The layer cake?

WB: Yes. Sometimes in my writings it may seem like that but everything is here, everything is now, and how we perceive it. I don't buy the concept of seven within seven as many people have proposed and many assume to be true. I have not found that to be a reality.

TMA: It can be divided up however one wants to divide it.

WB: Exactly. It depends on your state of consciousness on how you perceive your own environment. I feel that there are definitely vibrations within vibrations and that everything is here and now. And what's important is that we open to them within our selves and reconnect.

TMA: At the same time, though, there is a level where you can see the physical and then you can pass on into what you would call the dream level where most of the people you would see are not really aware that they are there? And at slightly higher levels, you're more likely to run into people who know that they're there?

WB: Oh, absolutely. It's almost like states of consciousness that people reside in. Where some people are just more aware of their daily activities then others, they're more aware of their dream activities than others. That's one of the fascinating things. I'm glad you mentioned that because that's one of the things that I love about the out-of-body exploration. We get an opportunity to actually experience these things. You know, many people go through their lives just reading about them and talking about them. When you practice out-of-body techniques, you're a participant. You're no longer on the armchair reader list. I mean, you're there. And that's what makes all the difference in the world, I feel.

TMA: Experience is the teacher.

WB: It's the only valid teacher, I feel. It's kind of unusual for an author to say that, but I really feel it's the key here -- to have the experience for yourself and go beyond the need for others and books and instruction. It's all about our personal experiences.

I'd like to invite all the readers to visit my website at www.out-of-body.com to participate in the survey. It's still going on. It only takes about a minute. There's also an online forum where you can share your own experiences and read other people's experiences. It's unedited. All kinds of experiences from all over the world end up there.

William Buhlman has trained out-of-body travelers in his workshops for more than a decade, teaching people how to project their consciousness outside of the limits of their physical bodies and to explore dimensions and worlds beyond everyday life. In new book, The Secret of the Soul (and in his previous book, Adventures Beyond the Body) he vividly recounts his own adventures in the parallel universes described in the new-physics theories of Stephen Hawking, Paul Davies and Fred Alan Wolf, and presents his step-by-step guide to astral travel -- including exercises, tips, techniques, and answers to your every question about out-of-body experiences.