Belzebuub: Well, about 55% of the population have lucid dreams, and those are dreams where we know that we’re dreaming. And people just say, “oh well, I had this strange dream. It was very real to me; I don’t understand it”. There are not many people you can go and discuss this with, generally, in society.

But, over 10% have these out-of-body experiences, which are projecting from the body. So they’re not dreams, they’re times when you’ve laid down, and whether it’s through an illness or it’s through sleep, which is most common, then you come out of your body and you’re in the astral plane. So again, they’re just not enough people to talk to, to really bring this thing out into the open, into the wider society. But what we’re doing really, is explaining to people that these things are normal, they’re natural, anybody can have them, and anybody can learn to have them.

Q: So, there might be people who are a bit apprehensive about doing something like this. We talk about near-death experiences and how you come out of the body, so someone might be a bit afraid of that. Is there anything that dangerous or worrisome about practising this sort of thing?

Belzebuub: No, there’s nothing dangerous in it at all. We go into the astral plane every single night when we dream and sleep, and we don’t come back the worse for it. Similarly, if we have an out-of-body experience, there’s nothing there that can really harm us, we just come back like in a dream. So, there’s no danger in it at all, no more than sleeping.

Q: Alright, so if I was interested in pursuing this, like maybe last night I had an experience that you spoke about, what can I do to pursue it, to make it happen again, to make it happen more often, to explore it?

Belzebuub: You can learn how to have out-of-body experiences. You can learn how to astral project and have lucid dreams. And for that, you try a series of techniques, such as concentrating when you’re going to sleep, learning how to wake up in dreams, and you can then have out-of-body experiences – you can train yourself to have them.

Q: And, to what end? What can I gain from doing this?

Belzebuub: Well, first of all, you’re going to see that you’re not just the body. We are in this body, but it decays, it is subjected to time; and in time, it’ll end. And it’s in our interest to find out whether there is something of us which survives the body. And if we have an out-of-body experience, we know that we’re not this body, we know that we exist in its absence, we can live in its absence, and that’s really profound for us.

More than that though, we can explore this dimension, this new dimension, and we can experience things that we cannot experience here. We can get access to secret teachings, secret knowledge. We can get our own learning about what we need to do in this life and what this life is for. If we look at myths and legends and religions, we can see that there are lots of Beings in them that are not Earthly. We can actually go and see and meet those different Beings that live outside of this body. We can also meet Beings from other planets who are there, because they can also have out-of-body experiences just like everybody here can.

So the wisdom that’s to be gained there is immense, and if we don’t search for it and we don’t have these out-of-body experiences, and if we don’t look into our dreams and understand them, we’re missing a fantastic opportunity. We’re missing the greatest learning experiences that we can have. It’s just a waste not to have out-of-body experiences, and it’s a waste not to study dreams. The thing is knowing how to do it, having the right techniques to do it, and that’s really important.

Q: So, if I was to do this and speak to one of these Beings that you talk about, how would I know that what they’re telling me is something worthwhile, or how could I verify perhaps what they’re telling me? If I was to wake up one morning and tell my wife I got all this information from someone, I might sound a little bit crazy …

Belzebuub: But it’s your experience and you would know it for yourself. Personal to us are our experiences, although some, you know, we can share and everything, but it’s our life. You shouldn’t expect other people to - how can I say? You shouldn’t expect that other people will understand what you go through there, because it’s your own learning, it’s our own learning there. If we depended upon what other people thought, we’d never really explore it.

Q: So, maybe to phrase the question in another way: I get some sort of information there which I feel that I need to act upon perhaps, or, don’t know how to act upon, don’t know how to deal with, how might someone deal with that sort of situation? Is there some way of doing it?

Belzebuub: The more knowledge we have about ourselves, the more we’ll understand what goes on there. There’s a whole symbolic language in the astral plane, which we can learn through experience. And if we can do that, we can tap into these great mysteries and discover all sorts of things which you couldn’t imagine possible. But, we need to really make the efforts to do it.

Q: So, something that I’m told there, I may not necessarily understand now, but it sounds like I will be able to at some point?

Belzebuub: If you try hard enough, then you may be able to. There’s nothing guaranteed because we have to work for it. But, you may be able to understand things better later on through experience than you do now. That’s a general thing which happens to us in our life – we tend to go through it and experience different things, and from that experience, we know more. Same with experiences out of the body, the more we have them, the more we understand them.

Q: So the goal really is to have as many experiences as possible, to build up some level of understanding?

Belzebuub: Not just to have many experiences, but to carry out an inner study, to have objective experiences that are worthwhile. Anybody can just go out of the body and travel around a bit and imagine lots of things, but it’s a bit of a waste. It’s much better if we can change ourselves here, inwardly, and then the astral becomes a means for us to learn about that change, and helps us in that change.

If we can do that then we begin to change spiritually as well, we begin to improve spiritually. And then as a direct result of that, we have more spiritual, astral experiences, and they become of great value to us, a great source of learning – but we have to earn them. So, it’s not so much the quantity of astral experiences which counts, but the quality of them. And that depends upon the quality of the inner work which we are doing here.

Q: So the astral in itself is not spiritual growth, it’s a part of spiritual growth?

Belzebuub: In itself it’s merely stepping into another dimension; it’s another aspect of life just as this one is. But, going there doesn’t mean that we are growing spiritually at all, it just means that we’re capable of experiencing that dimension and being there. To grow spiritually we need to do things here, then, we can improve things over there. Then we can have the consequences of what we do here, over there.

And by improve things, I mean improve what goes on for example in our dreams, because over there is the dream world as well. As we change here, as we begin to understand the different aspects of our psychology, then, they change in our dreams too. So, if we’re less angry here, then we’re less angry in our dreams. And, this goes on for all the different kinds of emotions we have, all the different bad traits and so on. And as we clean them up here, then, we’re cleaning them up over there in the astral plane, in the dream world - and then we’re eligible for more spiritual teachings, because we have fundamentally changed. But we do need to work here, to change here, in order to influence there, and that’s all part of a wider spiritual work.

Q: So it sounds like - do you mean if I just stop being angry, if I maybe avoid angry situations or places or situations that make me angry, does that mean my dreams will clear up, if I understand that right?

Belzebuub: That may have a small impact in your dreams, but it would be an insignificant one. To really change anger in a dream, you would have to be able to study it thoroughly here, to be able to look at its different aspects: the way that it works, the way that it makes you act, the different feelings that it produces inside, and all of this. And, by studying this, then, we’re getting knowledge about it, and the more we study, the more we bring out from inside of us, and then, we have knowledge about what’s inside of us.

But, it requires the ability to be able to see what’s going on inside. That again is another technique that we can learn; we can learn to observe inside, to see the different thoughts and emotions and feelings, and, uncover what’s happening inside. If we don’t do that, then it’s going to have a grip on us, it’s going to make us act in certain ways, feel things in certain ways – all according to the program of nature.

Q: So, it sounds like it’s important to have, as you said, quality astral experiences. Dreams aren’t so important?

Belzebuub: Yes, dreams are very important, because if we can remember them, they tell us a lot about our psychology. We are in the dream world without the constraints of society, so, what we are dreaming is what’s inside of us. And, if we can look at that when we wake up in the morning, then we can see ourselves as we really are. And, we may be shocked by what we see, but that is our reality, that’s how we really are without all of this that exists in society to keep us acting in certain ways.

If we really study our dreams, then it can bring us a wealth of information and a wealth of knowledge, which we miss if we just let them go. If we can see these dreams, then we’re going to see so much about ourselves. It’s like a valuable book of our psychology, and if we read it, we understand so much. It’s just not worth letting it go, it’s not worth just not remembering dreams, because it’s a missed opportunity. Well, to those who don’t care about self-knowledge, it doesn’t really matter, because it’s just a nice sleep. But for those who want to search more into themselves and into the nature of life, it’s a huge opportunity to learn.

Q: A lot of my dreams though are just sort of random images or very vague, I mean I can’t see what I can learn from something like that?

Belzebuub: You can learn from that that something needs to change in order to really see these dreams, and that there are elements of the subconscious which are very strong. The stronger the subconscious, the less we can remember dreams, the less vibrant they are, the less clear they are. By being more awake and more conscious in daily life, then we can see those, we can have clearer dreams, and then, we begin to wake up in dreams. By waking up, I mean we know that we’re in a dream, but we have to have a certain level of consciousness, a certain level of awareness in dreams to do that, and for that too we have to have a certain level of awareness in daily life.

Sometimes though, we may not remember dreams because we’re tired, because we’ve got a very busy schedule - sometimes because we’re just thinking so much during the day - and all these things can stop us remembering dreams. Another problem can be that we’re just not trained to do it, so we wake up and we turn the alarm clock off and get up. So for that, it’s worth stopping, laying still when you wake up, and keeping a dream diary. So when you lay still you go back over your dreams, and then you can write them down in a diary, and that helps you to focus upon remembering dreams. And, just by trying to have the intention of remembering them and have an out-of-body experience when we go to sleep also helps in this process because we’re going to sleep in a different way.

Q: So it sounds like, you mean the intention is important? If I lie down, if I just think about going to sleep, that’s what will happen?

Belzebuub: Well, if you try to have an out-of-body experience and you go to sleep with the intention of trying to remember your dreams (two different things), the intention to remember your dreams helps you to wake up and remember to remember them straight away when you wake up. But, going to sleep trying to have an out-of-body experience helps our level of awareness in our dreams anyway, because we go into sleep in a much lighter way, and if we’re fortunate, then we can actually go through the whole process of falling asleep and going into the astral plane consciously.

There are various stages that we go through when we go to sleep – we can be aware of those if we are concentrated on one thing, whatever that one thing may be. And, through that then, we can experience the different processes of sleep, which end with an out-of-body experience, and we’re there awake in the astral plane, while the body is asleep here in the three-dimensional world. But dreams and out-of-body experiences are really best used for spiritual or inner growth.