Background Rant – Astral Projection vs Visions

So, I just want to clarify this matter a bit, so that I am honest on this site:

• Christians sometimes discuss having “visions” from God – in which while they are in a waking state God shows them in their physical sight images.
• New Age people discuss having “astral projections” where their soul leaves their body and they can explore the world – often seeing unseen things – as a disembodied spirit.

Before I started having strange dreams from God, I had already for a while been able to astral project; this is because, a few years ago, by chance I learned about astral projection online, and was able to it on my first try after following the instructions. But every time I astral projected, all I saw was a dark and creepy world, and needless to say I don’t think there is any wisdom or utility to be gained from astral projection.

However, the truth is, much of my “visions” and “out of body experiences” recounted on this site are very, very similar to astral projection.

• Astral projection often is preceded by weird sensations of energy soaring through your body – like unto many of my spiritual experiences.
• During some of my spiritual experiences sometimes I have this sensation of floating a few inches above my bed and slightly drifting – as if my soul left my body – just like astral projections.
• Much of the spiritual experiences here are just entirely indistinguishable from astral projections – being accompanied by my soul leaving my body, weird pulses of energy, and sometimes my soul being pulled at high speeds through the darkness to different places.
• I’ve never simply had my vision altered by God – rather, it always seems as though my soul is somehow separated from my body, or at least half separated, allowing me to see things that God shows me.

This matter weighs on me, because I am confused why most Christians who receive messages don’t discuss the astral projection quality of their experiences in a similar way to mine. Why would my experiences be so different from the typical? (Though there are a few exceptions where influencers indeed describe very similar out of body experiences.)

And on the topic of astral projection: the fact that astral projection works to me sort of proves my faith all by itself. First of all, it obviously disproves materialism and therefore atheism. From across religions, surely Christianity must be the true one because it is the religion that has done the most good in the world, and also because it is the religion that has the most divine encounters that are all consistent with each other – containing many accounts of witnesses with miraculous events testifying of Christianity’s truth who then died as martyrs. And from within Christianity, I know that Mormonism is true because it is the only sect which has a strong belief in modern day revelation, which I know can happen because astral projection works, and also Mormonism has a huge amount of miraculous encounters also validating it.

The Dreams

A Negative Spiritual Experience I think

Though I haven’t deliberately tried to astral project for a few months, I nevertheless have astral projected a few times recently. The problem is that I have gotten used to falling asleep by repeating prayer mantras in my head until I lose consciousness. When I do this early in the morning – when I am trying to fall back asleep – such prayer mantras sometimes put me into the state of mind to induce astral projections rather than my falling back to sleep. That has been the case for the last four nights in a row (as of 10/3 when I wrote this).

Sometimes such astral projection experiences following prayer seem like scenes God is showing me – just like how God sends me dreams (I think). However, sometimes they simply don’t seem like they came from God at all but rather are generic astral projections.

But this astral projection I had on October 1 bothered me. As usual, it was in the morning, and I was trying to fall back asleep, so I was praying mantras – I actually noted the prayer after the experience:

“Dear heavenly father, Jesus can take away my burdens and temptations, so I need him. So, Lord please save [someone else] and me and I pray for dreams and revelations in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.”

I was having a hard time falling back asleep, so I think I said this in my head over a hundred times for over an hour – and as said, instead of this leading me to fall back asleep, this instead led me to have an astral projection.

I first felt energy soaring through my body. Then I felt my soul leave my body, and it felt like my soul started rotating around and moving through the darkness, though not at as huge speeds as other experiences. I then heard this feminine voice that sounded like google translate saying something along the lines of:

“Turn around to see what I want you to see. When you come to bury your brother Brigham you will see. The reino do levantando shall rise to the heavens. In a high place you will be able to walk about as in a plane. The coasts will sink and there will be conflict there.”

* to note, “reino do levantando” means “the kingdom of the rising” – something I understood because I speak Portuguese.

I didn’t see anything though – when I astral project, I can very distinctly feel my soul separate from my body, and the sense of myself floating and around, but the astral projection has to last for a long enough time for me start to see, and in this case it didn’t last long enough for that.

Thoughts

Obviously, I can’t know for sure whether this experience was from God or not, but to me it seems like it wasn’t (I’m very sorry if that diagnose is incorrect).

• My name is Brigham, so the experience seemed to be a death threat, and I have had other dreams about how Satan wants me dead.
• Reino do Levantando seems like Satan’s kingdom. As seen in the tower of Babel story, it seems like the idea behind Satan is that he is going to make his kingdom on earth rise to the heights of heaven; this contrasts with God’s plan, which is for the kingdom in heaven to come down to earth.
• The voice I heard was weird.
• There is still a possibility this experience wasn’t demonic, but it would be difficult for me to quantify the chances of that.

It’s kind of scary that this could happen to me after praying so much. I am under no illusion that just any spirit I hear is from God, and this whole thing makes me nervous. What if other spiritual experiences that I have had actually came from Satan? What if I am insulting God by accusing / worrying about his messages being from Satan?

Does having negative spiritual experiences mean that you must not be true? I don’t think so, given the story of Jesus being tempted by Satan during his 40 day fast, the story of Paul’s “Thorn in the Flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7), the story of Satan appearing to Moses pretending to be God (Moses 1:12-14), or the story of Joseph Smith’s first vision – where Satan attacked him before he finally received his divine experience from God.

Positive Dreams

Missionary work

This dream might not have been from God, as sometimes I have random haunting dreams of returning back to being a missionary, but I think it is worth noting:

In the dream, I went back in time to 2019 to be a missionary once again, though I knew that my soul came from 2025 (of note, I didn’t serve my mission until 2020); I saw this as an opportunity at redemption to fix parts of my life. In the dream, I was with other missionaries in perhaps a Walmart parking lot in Austin Texas. I was disconcerted at how young the other missionaries seemed (which is odd, because I’m still basically the same age as many Mormon missionaries). There was also trouble with cars – the other missionaries had accidentally wrecked their car’s batteries and wanted to do the same to mine (not understanding what they were doing), but I stopped them. Since my car was then the only one working, all the missionaries piled into my car (making 6 of us I think), and I had trouble navigating as I drove, at one point driving against traffic.

So, this dream might be random – but it might reflect a second chance at future missionary work (perhaps in the 144,000?), this time with me being able to help other prospective missionaries who were young in the faith. Driving against traffic perhaps represents going against the forces of the world. The year of the dream was 2019 because that was when the pandemic started – the lockdown stuff being a forerunner of the beast system. Am I worthy of such a fate? I don’t know, because I have sinned much.

Note that “restoring power”, especially in powerlines or powerplants, has been a theme of my dreams, representing restoring God’s truth and authority on earth. So, my car being the last one with a working battery would represent how nearly all religions have lost their “power” from God.

Greece

I had dreams where I saw ancient maps of Greece, and I wrote in my notes that the Constantine and Byzantine empires had lasted longer than expected; of course, there is no “Constantine empire” – Constantine was the founder of the Byzantine empire. I take from this that there is something wrong about our history of Greece, but I’m not yet sure what it is or what its’ relevance is. I remember in one map seeing a border at the top of the Greek peninsula, perhaps implying that the empire went into Turkey but not further up the Adriatic.

Here is a crazy theory, then: what if the Frankish and Holy Roman empire (seen from 771 ad to 1600 here) are all actually the same as the roman empire – because 1000 years have been added to history, as discussed in The Mud Flood and the Book of Mormon). The Byzantine empire was therefore separate, and it was actually the Byzantines (who spoke Greek) who took over Israel – hence why all the early works of the Bible are written in Greek. Yeah, I know, crazy (and much lacking in any proof), but if you have seen this website, I have a lot of crazy theories about history.

Other Random Stuff

• I dreamt I was in a writing competition for an essay about “dieting” as discussed in the Book of Mormon. I think I won this competition, and so I discussed this strange event with family members who I was in a reunion with. People from Shiloh and Bros were also in this competition (discussed in my last dream Out of Body Experience, Fleeing Religious Persecution). What could this mean? I don’t think there is much about dieting to be found in the Book of Mormon.
• I dreamt of seeing a white woman in the 1800s on the frontier saying stuff that seemed to sort of reference Nazis. I then somehow got the communication that the Axis powers (except Japan) in the WWII had to some extent won because Europe is acting how such powers would have intended. I assume this is a reference to how the doctrines of Satan are prevalent in Europe today, despite the “good guys” winning WWII. I think this also links the axis powers to frontier Americans views, which aligns with Joseph Smith’s civil war prophecy: He prophesied there would be a civil war in the USA starting in south Carolina (though the greater tragedy he prophesied would befall Missouri, which then would have been on the frontier, since that is where the early latter day saints were persecuted). After the civil war, the forces of Satan would retreat to the Rhine river (discussed in Secular Evidence for the Book of Mormon).