~Astral Travel~

Lately memory of my mum and sister were haunting me. I often wonder why just newly born my sister left for her heavenly abode? Why mama followed her as soon as she severed our umbilical cord? Why was I left to suffer on my own treated by God differently from others? Why I was deprived of and those bitter sweet brother sister quarrels. Some told me it was karma sins committed in a previous birth and other advised to accept the inevitable fate written in the stars. Lately through a spiritual medium I discovered that they were happy up above in the clouds in their heavenly abode. 1

I yearned to know the truth where the souls go. One night dejected, despondent reflecting on this, I read a few pages from the book "Astral Travelling", and went to sleep. To feel in the depths of the darkness, my soul had left me. Shearing through the thick quilt of clouds, sailing up above the ninth cloud, I found a colossal tree. Multi hued masked faces suspended from its branches. A voice boomed, “this is The Soul Tree”. I eagerly asked, “do you know where my mum and sister are? The voice went quite. I started searching for my loved ones among those masks. I was running out of time.2

My body was joined to my physical body by a silver cord. I had stretched the cord to utmost to reach the tree. I was very conscious of not breaking it, I knew without it I wouldn’t be able to get back to my physical state. I had already started losing my concentration and lucidity. Concentration was important for me to carry on astral travelling. I was desperate to meet my loving ones. Perhaps this was my last chance to have an encounter with them. 3

Afar at the horizon, the sun began to rise. I could see an orange halo around the earth. It was still dark up there in space. The orange halo was getting larger and brighter. The earth appeared like a silhouette among the glowing fire around it. Brighter it was getting the masks were becoming less apparent. Now I could only see them vividly. My enthusiasm was brimming and kindling, I was getting anxious. I didn’t want to lose this opportunity. I can vouch that light can travel fastest of all, it didn’t take long to soak the tree with brightness. It had turned so bright that my eyes squinted. The power of the sun had pushed the darkness out of sight completely. I couldn’t see anything, the tree, the masks or the stars. I remembered, once mum told me, "when we die, our souls transform to stars and shine eternally". I wondered if there were more trees like this one. From a distance we can’t see the trees, but we can only see the eyes of the souls shining brightly in form of stars. And when they blink the stars twinkle. 4

To me it seemed if the curtain had dropped, as if the stage had revolved to prepare for the next scene. The voice boomed again, this time it was reverberating repeatedly, “You must leave”, “You must leave”. At the background I could hear sound of a buzzer too. It was like being at a "light and sound" show. I panicked and rushed back. By cascading down the sky, shearing through the quilts of clouds, somersaulting from one cloud to another, eventually I entered the earth's atmosphere and re-emerged into my body. I woke up in frustration. Buzzing noise was still ringing in my ears. Soon I realized the buzzing sound was of my alarm clock. I was bamboozled and huffing. I looked our from my bedroom window, it was overcast and raining heavily.