Re: "Revelations of the Insider" - revisited
Lono,
Yes I agree, soul travel is a very interesting topic. I don't profess to be an expert here, but I have been through a few things. I also believe the average person can persue soul travel and have much success. You don't need to join any soul travel groups, such as Eckankar (and there are a few other groups that I know of) in order to learn this skill.
Intending to leave your body via the 6th chakra is the way to go, if anyone would like a starting point. When you go to bed at night, you could make a statement of intent, something like "I now intend to travel in my soul body tonight, to the inner planes, with the help of my HS and guides". You could also add, "I would like my HS and guides and soul, to begin to teach me all the practical ways of traveling in my soul body so I may become very expert at this skill". You could word this anyway to wish, this is just an example. This would set the stage, and probably give you some interesting dreams.
You could soul travel while sitting up meditating in a chair (which is the method taught by Eckankar). They have you chant the name of the man who's the "master" in Eckankar, who at this time is Harold Klemp (the last time I checked anyway). I can't remember his spiritual name, which is his soul name, but just as an example, let's say his soul name is Mahatma. What they teach is that you sit upright, relax and chant the name Mahatma over and over, with your eyes closed and also with ALL of your focus and concentration on your third-eye/6th chakra.
What supposed to happen is the soul body of this master comes to you as you chant and helps you get out of your body, via the third-eye. Then the two of you, in your soul bodies, travel to all sorts of places on the astral plane, causal plane, mental plane and also soul plane, and perhaps even areas above that. And the purpose of all this is to teach you the all the spiritual lessons... etc, and in the long run you will become more spiritualy aware. And remember, I'm giving you a quick-and-easy version of this, there's more involved here.
One of the by-products of soul travel is a more awakened third eye when you are fully awake in 3D. So there's plenty of good things that will happen as time goes by. Having an awakened third-eye while going about your business all day long, can be very helpful, fun, exciting... etc, I'm sure you can think of loads of things you could do with this. But it DOES take much practice.
So that's bascially how it's done. The followers are asked to spend something like 20-30 min. a day, 7 days a week, doing this "spiritual exercise" of chanting and trying to have a soul body experience, while you sit up in a chair (they never recommend lying down since most of the time you'll fall asleep, they always tell you it's much better to sit upright). Eventually, if you hang in there, 7 days a week, on and on, it's like a cumulative process. All this focus on your third-eye, does indeed, wake it up.
As time goes by you should have better and better OBE's this way.
So that's about it for soul travel.
PH