One of the most important books that I've read lately has been Monica Holy's "Fringe Dweller on the Night Shift," which is a description of her personal experiences of "astral rescue." The idea that physically incarnated people travel out-of-body on "psychic rescues" has appeared here and there in the literature, but Ms. Holy's book is the first one, as far as I know, to extensively discuss it from a personal perspective. The theory (or belief) behind "astral rescue" is that certain select individuals engage in a sort of spirit rescue effort during the dream state, as they travel out-of-body and provide aid to those who are dying.
Seth mentions this specifically in his chapter on the immediate conditions of the after-death state:
If you firmly believe that your consciousness is a product of your physical body, then you may attempt to cling to it. There is an order of personalities, an honorary guard, so to speak, who are ever ready to lend assistance and aid, however.
Now this honorary guard is made up of people in your terms both living and dead. Those who are living in your system of reality perform these activities in an "out-of-body" experience while the physical body sleeps. They are familiar with the projection of consciousness, with the sensations involved, and they help orient those who will not be returning to the physical body.
These people are particularly helpful because they are still involved with physical reality, and have a more immediate understanding of the feelings and emotions involved at your end. Such persons may or may not have a memory of their nightly activities. Experiences with projection of consciousness and knowledge of the mobility of consciousness, are therefore very helpful as preparations for death. You can experience the after-death environment beforehand, so to speak, and learn the conditions that will be encountered.
I have had several dreams of such "spirit rescues"; have I been engaging in such spirit rescues? Or simply remembering what Seth described and dreaming of performing spirit rescues? I don't know. Such are the pitfalls of trying to extract information from dreams... Was the experience "real"? Or was it just a dream?
In any case, here's one of my experiences:
September 30, 1990. Sunday. 4:55 a.m.
I dreamed that I was giving detailed instructions to someone in the astral state concerning procedures for adjusting to death. I think that the person who died was [***]. I remember instructing him in how to control mental images and how to navigate in the astral state. I told him that he had three days to adjust before going to a higher state. I think that I told him that it wasn't a good idea to go near his body during the three days of adjustment.
I then floated quickly away from this scene and arrived at a car parked by a city street. Someone was with me in the astral state. I sensed that someone in the car had passed out, and I went into the car and tried to resuscitate a woman who I thought was out of her body. I performed a procedure similar to CPR, and I think I revived her, but I'm not sure if she was really passed out.
By the way, the person mentioned in the dream was quite alive at that time, though elderly, with a heart condition. I've attempted to find out when he ultimately passed away, without any success. One of the paradoxes of the Internet is that you are very quickly "forgotten" once you die, and it's almost impossible to find the most basic information about people (including obituaries of locally prominent people) after you've been dead a few months. Your online presence vanishes quite swiftly once you are gone to this world.
Even if the identity of the person that I was assisting was unclear, I notated the dream by saying that it was the first significant dream that I had had in a long time and that the dream seemed very vivid, realistic, and colorful--all markers of a recalled OOBE.
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