[inavalan]

I had my first OBE the same week I finished Buhlman's "Adventures Beyond the Body". Although I don't fully subscribe to all Buhlman's beliefs, I like him the most of all the authors on the OBE subject. I like his interviews too.

As much as one can be sure, I'm sure that OBEs are safe. You can still use some white-light protection, but that is more of a deepening technique than serves as protection, and it isn't necessary.

When you OBE / lucid dream (they are the same thing, don't pay attention to those that theorize things they don't understand) you actually project onto your own exclusive slice of the imagination plane, where you also dream, and where you project when you imagine things. There are no demons, or other forces there. I never encountered them, and I have all the reasons to believe that all negative instances you might encounter are only thought-forms generated by yourself. They can't harm you there more than your thoughts can harm you when you're fully awake.

I know that there are authors and forumites that have a different opinion, but that is actually what makes them encounter and fear those negative entities. Their own thoughts generate those entities, and only their own fears can psychically harm them.

You may seem to meet your guide(s), deceased people, and such during your projections, but you actually deal with your own projections of them. Those projections may be 100% generated by you, or may be materializations of the contacts you may have with those entities at a subconscious level, your translations of the messages you get from them, not the real messages. But, those you encounter, "see", are only your own projections, the thought-forms your thoughts generated.

Bottom line: don't worry about demons, and such. There are none!

Regarding "astral projection" ... This can also cover a different kind of projection than what I've described above, but it's rare, and it may happen only during some NDEs (not all of them), or if you really know what you're doing during some life-between-lives regressions, or meditations, but again, not all of them, and only when you know what you're doing. Those are projections onto a formless plane, where we go after we die, temporarily until our next incarnation, or forever if when we don't need to reincarnate anymore. You have no reason to fear such projections either.

A note: having OBEs won't help you advance on your enlightenment path. What you do with them might do that.

Good to ask, but take advice with a healthy reservation, ... surely, including mine :)