Ranar and Laosa on Mental Traveling
Bardon has an interesting approach to the training of mental/astral traveling. He starts with the training of transferring the mind into objects to go on with the creation of a second mental body with the help of a mirror and imagination. For astral traveling the student is supposed to withdraw actively the astral body out of the physical body and to unite with it by conscious breathing.
This approach is based in main on will power, the Akasha element and imagination.
Now when you contact Ranar and Laosa you receive a different approach which is also interesting and fascinating. Certainly you can combine all techniques for making progress.
Laosa points at the nature and abilities of flying insects. So when you imagine a flower meadow with bees, butterflies and bumblebees flying from one flower to the next one then you have the right image. The insects are light and they are moving effortlessly through the air. It is a kind of floating.
For the student it means to imagine himself in his mental body as a super light being, floating without any effort through the air, into higher spheres and wherever he wants to go. The air element is emphasized in this training. The air element makes your mental body light and loosens the mental matrix so that you can leave your body easily. (The air element is very close in its nature to Akasha, so both play a major role and both can be combined in a useful way in the training.)
Ranar has a similar approach. He points at the nature of the eagle, being carried by the winds high up in the air. It is again the floating, effortless principle but here on a higher level. So in the training you could imagine yourself high up in the air, being carried by the winds, just enjoying your flight and the view of the landscape below you, without any need of effort.
We see here wonderful examples of the law of analogies. Nature can teach us more than a lot. It is full of amazing mysteries and all deities have a connection to nature with corresponding symbols, etc.
A main message is always to enjoy life. Not everything must be taken as a hardship, not all magical skills need painful training. In fact quite the contrary we are ask to see the beauty, to discover the wonderful mysteries and to celebrate life and each step of progress on the path.