Astral projection

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Astral projection

Interpretation of out-of-body experiences

Astral projection (also known as astral travel, soul journey, soul wandering, spiritual journey, or spiritual travel) is the intentional practice of separating consciousness from the physical body to navigate a non-physical realm, in which a subtle body known as the astral body or body of light reportedly travels throughout the astral plane. It is distinct from a spontaneous out-of-body experience (OBE) in that it is deliberately induced rather than occurring involuntarily during trauma, anesthesia, or sleep onset. The concept is ancient and appears across multiple cultures; the term "astral projection" itself was coined and popularized by 19th-century Theosophists, and the practice is sometimes associated with dreams and forms of meditation. Allegedly documented in Theosophical literature, Hermetic and Neoplatonic philosophy, Eastern esoteric traditions, Western occultism, and — since the mid-20th century — in consciousness research programs including those conducted at the Monroe Institute under contract to the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency. Mainstream science holds that there is no evidence of a consciousness that functions separately from normal neural activity, and astral projection has accordingly been characterized as pseudoscience.

Historical and cultural accounts

Ancient Egyptian

Ancient Egyptian teachings present the soul (ba) as having the ability to hover outside the physical body via the ka, or subtle body.

Amazon

The yaskomo of the Waiwai is believed to have the ability to perform a soul flight that can serve several functions, such as healing; flying to the sky to consult cosmological beings (the Moon or the Brother of the Moon) to obtain a name for a newborn baby; flying to the cave of peccaries' mountains to ask the father of peccaries for abundance of game; or flying deep down into a river to seek the aid of other beings.

Inuit

In some Inuit groups, individuals with special capabilities known as angakkuq are said to travel to mythological remote places and report their experiences back to the community, including the ability to stop bad hunting luck or heal the sick; these abilities are said to be unavailable to individuals with normal capabilities. Soul wandering is classified in anthropological literature as a culture-specific disorder.

Hindu

Similar ideas such as the Liṅga Śarīra are found in ancient Hindu scriptures such as the Yogavashishta-Maharamayana of Valmiki. Paramahansa Yogananda recounted witnessing Swami Pranabananda performing a miracle through a possible astral projection. The Indian spiritual teacher Meher Baba described astral projection as a deliberate practice undertaken by advanced aspirants who, having attained sufficient preparation, can at will separate the astral body from the physical and travel through the inner world:

In the advancing stages leading to the beginning of the path, the aspirant becomes spiritually prepared for being entrusted with free use of the forces of the inner world of the astral bodies. He may then undertake astral journeys in his astral body, leaving the physical body in sleep or wakefulness. The astral journeys that are taken unconsciously are much less important than those undertaken with full consciousness and as a result of deliberate volition. This implies conscious use of the astral body. Conscious separation of the astral body from the outer vehicle of the gross body has its own value in making the soul feel its distinction from the gross body and in arriving at fuller control of the gross body. One can, at will, put on and take off the external gross body as if it were a cloak and use the astral body for experiencing the inner world of the astral and for undertaking journeys through it, if and when necessary.... The ability to undertake astral journeys therefore involves considerable expansion of one's scope for experience. It brings opportunities for promoting one's own spiritual advancement, which begins with the involution of consciousness.

Astral projection is reportedly one of the siddhis — magical powers considered achievable by yoga practitioners — and in the epic Mahabharata, Drona leaves his physical body to see if his son is alive.

Japanese

In Japanese mythology, an ikiryō (生霊) is a manifestation of the soul of a living person separately from their body; traditionally, if someone holds a sufficient grudge, a part or whole of their soul is believed to temporarily leave the body and appear before the target of their hatred to curse or otherwise harm them, in a manner similar to an evil eye. Souls are also believed to leave a living body when the body is extremely sick or comatose; such ikiryō are not considered malevolent.

Taoist

Taoist alchemical practice involves the creation of an energy body through breathing meditations, drawing energy into a "pearl" that is then circulated. A classical example appears in the tale of Xiangzi, who, sleeping at a banquet, sent his "primordial spirit" to appear simultaneously in another room:

Xiangzi... with a drum as his pillow fell fast asleep, snoring and motionless. His primordial spirit, however, went straight into the banquet room and said, "My lords, here I am again." When Tuizhi walked with the officials to take a look, there really was a Taoist sleeping on the ground and snoring like thunder. Yet inside, in the side room, there was another Taoist beating a fisher drum and singing Taoist songs. The officials all said, "Although there are two different people, their faces and clothes are exactly alike. Clearly he is a divine immortal who can divide his body and appear in several places at once."... At that moment, the Taoist in the side room came walking out, and the Taoist sleeping on the ground woke up. The two merged into one.

Judaic and Christian

In some traditions the subtle body is described as attached to the physical body by a psychic silver cord. Ecclesiastes 12:6 is often cited in this respect: "Remember him — before the silver cord is severed, and the golden bowl is broken"; Rabbi Nosson Scherman, however, has argued that the passage is metaphorical, with the silver cord referring to the spine. James Hankins has argued that 2 Corinthians 12:2 — "I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know — God knows" — refers to the astral planes.

Western esotericism

According to classical, medieval, and Renaissance Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, and later Theosophist and Rosicrucian thought, the astral body is an intermediate body of light linking the rational soul to the physical body, while the astral plane is an intermediate world of light between Heaven and Earth, populated by angels, demons, and spirits. In the Neoplatonism of Plotinus, the individual is a microcosm of the universe: "The rational soul...is akin to the great Soul of the World," while "the material universe, like the body, is made as a faded image of the Intelligible." Each succeeding plane of manifestation is causal to the next — a world-view known as emanationism: "from the One proceeds Intellect, from Intellect Soul, and from Soul—in its lower phase, or that of Nature—the material universe." The idea figured prominently in the work of 19th-century French occultist Eliphas Levi, was adopted and developed further by Theosophy, and was later integrated into other esoteric movements. Subtle bodies and their associated planes of existence are often depicted as a series of concentric circles or nested spheres, with a separate body traversing each realm.

Terminology: astral vs. etheric

The expression "astral projection" came to be used in two different ways. For the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and some Theosophists, it retained the classical and medieval meaning of journeying to other worlds, heavens, hells, astrological spheres, and landscapes in the body of light; outside these circles the term was increasingly applied to non-physical travel around the physical world. Some later Theosophists distinguish "etheric travel" — movement in the physical world — from "astral" travel, which may involve altered time-perception. Robert Monroe describes the former as "Locale I" or the "Here-Now," while Robert Bruce calls it the "Real Time Zone" and describes it as the non-physical dimension-level closest to the physical. The etheric body is usually, though not always, invisible, but is often perceived by the experiencer as connected to the physical body during separation by a silver cord; some link falling dreams with projection. According to Max Heindel, the etheric double serves as a medium between the astral and physical realms; in his system the ether, also called prana, is the vital force that empowers physical forms to change, and — by his descriptions — when one views the physical during an out-of-body experience, one is not technically in the astral realm at all. Practitioners report that astral environments may have no parallel to any physical setting, and may be populated or unpopulated, artificial or natural, beatific, horrific, or neutral. A common Theosophical belief is that one may access a compendium of mystical knowledge called the Akashic records. In many accounts the experiencer correlates the astral world with the world of dreams, and some even report perceiving other dreamers enacting dream scenarios unaware of their wider environment. The astral environment is also sometimes divided into levels or sub-planes — views of the overall structure vary across traditions, and may include heavens and hells and other after-death spheres, transcendent environments, or other less-easily characterized states.

OBE versus astral projection

The functional distinction most consistently drawn in modern consciousness research treats OBE as a subset of astral projection: OBE refers specifically to perceiving the physical environment from outside the body (the classic "floating above the operating table" report), while astral projection encompasses intentional movement through non-physical realms that may not correspond to any physical location. Within the Cosmic Agency / Taygetan transmission material, Swaruu of Erra allegedly describes these as operating in different layers: OBE traverses local physical space, while astral projection enters what the Taygetans call the akashic or morphic-field layer — a non-physical information substrate interpenetrating the physical world.

Notable practitioners and modern literature

Emanuel Swedenborg was one of the first practitioners to write extensively about the out-of-body experience, in his Spiritual Diary (1747–1765). In her book My Religion, Helen Keller wrote of her beliefs in Swedenborgianism and described traveling astrally to Athens:

I have been far away all this time, and I haven't left the room... It was clear to me that it was because I was a spirit that I had so vividly 'seen' and felt a place a thousand miles away. Space was nothing to spirit!

In occult traditions, practices range from inducing trance states to the mental construction of a second body — called the "body of light" by Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) — through visualization and controlled breathing, followed by the transfer of consciousness to the secondary body by a mental act of will.

Among 20th-century writers on astral projection, the most frequently cited include Edgar Cayce (1877–1945), Hereward Carrington (1880–1958), Oliver Fox (1885–1949), Sylvan Muldoon (1903–1969), and Robert Monroe (1915–1995). Monroe's accounts of journeys to other realms (1971–1994) popularized the term "OBE" and were translated into many languages; his books placed only secondary emphasis on method, and he founded an institute dedicated to research, exploration, and non-profit dissemination of auditory technology for assisting others in achieving projection and related altered states of consciousness.

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) discussed his teacher don Juan's beliefs about "the double" and its abilities in Tales of Power (1974), The Second Ring of Power (1977), and The Art of Dreaming (1993). Florinda Donner, a student of Castaneda, further described methods of using the double in her 1992 book Being-in-Dreaming. Michael Crichton (1942–2008) gave detailed accounts of astral projection in his 1988 non-fiction book Travels. Robert Bruce, William Buhlman, Marilynn Hughes, and Albert Taylor have discussed their findings on the syndicated show Coast to Coast AM.

Induction methods

The principal modern induction technology is Hemi-Sync binaural audio, developed by Robert Monroe at the Monroe Institute in Faber, Virginia. Angela Ford, Army remote viewer and Monroe Institute instructor, has described the alleged mechanism: Hemi-Sync plays different tones in each ear, reportedly driving both hemispheres of the brain to a synchronized frequency range that purportedly allows consciousness to disengage from the physical body — the same state that children with natural OBE ability, including Ford herself, are said to access spontaneously from early childhood. Other reported induction methods include lucid dream transition (the Wake-Back-To-Bed technique), sensory deprivation, breathwork (particularly holotropic breathing derived from Stanislav Grof's methods), and psychedelic compounds including DMT, which is reported to induce subjective states phenomenologically indistinguishable from deep astral projection accounts.

Silver cord

The "silver cord" — a filament of non-physical material described as connecting the astral body to the physical body during projection — appears consistently in Theosophical literature (derived from the Hebrew Bible's "golden bowl" imagery in Ecclesiastes 12:6), in Monroe's accounts, and in many independent experiencer reports. The cord is typically described as elastic, extending without limit during travel but drawing the projector back to the physical body. Monroe and subsequent researchers have suggested that the cord is not a causal tether but a perceptual phenomenon: a reflection of the consciousness's awareness of its dual state.

Government interest

The CIA's relationship with Monroe allegedly began with funding for OBE/astral projection research in the early 1970s as part of Project Stargate predecessor programs. The 1983 Gateway Process report — a 29-page CIA analysis by Army Lieutenant Colonel Wayne McDonnell — concluded that the Monroe Institute's Hemi-Sync methodology produces genuine altered states distinct from sleep or normal relaxation, and recommended that the Gateway training program be incorporated into intelligence applications. Ingo Swann, the primary architect of Coordinate Remote Viewing, reportedly described his remote viewing methodology as a controlled, reproducible form of the same perceptual dissociation that occurs spontaneously in OBE — the difference being systematic, on-demand access rather than random occurrence.

Alleged astral entities

Monroe documented allegedly consistent encounters with non-human entities during astral projection — categorized by apparent motivation: benevolent guides and helpers; neutral information-providing entities; and predatory or parasitic entities he termed Loosh collectors, beings purported to feed on human emotional energy, especially the fear generated at death and during high-distress OBE attempts. This predatory entity category maps closely onto the Archon concept in Gnostic cosmology; the Djinn in Islamic metaphysics; the "flyers" described by Carlos Castaneda's don Juan; and the Draco reptilians-allied entities described in Elena Danaan's contact material as operating in the lower non-physical layers of Earth's consciousness field.

Laboratory research

Physicist Thomas Campbell, who worked alongside Robert Monroe in the early 1970s before the Monroe Institute was formally established, has described the research process: Monroe "taught us how to go out of body" as the first step, after which Campbell and electrical engineer Dennis Mennerich spent years conducting evidential experiments — remote viewing, healing, mind-to-mind communication — to determine whether the phenomenon was real or "some kind of mind game." Campbell, whose subsequent career included work at NASA's missile defense programs in Huntsville, Alabama, has stated that he concluded the experiences were genuine and developed a theoretical physics framework to explain them.

Connection to remote viewing

Remote viewing programs (Stargate, SCANATE, GONDOLA WISH) reportedly used a stripped-down version of astral projection methodology — dissociation from the physical environment sufficient to perceive remote targets — without requiring full out-of-body projection. The operational distinction was practical: full OBE was difficult to control and sustain on demand; the remote viewing protocols (CRV/ERV) were said to produce reliable partial dissociation suitable for target work. Angela Ford, who taught at the Monroe Institute while simultaneously consulting on remote viewing projects, has described Hemi-Sync as specifically not part of the Stargate CRV protocol — it was reportedly the Monroe Institute's parallel track for those seeking full OBE rather than remote viewing intelligence collection.

Scientific reception

There is no known scientific evidence that astral projection as an objective phenomenon exists, although there are cases of patients having experiences suggestive of astral projection from brain stimulation treatments and hallucinogenic drugs, such as ketamine, phencyclidine, and DMT. Subjects in parapsychological experiments have attempted to project their astral bodies to distant rooms and report what was happening; such experiments have not produced clear results. Psychologist Donovan Rawcliffe has written that astral projection can be explained by delusion, hallucination, and vivid dreams. Arthur W. Wiggins has considered astral travel an illusion, pointing to neuroanatomy, prior knowledge, and human belief and imagination as prosaic explanations. Robert Todd Carroll writes that the main evidence for astral travel is anecdotal and comes "in the form of testimonials of those who claim to have experienced being out of their bodies when they may have been out of their minds." Leonard Zusne and Warren Jones have analysed astral projection reports within the framework of anomalistic psychology and magical thinking.

See also

References