Astral Travel or Astral Projection is the first yogic meditation out of body experience (OBE). Let’s see dangers, reality, and methods here. I have shared personal experiences of Astral Projection with the help of my own narrative. This Article is crafted with academic references from high-quality journals and books. You can click on the references below the article to understand the topic deeply. However, it is advised to read the article fully. Hope you will enjoy it and add a mystical flavor to life. (Updated Article with more facts)
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What is Astral Travel/Astral Projection?
Astral Travel or Astral Projection is to project our intelligence consciously to higher spiritual/nonspiritual planes. Many people in Scientific Community consider it as pseudoscience. However, there are researches going on in a controlled environment. Some of the results from various researches and observation has suggested, there is some reality associated with Astral Travel. Some people report exactly the same environment which is supposed to be in reality while many fail to do so. Interesting right?
What is ‘Out of Body Experiences’?
‘Out of Body Experiences (OBE)’ is one of the most common stuff in some kinds of people having Yogic Interests or medical conditions. The academic study suggests, 1 out of 10 people experience OBEs once in their lifetime. It is common in ‘near death’ time periods. Most of them report similar kinds of environment, like a place having bushes, plants, trees, etc.
There is a famous case of Pam Reynolds, who was undergoing surgery for a tumor. The operation was highly invasive. She was able to describe aspects of the procedure that had happened at a time when she was clinically dead. Was it just an OBE or Astral Projection? Scientific studies are inconclusive and discussions are still going on.
Astral Travel in Dreams v/s Astral Projection in Real, is astral travel real?
People often ask, is astral travel real? Astral Travel is mostly experienced consciously in the sleep mode or fully relaxed mode. However, these are experienced also in medical and psychological conditions like epilepsy, brain injuries, depression, anxiety, Guillain-Barré syndrome, cardiac arrest, dissociative identity disorders, migraine, and altered states of consciousness-related disorders. If you have experienced headaches, mood swings, thought for leaving the body permanently (suicide), etc. while trying it you should stop and visit the doctor or psychiatrist immediately.
There is no scientific conclusion on whether the Astral Projection happens just in dreams or in real. In Indian Philosophy, astral travel is a matter of Siddhi or the perfection in Yoga. Here, Siddhi is not recommended because it hampers the process of enlightenment.
So, the whole matter is philosophical rather than Scientific. Let’s understand Astral travel from a philosophical perspective.
Astral Body (Linga Sharira)
The major requirement for Astral Travel or Astral Projection is to have a subtle body. In the book Yoga Vashista. Astral Body is known as Linga Sharira.
As per my practical experiences it is heightened sensitivity or awareness of your self. For more details read this article from scimonk related to spiritual experiences.
As per the three-body doctrine of Indian Philosophy, each one has three types of bodies namely gross body (physical body), subtle body (linga sharira/astral body), and Causal Body ( Brahman or Purusha ). Misbalance in these three bodies results in phycological or bodily dysfunctions. This is one of the major dangers of astral travel.
My Astral Projection Experiences.
My first experience happened in September 2013. I was lying on the bed in Savasana posture. I remember I was trying to feel the udana vayu and samana vayu respectively.
There are different types of Vayus and meditation techniques to feel the Pranas consciously by Dharana. This is the technique I followed. Consciously meditating on Pranas results in Samyama (Dharana, Dhyana, Samadhi) It is the flow of continuous attention and knowledge to an object of meditation. If you meditate on the Udana Vayu, you can consciously project your body on deep sleep mode.
Coming back to the astral travel experience, after some time, I went to a induced sleep stage. Suddenly my formless subtle body was out of the physical body. There was a slight feeling of spark in the head.
The astral body was actually formless but I could also feel my physical body which was locked and paralyzed. My astral body saw the mirror kept in my room. My formless body went in front of the mirror, all of sudden I could see the female form of my subtle body in the mirror, it looked like “Mahakali”. Strangely, she was all me. She disappeared in my subtle body and I was again inside my physical body.
I will call this experience as “mind playing it’s own games”, nothing else. Dreams have also it’s own science which we can discuss later.
However, this sort of spiritual experience is actually the Yin-Yang principle or Purusha and Prakriti. The primordial nature of any being is a feminine force called Shakti. She is my shakti or which manifests in Jagrit (Wakefulness) as Self Confidence, Self-Motivation, Sympathy, Love, Care, etc. If you are a female, Shakti could be a masculine force.
Kindly, don’t make any assumptions for yourself from my astral projection experience, psychology differs for each individual based on space and time where they are raised. As said by Carl Gustav Carus, the key to the understanding of the character of the conscious lies in the region of the unconscious. To reach consciously to the unconscious or subconscious portions of the mind, while keeping the wakeful memories alive is tough.
Another experience.
I was lying on the Savasana posture doing the Dharana on the nature and the forest of my surrounding. My village is located in the forest region, of Sikkim Himalaya.
In this astral projection/astral travel experience I remember I was feeling the finest aspect of my empathy for the forest spirit and nature. I went to a deep sleep. I came out of my body and I saw nature around. I was one with the forest. I was one with the air, I was one with the forest and I was one with the rain falling to the leaves in the forest.
Why astral projection can be dangerous?
There are many dangers of astral projection. If you don’t have the perfect knowledge about the place where you are trying to project, you might become the prey of a false perception of reality. The false altered states of consciousness are another danger of astral projection. You can easily become a victim of such stuff. The victims of false astral projection develop an ego and feel that they are enlightened and they are no more suited for this Earth.
Remember that, complete enlightenment means, you need to be able to know logically about the smallest to the largest in the Universe. No, one is completely enlightened, even the great masters. If you don’t have patience, you can develop frequent headaches and other unknown disorders.
Be careful about the people whom you meet. Frauds mostly say they have experienced Astral Travel and, they can teach you anything. Remember no one can teach you such stuff. These are things to be experienced by ‘self’ based on psychology.
References:
- Astral Projection, By Oliver Fox
- The Phenomena of Astral Projection, By Sylvan Muldoon
- Astral Projection: Theories of Metaphor, Philosophy of SCIENCE, and the Art of Scientific Visualization, by COX, DONNA J.
- Astral Projection and the Nature of Reality: Exploring the Out of Body State, By John Magnus
- Understanding the out-of-body experience from a neuroscientific perspective. Psychological scientific perspectives on out-of-body and near-death experiences, by Aspell JE, et al. (2009)
- Astral Travel for Beginners by Edain McCoy
- Between the gates: Lucid dreaming, astral projection, and the body of light in Western esotericism, by Mark Stavis
- The disembodied self: An empirical study of dissociation and the out-of-body experience, by Harvey J Erwin
- Atreya, B. L. (1964). Parapsychological references in Yogavasistha. Research Journal of Philosophy & Social Sciences, 1(1), 107–117.
- Singh, A. N. (2006). Role of yoga therapies in psychosomatic disorders. International Congress Series, 1287, 91–96.
- Silva, E. F. F. da, Albuquerque, S. S. de A., Barbosa, L. N. F., & Melo, M. C. B. de. (2019). MENTAL DISORDERS IN PSYCHOLOGY STUDENTS. International Journal of Psychological Research and Reviews.