Astral projection
[5] Some individuals have reported perceptions similar to descriptions of astral projection that were induced through various hallucinogenic and hypnotic means (including self-hypnosis).
[9] In some Inuit groups, individuals with special capabilities, known as angakkuq, are said to be able to travel to (mythological) remote places, and report their experiences and important matters back to their community.
In Japanese mythology, an ikiryō (生霊, also read as shōryō, seirei, or ikisudama) is a manifestation of the soul of a living person separately from their body.
[14] Traditionally, if someone holds a sufficient grudge against another person, it is believed that a part or the whole of their soul can temporarily leave their body and appear before the target of their hate in order to curse or otherwise harm them, similar to an evil eye.
"[19] Rabbi Nosson Scherman, however, contends that the context points to this being merely a metaphor, comparing the body to a machine, with the silver cord referring to the spine.
[20] James Hankins argues that Paul's Second Epistle to the Corinthians refers to the astral planes:[21] "I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven.
[26] The idea of the astral figured prominently in the work of the nineteenth-century French occultist Eliphas Levi, whence it was adopted and developed further by Theosophy, and used afterwards by other esoteric movements.
The subtle bodies, and their associated planes of existence, form an essential part of some esoteric systems that deal with astral phenomena.
For the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn[28] and some Theosophists,[29] it retained the classical and medieval philosophers' meaning of journeying to other worlds, heavens, hells, the astrological spheres and other landscapes in the body of light; but outside these circles the term was increasingly applied to non-physical travel around the physical world.
Some experimenters say they visit different times and/or places: etheric, then, is used to represent the sense of being out of the body in the physical world; whereas astral may connote some alteration in time-perception.
[36] Subjects in parapsychological experiments have attempted to project their astral bodies to distant rooms and see what was happening.
[37] Psychologist Donovan Rawcliffe wrote that astral projection can be explained by delusion, hallucination, and vivid dreams.
In her book, My Religion, Helen Keller tells of her beliefs in Swedenborgianism and how she once traveled 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.
These include Edgar Cayce (1877–1945), Hereward Carrington (1880–1958),[44] Oliver Fox (1885–1949),[45] Sylvan Muldoon (1903–1969),[46] and Robert Monroe (1915–1995).
[47] Robert Monroe's accounts of journeys to other realms (1971–1994) popularized the term "OBE" and were translated into a large number of languages.
Though his books themselves only placed secondary importance on descriptions of method, Monroe also 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.
[49] Michael Crichton (1942–2008) gives lengthy and detailed explanations and experience of astral projection in his 1988 non-fiction book Travels.
