You’re lying in bed, completely relaxed.

Your eyes are closed. Your body feels heavy.

Then something very strange happens.

You feel yourself rising.

For a moment, you seem to be floating near the ceiling, looking down at the room below.

And there, lying peacefully on the bed…

is you.

Welcome to the mysterious world of astral projection.

What Is Astral Projection?

The meaning of astral projection is usually described as an intentional out-of-body experience in which a person’s consciousness, or what some spiritual traditions call the astral body, appears to separate from the physical body and travel independently.

People who report an astral experience may describe floating above themselves, traveling through familiar surroundings, visiting distant places, or entering entirely different environments sometimes called the astral plane.

Ideas about journeys beyond the physical body have appeared in spiritual and philosophical traditions for centuries. The modern language of the “astral body” and astral projection was particularly developed and popularized through Western esoteric movements such as Theosophy during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

But here’s where it gets interesting.

People are still reporting the experience today.

When You Find Yourself Outside Yourself

Researchers generally use the broader term out-of-body experience, or OBE.

A classic OBE can involve the sensation that your center of awareness is outside your physical body, sometimes accompanied by seeing your own body from an elevated position.

And these experiences don’t necessarily happen when someone is close to death.

A recent review examining 87 publications found that OBEs can occur spontaneously, be deliberately induced, and occur alongside experiences such as lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis. People frequently describe them as having a powerful sense of reality.

This raises a rather wonderful question.

Where exactly were they?

Have you ever experienced astral projection, floating outside your body, or the sensation of traveling somewhere while your physical body remained asleep? Tell us about it in the comments. We’d love to hear your story.

Is Astral Projection All in the Brain?

There are neurological explanations for out-of-body experiences.

Our brains constantly integrate information from vision, balance, touch, and body position to create our sense of where “we” are.

Research has linked disturbances in that process to out-of-body sensations, particularly involving brain regions concerned with integrating information about the body and its position in space.

That’s fascinating in itself.

But it doesn’t necessarily make the mystery feel any smaller.

After all, explaining some of the brain activity associated with an experience doesn’t automatically answer every philosophical question about consciousness.

And that’s the question sitting quietly underneath astral projection.

What is consciousness?

Is it entirely created by the brain?

Or could consciousness somehow be capable of experiencing reality beyond the boundaries we normally assume?

At present, science has not established that consciousness can literally leave the body and travel independently through the physical world. Astral projection remains an interpretation of extraordinary subjective experiences rather than a demonstrated ability.

But people continue to report them.

Perhaps an astral experience is an unusually vivid form of dreaming.

Perhaps it’s a fascinating altered state produced by the brain.

Perhaps consciousness is capable of creating entire worlds that feel every bit as real as waking life.

Or perhaps we’re still missing something.

Tonight, when you put your head on the pillow, you probably expect to remain exactly where you are until morning.

But what if the mind is so much bigger than the place we assume it lives?

If you enjoy exploring consciousness, coincidence, fate, synchronicity, and life’s unexplained mysteries, Stories From The Universe by Keith Everett contains 36 uplifting stories that might make you look at the world a little differently.

P.S. For more about manifestation, abundance, divine timing, and the remarkable teachings of Florence Scovel Shinn, visit the Florence Scovel Shinn Legacy YouTube channel.