Astral Projection
Out of Body Experience
Astral projection or astral travel is an ancient concept that refers to the conscious travel of the subtle body to different realms. As children, some of you may have read Mandrake the Magician, by Indrajal Comics. Magnon was the ruler of numerous planets outside our galaxy and Mandrake’s friend. Whenever he felt the need to communicate with Mandrake, he would use astral projection and appear in front of Mandrake, in a non-physical form.
Astral travel is also an OBE or an Out of Body Experience. The key difference being, an OBE usually occurs involuntarily while the body is being medically revived after a cardiac arrest, while astral travel is an experience which the jeeva orchestrates in complete awareness. Additionally, a majority of people who have experienced OBE report that they were hovering above their physical body watching the doctors trying to revive the body. Some also “hear” and “see” beyond physical barriers like walls, they become aware of what is happening outside their room. But all of this just ‘happens’ to them, with no actual control over what they see/hear/experience.
This illustration, copied from a research paper found in LinkedIn, focusses on
Visualising what the experience feels like
Illustrating an experiment done in this field
The brain region believed to be responsible for the experience
Astral travel, a belief held in common in all cultures across the globe, is finding inclusivity and acceptance through popular fiction and television shows, the most recent being ‘Behind her eyes’ on Netflix, based on a novel by Sarah Pinborough...
Unlike in these stories though, astral travel is undertaken for spiritual purposes and not for deception or showing off.
While scientists dismiss the phenomenon as tricks played by the mind under the influence of mind-altering drugs or psychosis, in recent years, Paramahamsa Yogananda has described it in some detail in his “Autobiography of a Yogi”. He talks of Swami Prabananda in the third chapter of the book. He calls him ‘The saint with two bodies’, as the saint had materialised himself in front of one Kedar Nath Babu, even as the young Mukunda (Paramahamsa Yogananda’s poorvashrama name) sat waiting in front of the cross-legged saint in his room.
Swami Pranabananda says to an astonished Mukunda, “Why are you stupefied at all this? The subtle unity of the phenomenal world is not hidden from true yogis. I instantly see and converse with my disciples in distant Calcutta. They can similarly transcend at will every obstacle of gross matter.”
There are other accounts of astral projection by Yogananda’s masters – Sri Yukteshwar, Lahiri Mahashaya and Mahavataar Babaji, in the book. Paramahamsa Yogananda makes references to the works and findings of Dr. Giuseppe Calligaris, an Italian doctor and professor of neuro-psychology, in the early part of the 19th century. Despite publishing twenty books after three decades of experiments on thousands of people and demonstrating his findings that certain areas of the skin when stimulated enables one to perceive beyond physical barriers, his findings were not accepted by the ‘scientific’ community. Today most of his works are lost. However, one can still procure his supposedly difficult to understand book, ‘Linear Chains of Body and Spirit’, for further explanation of such phenomena. There are countless other books on the subject of “Astral Projection”.
Astral projection requires an extremely evolved consciousness and elevated spirituality, and is neither child’s play nor something to be trifled with.
To quote a member of the Medium*, “The spiritual significance of astral travel lies in its potential for profound personal insight, encounters with other beings, and the exploration of non-physical realms that are said to impact our understanding and growth.”
