astral projection

(Also known as "out-of-body-experience" (OBE))

The separation of a person's consciousness from his or her body, allowing the person to travel short or vast distances without taking the body along. The separated consciousness can perceive physical reality. Two common types of out-of-body experiences are the `near-death' and the `space travel' experiences. In the former, a person who is unconscious hovers above his or her own body and perceives what is going on during an operation or while rescue workers try to save the person's life. In the latter, a person visits Jupiter or other galaxies.

Two scientists who have popularized this modern variant of metaphysical dualism are Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and Raymond Moody. The former is well-known for her work on death and dying. The latter is a psychiatrist with a Ph.D. in philosophy whose favorite title seems to be `parapsychologist'. He has written at least four books on the subject. They are based mostly on liberal interpretations of testimonials and anecdotes from doctors, nurses and patients. Characteristic of Moody's work is the glaring omission of cases that don't fit his hypothesis. He has even written a book about Elvis. Kübler-Ross claims it is possible to have sex with the spirits of the dead. Other popular investigators of out-of-body experiences are Drs. Puthoff and Targ of the Stanford Research Institute (not affiliated with Stanford University) and Dr. Charles Tart, a psychologist who retired from the University of California at Davis and is now on the staff at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. The latter trio also do research on esp.

Astral projection requires us to believe that (a) consciousness is a separate entity from the body and can exist without the body, at least for short periods of time, and (b) that the disembodied consciousness can `see', `hear' and `feel', and, I suppose, smell as well.[note 1] The belief that the mind and body are separate entities and can exist apart is the basis for the traditional Western view of the immortality of the soul. On the traditional view, you must die before your soul can travel, and even then your destinations are pretty limited: heaven or hell and you don't get to take your pick! The New Age view lets you take your pick of anywhere you want to go and you don't have to die to do it. What a deal!

However, imagine what would happen if thousands of souls took off on astral voyages and came back to the wrong bodies. You'd think that there'd be a mix-up occasionally. One would expect some minds to get lost and never find their way back to their bodies. There should be at least a few mindless bodies wandering or laying around, abandoned by their souls as unnecessary baggage. There should also be a few confused souls who don't know who they are because they're in the wrong bodies. If dualism were true, one would expect that there would be minds out of their bodies everywhere!

It seems obvious to me that when I perceive anything it is because I have bodily senses (sight, hearing, etc.) which are stimulated by physical phenomena (electromagnetic radiation, vibrating air, etc.). According to the dualists, however, it is my mind that is really doing the perceiving. My body is superfluous. Descartes, often called the Father of Modern Philosophy, thought he had proved this point in his Metaphysical Meditations. There he asks the reader to follow him while he does a thought experiment. Imagine a piece of fresh beeswax, he writes. Consider its odor, its texture, its size and shape. Tap it and listen to the dull sound it emits; taste the sweet honey still embedded. Now imagine that the wax is burned. It now looks, smells, feels, sounds and tastes different. In other words, every piece of perceptual data tells you that this is a different object. Yet, you know that it is not a different object; it is the same object with a completely different appearance. You know that the essence of the wax remains through the transformation of its properties. How do you know this? Not through your bodily senses, since they tell you this is not the same wax. You know it through your mind. Thus, your knowledge of material substances does not come through your bodily senses, but through your immaterial mind.

The main difficulty with Descartes' argument centers on the ideas of essence and substance. They are superfluous concepts. Everything can be explained just as well without assuming that behind every perception of a physical object there is a substance called mind and a substance called body. Is Descartes' wax the same wax after it is burned? Is an egg the same egg after it is boiled? Is a dollar the same dollar after it is cut into four parts? Just because something is equal to something else does not mean it is identical to it. It may be the same wax in the same way that the boiled egg is the same egg. It is not the same wax in the same way that the mutilated dollar is not the same as the pristine one. What is gained by assuming that there is an egg- essence that stays the same through boiling? How does this egg- essence differ from the physical properties of the egg? Why assume that the real egg is a substance grasped only by the mind?

Likewise, why assume that besides seeing a red ball, hearing a thumping noise, feeling the wind on your face, smelling the cabbage cooking, etc. there is a non-material substance, the mind, which is really doing the hearing, feeling, smelling, etc. and the body, including the brain, is just a vehicle somehow pumping data to this mind? One troublesome aspect of dualism involves trying to explain how it is possible for a spatial entity to interact with a non-spatial one. How does mind connect with body if they are different substances? How can the physical cause effects in the nonphysical and vice-versa? [Descartes could not explain how the interaction of mind and body is possible, but he did claim to know where it occurs: in the pineal gland.]

One might wonder, if the dualists are right, why consciousness requires the assistance of sensory organs under ordinary circumstances. The body becomes a superfluous entity on this theory. If it were possible to separate a soul from its body why would the soul ever come back? If it can do just fine without this material prison (as Plato called the body), then why doesn't it venture out on its own and stay there?

Now, there is nothing mystical or mysterious about experiencing travel while the body stays put. Most people on the planet do this every night when they go to sleep and dream. Many of us daydream about foreign and exotic places. Some people do this when they take certain kinds of drugs. Some people do this when they have a brain disorder.[note2]

James Randi cites the case of two scientists at the Stanford Research Institute, Dr. Russell Targ and Dr. Harold Puthoff, who favorably compared the findings of Mariner 10 and Pioneer 10 (research spacecrafts) with the `findings' of Ingo Swann and Harold Sherman who claimed to have visited Mercury and Jupiter on `astral trips' before the research vessels had been launched.[note 3] These scientists said they found exciting similarities between what Swann and Sherman reported and what the spacecraft reported. They called for more studies, using the astral travelers as guides to outer space exploration. Isaac Asimov took a list of the claims the astral observers made and compared them to what was known based on the spacecraft research. Asimov concluded that 46% of the claims of the astral travelers were false. He classified only one out of 65 claims as a fact that either was not obvious or not obtainable from reference books. The scientists were not even put off by the fact that Swann claimed he saw a 30,000 ft. mountain range on Jupiter on his astral voyage when there is no such thing. It is hard to imagine why anyone would have faith in such claims. If I told you that I had been to your hometown and has seen the 30,000 ft. high mountain there and you knew there was no such mountain, would you think I had really visited your town even if I correctly pointed out that there is a river nearby and it sometimes floods? Swann, by the way, now claims that astral travel is so fast that he probably wasn't seeing Jupiter but another planet in another solar system! So, there really is a big mountain out there somewhere!

Despite the claims of parapsychologists such as Moody, Tart, Targ and Puthoff, there is not one piece of physical evidence to support the claim that anyone can project their mind or soul or psyche or spirit or whatever to somewhere else on this or any other planet. All we have is testimony. How could it be otherwise? The real question for psychology is why is it that when confronted with the same evidence, two equally intelligent and knowledgeable groups of people, each with their armies of Ph.D.s, M.D.s and Nobel Prize winners, the skeptics and the believers, respond so differently. The skeptics scoff at the claims of the witnesses to the paranormal and consider the believers to be naive, gullible and foolish, directed more by wishful thinking and self-deception than critical thinking. The believers think the skeptics are closedminded "professional detractors" (J.B. Rhine's characterization of Martin Gardner) directed more by stubbornness and preconceived notions than by critical thinking.

In concluding, we should note that purists make a distinction between astral projection and OBE. The former is a teaching of Madam Blavatsky [note 4] and involves belief in different bodies, one of which is the astral body. The astral body perceives other astral bodies rather than their physical bodies. So, strictly speaking it is not the soul or consciousness which takes off during astral projection, but a kind of body. This body, by the way, is the one which has an aura. It is also the seat of consciousness and is generally described as being connected to the physical body during projection by an infinitely elastic and very fine silver cord, a kind of cosmic umbilical cord or Ariadne's thread.

See related entries on beliefs, soul and mind.

Jouni A. Smed's OBE-FAQ. I don't often recommend works by non-skeptics, but this one is an exception: very informative and well-written, though packed into one huge file (192K). I especially recommend the sections on "Other Approaches" and "Psychological Theories."

Blackmore, Susan J., Beyond the Body: an Investigation of Out-of-Body Experiences (London: Heinemann, 1982).

Grof Stanislav. Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research (New York: Viking Press, 1975)

Ryle, Gilbert. The Concept of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

Sacks, Oliver W. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales (New York: Harper Perennial Library, 1990).

Sagan, Carl. Broca's Brain (New York: Random House, 1979), pp. 47-48.

Siegel, Ronald K. Fire in the Brain : Clinical Tales of Hallucination (New York: Dutton, 1992).

Note 4. She was the founder of the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875. She put together an eclectic set of teachings based on her travels in India and her study Eastern religions and science.

An experience in which a person's consciousness seems to depart from his or her body, enabling observation of the world from a point of view other than that of one's physical body and by means other than those of one's physical senses.

reader comments

23 Jun 1996
Dear Mr. Carroll,

I have read your material on OBEs with interest. While I make no claims to be a scientist, I have had an unique experience, which I still can not explain. Perhaps it was a dream, a shared dream.

While asleep one evening in 1981, I thought I left my body and travelled to the foot of my mother's bed (110 miles away). My mother was very ill at the time. As I stood at the end of the bed she asked me if I would let her die. I told her, "No. Not unless you let me help you get better." She agreed to those conditions. Then it felt as if I was speeding back to my own bed. I woke up with the feeling that something inexplicable had happened. I woke my wife and told her of my experience. We said nothing more about it.

Six months later my mother came to live with my wife and me. After she had been with us for about a week she told us the strangest story while we were having our morning coffee. It was the same experience that I had had. However, she said that in her -- dream -- I appeared like an angel at the foot of her bed.

She clarified that she had had her experience the same day that I had had mine.

There is no physical proof that I can provide. Unlike some of the authors you have cited I have no reason to make a profit from having had the experience. To my mother, who is now deceased, my wife and me the experience seemed real. I am curious if there is another explanation.

Falko Schilling

reply: It could have been an OBE or a lucid dream, but I doubt it.

For a son to dream about visiting his very ill mother, or a very ill mother to dream about her son visiting her, is not surprising or unusual. That two such dreams occurred on the same night under such circumstances does not seem to require an extraordinary explanation. Your mother was very ill but lived too far away for you to be with her as much as you wanted to. She desired her son to be with her during her time of extreme need. Dreams fulfilling such basic needs and desires are common, not uncommon.

On the other hand, when you say that six months after your dreams she told you that she had "the same experience" on "the same day" that you had your dream, I have to wonder. You guys must keep pretty good diaries to be so precise on the dates. How many people can look back six months and remember what they did on a particular day, much less what they dreamed? Even so, it would be very unusual if neither you nor your wife had mentioned your dream to your mother between the time you had it and six months later when she came to live with you. You considered it to be a very unusual type of dream and woke your wife to tell her about it. Even if you did not mention the dream to your mother, it is possible that your wife did. Or, maybe you don't even remember mentioning the dream to your mother. We often fill in our memories of events and dreams after the fact and what we remember as having happened or having been in our dream often happened after the event or dream occurred.

When you say your mother's experience was the "same" do you mean that her dream was identical to your dream except for the angel bit? (By the way, I'd be honored if my mother dreamed of me as an angel! She must have thought you were a pretty good son.) If her dream had the same dialogue in it as yours, my best guess would be that you or your wife had told her of the dialogue and that what she remembered as her dream was actually what you or your wife had told her of your dream. Wives don't always tell husbands everything. We don't always remember what we said to whom and when we said it. Verification later may be erroneous, yet we take it to be certain. Our subjective certainty in these matters is often so strong as to make us prefer an explanation in terms of OBEs or dream telepathy rather than assume that it is more likely that we have cued each other but don't remember doing so. So-called pyschic performers, or mentalists, often amaze people with what they "know" about them, when much of what they "know" was revealed by their subjects. The subjects don't remember revealing information about themselves, even though the time lapse between their revelations and the psychic's "reading their mind" is only a few minutes. (See the entry on cold reading.)

Finally, as to the motivation of those who have strange and seemingly inexplicable experiences, I would note that most similar stories are not told by people who are trying to profit by it. They are truly baffled by what seems to them something beyond co-incidence and they seriously seek an explanation. Even though having a profit motive would be good grounds for being skeptical of such claims, not having a profit motive is not a very significant fact in evaluating the nature of such claims.

See entry on astral projection.

Further reading

Jouni A. Smed's OBE-FAQ. I don't often recommend works by non-skeptics, but this one is an exception: very informative and well-written, though packed into one huge file (192K). I especially recommend the sections on "Other Approaches" and "Psychological Theories."

Keith Augustine's essays

Blackmore, Susan J., Beyond the Body: an Investigation of Out-of-Body Experiences (London: Heinemann, 1982).

An out-of-body experience by a person who nearly dies. The experience is often described as involving a feeling of extreme peacefulness, a passage into darkness and then a passage into the light.

See entry on astral projection.

reader comments

Your articles are very informative. Yet I have to disagree with you on one important note. Near Death Experience. I had a heart attack in January 1990, near San Francisco. Over the years, I have not only found that millions worldwide have had an NDE, but that there were blind NDEers who were able to describe layouts of the room they were in, the people, and the equipment, as well as colors, and verified by their doctors.

Reply: Are you saying that you believe stories which assert that persons who have been blind from birth had "visions" while near death? I could believe that a person who had once had sight and was blind at the time of a near death experience was conscious of "seeing," as in a daydream or dream, things like rooms, doctors, equipment, etc., and I would have no problem believing that a person who appears unconscious or dead to others can have auditory sensations and hear what is going on around him. Nothing seems extraordinary about that.

I know Susan Blackmore and her views on the subject, but she can't explain to my satisfaction, how those who were blind, described what I have just mentioned. I remembered skeptics who said, "There was no such thing as ESP." Now many know from a declassified document showing that the CIA was using ESP with a 66% success rate for over 20 years. Far above the rate for 'chance.'

Reply: Where did you get that information. The CIA is about as reliable a source on this stuff as the man in the moon. In any case, there have been other widely reported stories about the CIA and how it has abandoned its program of hiring psychics, not because it had a great success rate, but because it was recognized to have been a waste of money. Sure, there were a few psychics and some CIA officers who believe in esp and who think the money was well spent. I, for one, am glad they are not wasting our tax dollars on this non-sense anymore.

I don't believe in people who can claim to leave their body at will or those who claim to be psychics. But I can believe in my own experience and that of the blind.
Aubrey

Reply: What does it mean to believe in your own experience? You mean you believe in your interpretation of your experience. That is quite another thing, highly speculative and controversial.

8 Aug 1996
I wanted to relate an experience that happened to me October 30, 1994. A friend and I went for a bicycle ride. I had stopped by his house to see him off and refill my water bottle before heading home. On my way back home I was hit by a car. The woman didn't see me and turned right into me. I hit the brakes, but there was nothing I could do. I told myself to drop and roll. The next thing I know I am standing on the sidewalk with two presence's next to me, telling me to relax, that things will be okay. I looked at the car and saw a black form rolling over the car. Then I am back in my body sitting on the ground.

I missed hitting a stop sign by twelve inches and a telephone pole by twenty-four inches. The only thing that happened to me was a cut on my leg (requiring stitches) and a few bruises. I thought I must have imagined it....but the pictures are too clear. Do OBE usually feel so real? Or would this be classified as a different experience?

Betsey Kamel

reply: Glad to hear you were not seriously injured. Our student assistant was hit by a car last year and nearly died from it.

Anyway, I can't comment on the nature of OBE's from experience, since I have never had one. I can only comment on your specific experience in a general way and speculate as to what caused your perceptions..

As you know, chemicals in our brain affect perception. How they do this is still a large mystery, but we know that electrical stimulation of certain parts of the brain, which can be brought about directly or by chemicals, can cause hallucinations, i.e., vivid perceptions not caused by an external object.

A trauma, or fear of trauma, to the body stimulates the production of chemicals in the body. Among the most well known examples of this is the production of adrenaline when frightened.

I cannot say for sure what you experienced but perhaps your perceptions were based on real people trying to comfort you who were gone by the time you recovered to full consciousness. Likewise for the black form: there may have been an ocular occlusion which affected your perception of an external object. On the other hand, it is possible that what you perceived were hallucinations, brought about by the trauma of your experience.

You clearly went from a state of conscious awareness to semi- or un-consciousness and then back to a state of conscious awareness. What you perceived was probably due to your body's reaction to being hit by a car, not due to any beings from another realm who appeared just at the moment of your unfortunate crash.

Maybe while sleeping people experience out of body hallicinations due to lag in the cortex and other parts of the brain.

Benjamin Moir
Sydney, Australia

reply: I wouldn't generalize too greatly from your experiment, but there are scientists now researching the possibility that obe's (and other "transcendental" states) are manifestations of particular brain states.

Further reading

Keith Augustine's essays

The Astral Projection Home Page

Near-Death Experiences Links

Blackmore, Susan J., Dying to Live: Near-death Experiences, (Buffalo, N.Y. : Prometheus Books, 1993).