Astral projection (or astral travel) is an esoteric interpretation of the out of body experience assuming the existence of a spirit.
The symptoms are much the same as an OBE: feelings of floating out of your body, meeting other entities, and experiencing the physical world from an ethereal perspective (ie, being able to float through walls and teleport instantly around the universe).
However, the expectation principle can cause the experience of astral projection to take on a highly spiritual form. Believers in the afterlife expect to see angels, deceased spirits and even gods - and so that is what they do see.
They may travel to different "astral planes"; layers of ethereal realities shaped by energy and light. Yet one key similarity remains: in astral projection, out of body experiences and lucid dreams, your thoughts guide the experience.
So if you imagine a friend's house, you will likely zap there in an instant. If you imagine your body back in bed, you will quickly return to it. And if you expect to see an astral chord connecting you to your body, it will materialize for you.
Is Astral Projection Real?
Scientists do not believe that astral projection is real. It is a spiritual theory, and other than first-hand accounts, we have no physical evidence of the phenomena.
While lucid dreams are officially deemed as internally generated experiences, astral projection is the belief that the spirit literally travels outside the body, in real, externally generated spiritual realms.
That is an extraordinary claim - and therefore requires extraordinary proof. Of course, everyone can freely decide what to make of their personal experiences, but if you have not yet experienced out-of-body phenomena for yourself, I do urge you to play down any spiritual interpretation for the time being. Here's why:
The Expectation Principle
For the OBE explorer, is belief in the astral world a help or hindrance?
In general, much of the dogma surrounding astral projection is positive. "Spirit travelers" claim to communicate with deceased loved ones and even entities from alien worlds. Intrepid explorers are rewarded with mind-blowing experiences that may forever convince them of life after death.
However, some astral projection experiences are portrayed as quite frightening, because of the direct implications of mingling with the spirit world. One example is from the lucid dreamer, Erin Pavlina, who described her first astral projection experience as terrifying:
Under the effect of sleep paralysis, Erin sensed three other entities in her bedroom, trying to coax her out of body. She had problems trying to breathe, scream, and free herself from the paralysis. The more she fought it, the more terrified she became, until she eventually woke up and had a nervous breakdown.
Erin believed her spirit was in a literal tug-of-war against the presences in her room (who, incidentally, she could also hear talking about her). This would be a terrifying experience for anyone! However, when we take a scientific perspective, we can rationalize what was actually happening and greatly reduce the element of the unknown - and therefore the fear involved.
What if you knew, without doubt, that your experience was just a dream (or nightmare) while it was happening? Wouldn't that empower you to clear your head and take control? That is what lucid dreamers frequently do when they encounter nightmares. Erin was already an advanced lucid dreamer by this point, yet her powerful belief in the spirit world led her to believe that this out-of-body experience was beyond her control.
After that, Erin had many more astral experiences and met many more negative entities in the spirit world. Eventually she learned to fight them ( Buffy-The-Vampire-Slayer -style). Yet in lucid dreams, there is no need to run in fear from your nightmare figures - you can very often embrace and relate to them. If Erin had believed this was possible during her early astral experiences, I'm sure she would have had a lot more positive learning experiences instead of having to fight these twisted spirits.
This is one instance where belief in astral projection can seriously impede your adventures. If you accept it as an extension of the lucid dream state, you can gain so much more freedom and confidence to explore these worlds in total safety.
Source of this page; http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/astral-projection.html