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Reading Room · Metaphysical Practices · Method

What is astral projection, and where did the idea come from?

Astral projection is the reported experience of leaving the physical body and perceiving from outside it. Its history runs from ancient Egyptian and Greek ideas of a double soul through Theosophy, spiritualism and 20th-century manuals that taught readers how to induce the experience deliberately.

Facts checked on against 29 sources, 18 of them museum, university, archive, library, government or primary texts.

Key facts

Every line comes from a source listed at the bottom of the page. The small numbers point to it.

Ancient EgyptEgyptian funerary and temple material is read by later writers as showing a ka or ba able to leave the body; the earliest evidence is dated some 3,000 to 5,000 years ago.123
Middle AgesAgarwal states that the out-of-body experience was studied and practiced secretly in this period.4
1758–1760sEmanuel Swedenborg is credited by Atkinson with a 1759 report of a fire at Stockholm seen while he was in Gothenburg.5
1875The Theosophical Society is founded in New York by Helena Blavatsky, and Theosophy later builds a detailed ladder of planes with matching bodies.67
1895C. W. Leadbeater's Theosophical Manual describes the astral plane as a real region of nature, and warns that impressions brought back by untrained seers are unreliable.8
1929Muldoon and Carrington's The Projection of the Astral Body is published in London by Rider & Co.910
1958–1966Monroe begins going out of his body in 1958 without drugs or alcohol, and his laboratory sessions at the University of Virginia Medical School run from September 1965 to August 1966.1112
1977–1999Itzhak Bentov's 1977 biomedical model is cited in a 1983 Army memo, and Robert Bruce's Astral Dynamics appears from Hampton Roads Publishing Company in 1999.1314

What the practice claims

Astral projection is described by Abhishek Agarwal as a process in which human consciousness temporarily leaves the physical body and functions independently while the body remains still, and Agarwal states that it is often termed an Out-of-Body Experience (OOBE or OBE).14

Practitioners of astral projection hold that the soul and body are distinct, and that the soul or consciousness can leave the body and travel the astral plane.15

Monroe wrote that, to the uninitiated, astral projection is a term for leaving one's physical body temporarily and moving about in a non-material or astral body.12

Where the idea came from

Theosophy is credited as a partial cause of a significant rise in popularity of astral projection in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and Blackmore attributed the idea to a 19th century system that teaches humans have seven bodies.166

In Theosophy the astral body is the third of seven bodies, after the physical and etheric bodies, and Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater began using the term astral body for the emotional body.1718

Monroe named Sylvan Muldoon as the most well-known of the two individuals he identified as deliberately inducing the out-of-body state, and Muldoon said he began projecting involuntarily at the age of twelve.1219

Robert Bruce states that he first came across the term 'out-of-body experience' as the modern term for what used to be called astral projection, and Monroe credits Charles Tart with popularizing the term in the sixties.2011

What the tradition holds

How practitioners describe it, in their terms. Described, not endorsed.

Agarwal attributes to Tibetan belief the idea of a Bardo body, and Agarwal says that ancient Greeks believed in a Double body that housed the soul.14

Hindu practice describes astral projection as a supernatural power that yogis can achieve through meditation, breathing exercises (pranayama), mantra chanting, and asana, in some traditions.21

Swami Panchadasi states that a student should not attempt to travel in the astral body except under the instruction of a competent instructor.22

Eckankar teaches students, called chelas, to travel along the Eck, or Audible Life Current, toward Sugmad, and its spiritual exercises are kept confidential from outsiders.23

Monroe says that the Gateway Program was named because it created a door-way, a window, a gap through which a participant could achieve other states of consciousness.1124

What the evidence shows

What historians, scientists and controlled tests have found.

Smith (2010) stated that out-of-body experiences are more often associated with near-death experience, stroke, epilepsy, psychedelic drugs, or hypnagogic states than with spontaneous occurrence. In Blackmore's 1984 postal survey of 321 usable returns, 39 respondents claimed an OBE, and 59 percent of the OBE reports named 'when resting but not asleep' as the most common circumstance.2526

Penfield reported a patient, case G.A., who said during stimulation that she felt strange, as though she were drifting away. Blanke and Dieguez estimated that 5–10% of neurologically normal individuals have had an OBE, and Nakul and Lopez found five published cases of OBE in the history of brain stimulation.27

Controlled tests that seek verifiable perceptions at a distance have not produced clear proof, and there is no accepted scientific evidence that consciousness leaves the body. Mudgal et al. (2021) attribute the origins of OBEs in part to mismatched or deficient neurocognitive processes that maintain self-awareness.2829

Worked out from the evidence

Not stated outright by any one source. It is worked out from the sources cited.

  • The idea of a separable astral body draws on several strands: ancient Egyptian and Greek notions of a double soul, Hindu and Tibetan vocabulary, and a 19th-century Theosophical system that organized these into layered planes and bodies. The modern Western term itself is largely a product of that later period.1461728
  • Research on out-of-body experiences has so far tied the reported feeling of being outside the body to brain processes such as body-perception and multisensory integration, rather than to evidence that consciousness leaves the body.271528

Not yet confirmed

  • How far did the Egyptian ka and ba concepts that later writers link to astral projection match the separation of soul and body described in Theosophical and modern accounts?
  • Why did Theosophy and spiritualism in the late nineteenth century shape the Western vocabulary of astral bodies so strongly?
  • How do researchers explain the overlap between reported astral journeys, sleep paralysis, lucid dreams and experimentally induced illusions of body location?

Sources

Museums, universities, archives and primary texts first. Every fact is paraphrased and nothing is copied; Wikipedia is never cited.

  1. Internet Archive: Astral Projection Lib. Read on · Primary text
  2. astralprojection.club: History Of Astral Projection @Knowledge Vault. Read on · Reference
  3. blog.hypnosis.land: Astral Projection in Ancient Cultures: A Journey into the Spiritual Realms. Read on · Reference
  4. archive.org: Full text of "Astral Projection Lib". Read on · Primary text
  5. gutenberg.org: Practical Psychomancy and Crystal Gazing. Read on · Primary text
  6. livescience.com: Astral projection: Facts and theories. Read on · Reference
  7. occultpatchespins.co.uk: What's the Connection Between Astral Projection and the Occult? ⛧ Occult Patches & Pins. Read on · Reference
  8. gutenberg.org: The Astral Plane. Read on · Primary text
  9. archive.org: The Projection Of The Astral Body. Read on · Primary text
  10. archive.org: The Projection Of The Astral Body. Read on · Primary text
  11. Internet Archive: Astral Projection Books. Read on · Primary text
  12. Internet Archive: Journeys Out of the Body: The Classic Work on Out-Of-Body Experience. Read on · Primary text
  13. Internet Archive: Full CIA Gateway Document. Read on · Primary text
  14. Internet Archive: Robert Bruce Energy Work The Secrets Of. Read on · Primary text
  15. learnreligions.com: Is Astral Projection Real?. Read on · Reference
  16. shapedream.co: What Is Astral Projection?. Read on · Reference
  17. psychologytoday.com: Out-of-Body Experiences: Into the Astral? | Psychology Today. Read on · Reference
  18. theosophy.world: Astral Body | Theosophy World. Read on · Reference
  19. archive.org: Muldoon - The Projection Of The Astral Body. Read on · Primary text
  20. Internet Archive: Astral Dynamics A NEW Approach To Out Of Body Experiences. Read on · Primary text
  21. mysticroute.com: Exploring the practice of Astral Travel - Astral Projection. Read on · Reference
  22. Internet Archive: Clairvoyance and Occult Powers. Read on · Primary text
  23. encyclopedia.com: Astral Planes | Encyclopedia.com. Read on · Reference
  24. Internet Archive: Far Journeys. Read on · Primary text
  25. cwp.missouri.edu: A Journey to Other Worlds - Campus Writing Program - Mizzou. Read on · University
  26. artifactsjournal.missouri.edu: A Journey to Other Worlds // Campus Writing Program. Read on · Peer-reviewed journal
  27. Front Hum Neurosci: Commentary: Out-of-Body Experience during Awake Craniotomy.. Read on · Peer-reviewed journal
  28. worldofpsychic.com: Astral Projection: A Beginner's Guide to Spiritual Exploration. Read on · Reference
  29. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov: Astral Projection: A Strange Out-of-Body Experience in Dissociative Disorder - PMC. Read on · University

Written by The Midway Machine. Facts checked against 29 sources on 2026-10-20.

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