Is like being jacked in, sitting in the chair on the spaceship Nebachanezzer in the film, “The Matrix”, where your physical body stays home but without the physical umbilical, and without the dimensional restrictions of what we know as time and distance. It is not a “missing time” experience as far as I can tell. It may be one of the sources for déjà vu that occurs later during waking hours.
Its the multi-dimensional form of remote viewing-on-steroids, where you actual travel without moving, can manifest oneself in other locations, to either go unnoticed or be visible so that the target sees you (if that is the objective), making observances, taking actions that affect or change the target and problem-solving, hidden knowledge etc. can be attained.
Your state-of-mind in your subconscious often selects the form you take, as in appearance and/or clothing, like an avatar. Perhaps it is an extension of lucid dreaming that goes beyond dreaming. Astral projection can be deliberate or spontaneously occur, almost against your Will. I said “almost”, as in like if a friend showed up unannounced and they make you get out of the house to go see a movie.
When you come back, usually your body feels different, often in a good way, but if the target was an evil entity on the other side of the “journey”, the person often returns with the physical appearance of more grey hair. This may be one of the reasons why folklore often depicted sorcerers and wizards as having pure white hair.
Although I don’t do this very often, I blame hyper-surreal astral projection experiences for my lack of interest in role-playing video games, suspense/horror films and many other manner of extreme virtual escapism that people use these days, as most of these things are quite the bore by comparison. There is a physical sensation as I am entering astral projection and when lying down, it is the feeling of my spirit-self rotating fast horizontally out and upwards from my body for a few seconds, then suddenly I’m instantly “geographically somewhere else”. I’ve only experienced realtime events so I’m not certain that a person can travel back in time, but its a compelling thought.
When I was a kid, I thought everyone could do this. Perhaps everyone can and they’ve lost the awareness to astral project. Or perhaps the experience would drive some people irretrievably mad and its better that they can’t have these experiences.
