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Originally Posted by Conan
What are your views on astral projection, that is the leaving of the consciousness from the body through deep mediation (controlled breathing and concentration), use of entheogenic herbs and drugs (such as salvia divinorum) or accidentally (surgery, car crash and near death experience, etc).
There are a couple of schools of thought when it comes to what exactly the "astral plane" is. The basic religious perspective is that it is literally another place – a realm separate from the human one our bodies were born into. A more scientific (although I personally find it more profound) is that these experiences are a conscious exploration of our subconscious. This gives these "journeys inside the self" a great capacity for personal insight. A third, hard science theory is that any perceived effects are simply hallucinations or waking dreams with no value or personal context.
As someone who takes a non-religous approach to meditating, and believes that a lot can be accomplished with a clear head and proper concentration – I'm very open minded to this concept. However, I see it as unlikely that I would be able to experience "astral projection" (which I believe is simply an exploration of my own mind, with dormant feelings manifesting themselves as "physical" entities within my imagination) through mediation alone. I think it is far more likely through a combination of meditation and salvia use. People have already reported profound experiences through their usage of salvia, and if I go into it with a mind emptied by meditation I can imagine it will be more than just a "trip".
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I tend to be a pretty big skeptic to the supernatural and while I don't necessarily believe in the Astral Plane as a separate physical realm of existence I do believe in OBEs to a relative extent.
I do NOT at all buy into the idea that drug use / abuse opens the mind to true spiritual development. It might help the conscious mind adapt to weirder ideas and open yourself up to different theories etc but as far as my personal experiences go with meditation (transcendental) and attempts at freeing my mind from my body - sobriety is key. Normally that style of meditation is very relaxing and the most substantial effects I've felt is the full extent of the rush and flow of blood throughout my body with every heartbeat (though it's always been an incredibly fleeting event).
For myself the most significant experiences I've had with the practice came about during a period around 10 years ago when I had stopped smoking pot and found I had to relax myself a lot more than 'normal' in order to fall asleep, hence the meditation. After a few weeks I started noticing that my mind was waking up before my body which definitely lends itself to the whole idea of lucid waking dreams. But then I started noticing odd things, like I could clearly see my room from my bed even though it felt like my eyes were still shut (there's also the fact that I NEED glasses to see anything clearly and I always take them off before getting into bed).
My theory on the matter is that due to practicing the meditation in bed while I was trying to fall asleep my body was falling into a transcendental state (similar to how you mention having a hard time moving your hands with the binaural beat experiment) but then my mind would fall asleep, come morning my body was still in a trance which allowed my mind the freedom to awake and operate independently.
Either way, after a few more mornings of seeing my room before I opened my eyes I tried 'stepping out' for lack of a better term. When I woke up being able to see the room clearly (which I normally am not able to do) I choose to try getting out of bed (which kind of felt like floating upward in a pool but without the resistance of water), then I started 'walking' out of the room, and while still consciously recognizing that my body should still technically be sleeping in my bed I tried turning around. And everything broke. The clarity of my vision was replaced with a bright light but an intense feeling of dread and it took significant mental effort to wake my body after that point. I've never managed to experience something like that since.
I realize this is entirely a single shot anecdotal piece of evidence but where it directly happened to me I can't explain it as anything other than having experienced the feeling of inhabiting my soul independently of my body.