ASTRAL PROJECTION

CONSIDER WHAT is sometimes called astral projection. Under conditions of religious ecstasy or hypnagogic sleep, or sometimes under the influence of a hallucinogen, people report the distinct sensation of stepping outside the body, leaving it, floating effortlessly to some other place in the room (often near the ceiling), and only at the end of the experience remerging with the body. If such a thing can actually happen, it is certainly of great importance; it implies something about the nature of human personality and even about the possibility of “life after death.” Indeed, some people who have had near-death experiences, or who have been declared clinically dead and then revived, report similar sensations. But the fact that a sensation is reported does not mean that it occurred as claimed. There might, for example, be a common experience or wiring defect in human neuroanatomy that under certain circumstances always leads to the same illusion of astral projection. (See Chapter 25.)

There is a simple way to test astral projection. In your absence, have a friend place a book face up on a high and inaccessible shelf in the library. Then, if you ever have an astral projection experience, float to the book and read the title. When your body reawakens and you correctly announce what you have read, you will have provided some evidence for the physical reality of astral projection. But, of course, there must be no other way for you to know the title of the book, such as sneaking a peek when no one else is around, or being told by your friend or by someone your friend tells. To avoid the latter possibility, the experiment should be done “double blind”; that is, someone quite unknown to you who is entirely unaware of your existence must select and place the book and judge whether your answer is correct. To the best of my knowledge no demonstration of astral projection has ever been reported under such controlled circumstances with skeptics in attendance. I conclude that while astral projection is not excluded, there is little reason to believe in it. On the other hand, there is some evidence accumulated by Ian Stevenson, a University of Virginia psychiatrist, that young children in India and the Near East report in great detail a previous life in a moderately distant locale which they have never visited, while further inquiry demonstrates that a recently deceased person fits the child’s description very well. But this is not an experiment performed under controlled conditions, and it is at least possible that the child has overheard or been given information about which the investigator is unaware. Stevenson’s work is probably the most interesting of all contemporary research on “extrasensory perception.”