What is an average astral projection like?
 Part 10 of a comprehensive Out-of-body Experience FAQ by Jouni Smed covering out-of-body experiences, astral projection, dreams and lucid dreams.
Accounts of OBEs have been collected since the beginning of psychical research. The first collection of cases of spontaneous apparitions, telepathy, and clairvoyance published in 1886 as 'Phantasms of the Living' [GMF86]. Frederic Myers also collected similar cases for his 'Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death' [Mye03].
The first major collection was made by Muldoon and Carrington and published in 1951 [MC51]. Nearly a hundred accounts were categorized according to whether they were produced by drugs or anaesthetics, occurred at the time of accident, death or illness, or were set off by suppressed desire. Finally they gave cases in which spirits seemed to be involved.
By categorizing the cases in this way, Muldoon and Carrington were able to compare and interpret them in the light of their theories of astral projection, but they did not go beyond this rather simple analysis. These researchers implied that we do have a double, and that it is capable of perceiving at a distance and even of surviving without the physical body.
The largest collections of accounts of astral projection have been amassed by Robert Crookall. In his many books [Cro61, 64a] he has presented hundreds of cases which show the kinds of consistencies as Muldoon and Carrington found. He also divided the cases according to how they were brought about. First there were the 'natural' ones which included those people who nearly died or were very ill or exhausted, as well as those who were quite well. Contrasted with these were the 'enforced' cases, being induced by anaesthetics, suffocation and falling, or deliberately by hypnosis.
Typical features of Crookall's accounts were the mysterious light illuminating the darkness, the white double, the ability to travel at will and inability to affect material objects. Crookall cited typical elements of the natural projection being the cord joining the two bodies, feelings of peace and happiness and the clarity of mind and 'realness' of everything seen. By contrast with what Crookall calls 'the enforced' OBE, by which he means one which is entered into deliberately by the experient, he argued the person typically finds himself not in happy and bright surroundings but in a dream or conditions reminiscent of popular conceptions of 'Hades.'
In projection two aspects can be exteriorized: in natural OBEs the soul body or the astral body is ejected free of the vehicle of vitality and the vision of the experient is clear, but when the OBE is the result of a conscious effort to have an OBE some of the lower vehicle is shed at the same time and clouds the vision. The same principles apply in death: natural deaths according to NDE accounts usually lead to an experience of paradisaical conditions, but the victim of an 'enforced' death is likely to find himself in Hades with clouded vision and consciousness.
The implication of Crookall's argument is that there is an astral body, a vehicle of vitality and a silver cord, and that we survive death to live on a higher plane. He believed that insofar as such a thing could be proved, the many cases he had collected proved the existence of out other bodies.
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