It would be comforting to many starting out in travel beyond the body to have some kind of verification from the scientific establishment that it is real and perfectly alright to do. But you can’t get that kind of absolute verification from science. When it comes to astral travel you need to investigate it personally by having out-of-body experiences and you are only able to begin to talk on level terms with those who have actually done it. There have been many experiments carried out by scientists to verify whether out-of-body experiences are real or whether they are a figment of the imagination; while travelers have provided many compelling accounts that could only have been experienced while out-of-the body, none provide conventional science with the kind of proof that most are looking for, which will give it universal acceptance, and I doubt they will find it. This is because of the scientific methods used to verify whether something is real or not. The methods require that evidence is acquired from phenomena that are external to the researcher and that the evidence is verifiable by others.
This poses problems for science when it comes to astral travel as the subject (the traveler) is in another dimension, which is subject to different laws. The subject may go to a place in the astral plane but the scientist has no evidence from the three-dimensional world that they have actually traveled anywhere apart from the accounts of the subject. All a researcher would see is that the subject slept and has to rely upon their account of what happened. Even if more than one person in the experiment meets in a place in the astral plane, the scientist only has two or more accounts of traveling and no actual physical evidence apart from the accounts of sleeping people.
Science is not sufficiently advanced that it is able to tell what people are experiencing by looking at brain waves or other bodily functions. Conventional science, lacking the means to study while actually in the fifth dimension can offer little of worth to those seeking answers; to find answers an individual needs to explore out-of-the body personally. This is why I refer to astral travel as an inner science; it is verifiable to the person who actually does it.
There has been enough anecdotal information given from subjects to show, that the simplest explanation that consciousness does leave the body and travel outside of it, is not irrefutable in current academic terms, that the accounts of traveling, seeing distant objects, places and events that actually exist, while the physical body was asleep may, theoretically in some cases be what they say they are. Yet many sometimes absurd theories are thought of by scientists and academics to explain what the subjects who claim to travel to distant places out of their bodies are actually experiencing, how many scientists actually think of exploring out-of-body experiences by having these experiences themselves? Once you do, you get into the realms of inner science, of Gnosis and science won't go there.
A few try (and some have tried inconclusively) to provide scientific evidence of consciousness existing outside the body by performing tests where the subject projects, sees an object, color or number and then relates that back once they wake up physically. This is possible to do, however, the astral plane, being under different laws to this dimension can give unexpected results for the traveler; the object may not be there or the subject could find themselves in a changed environment. Applying the laws of the third dimension to those of the fifth is completely inadequate.
Another problem is the subjective nature of the psyche, the subconscious affects the psyche in out-of-body experiences in ways that it does not here, with the result that many out-of-body experiences are subjective and not clear. Thoughts are a type of energy that condenses to form in the astral plane, so if for example you are thinking about being in a concert hall, it will become real for you and you will be in one (in the same way that you would in the dream state), even though it is not actually there, should thoughts about eating ice creams appear, you can suddenly find yourself eating one, but it doesn’t actually exist. Therefore the subject without the information from the five senses usually sees projections or a model of the world from their subconscious and not what is actually in the astral plane, or they may mix perceptions of the astral world with projections of their own subconscious and therefore be unable to give a clear account of what is actually in that dimension. But the fact that some out-of-body experiences can be subjective does not mean that they all are; some experiences are clear and give results that could only be achieved if consciousness was separated from the body.
This is why the study of the psyche is vital in any exploration out-of-the-body, a person must be able to have the psyche clear of its own projections to see what is real, and that requires an accurate study of the psyche, such as that which I describe on my self-discovery course. Subjects taking experiments for scientists have no real knowledge of the psyche and little experience of the astral plane; therefore they are likely to give subjective results, which correspondingly lack scientific credibility. With clear out-of-body experiences however, if someone is in a place in the astral plane, they can give a clear account of it when they come back to this world, even relating things that would not have been possible to have seen from their sleeping body.
There are other factors to take into account that belong to the nature and life in the fifth dimension and the only way to discover those factors is through personal exploration in that dimension and a thorough study of self-knowledge. Even if the scientific experiment were to succeed according to its own criteria, many theories could be put forward to try to explain the result which did not include the whole person’s consciousness being separate from the physical body. While science uses current methodology it is constrained in what it can discover of the fifth dimension, it wishes to apply three-dimensional laws to the fifth dimension without understanding what the laws of that dimension are. If you can personally explore outside the body in a clear way then you can begin to study the dimension that you are in, to see what is there, to understand its laws and how it operates, no one can do this from the third dimension.
Another factor to consider is that in an out-of-body experience what is experienced is often due to learning of the individual and, as anyone who explores out-of-the-body sufficiently will have found, there are other life forms existing in that plane. There is more going on than meets the three-dimensional eye. The astral plane is used by beings who live there for the learning of those of us who are alive in this world, how a scientist could factor that into the equation I don't know, it is far beyond their scope.
Near-death experiences (NDE) are another way in which it is possible to experience existence outside the body in the astral plane. These kind of experiences however, do have some differences to obe’s, notably in that the consciousness is no longer sending information back to the physical body via the silver chord, the brain no longer affects it and there is no two way body/consciousness process taking place. Life in the three-dimensional world in the body has ended, and the near death experience is part of a wider process of death and moving on, this is why they tend to be clear experiences of that process, without so many of the projections and influences of the psyche, or of the experiences geared towards learning of the individual which we get with OBE’s; the time for correcting the psyche and for learning has ended and the experience is about moving on.
Near-death experiences provide compelling anecdotal evidence of consciousness existing outside the brain as they occur when the brain is not functioning, that is when actually dead rather than in pre-death shutdown or revival. Under these circumstances there is simply no way that an out-of-body experience can be caused by any bodily function.
Scientists cannot convincingly explain the case (just to take one example of many) of a woman I spoke to recently who was in hospital and close to death, she described how while bodily unconscious she left her body, hovered slightly above the ground, looked around the room, could see medical staff around her, was able to read her medical notes and recalled how a doctor came into the room wearing a red turban. The notes she described turned out to be accurate and staff were perplexed about her account of the doctor in the red turban as he was not the usual doctor and had only visited that day to fill in for an absent member of staff, she was completely unconscious during the whole time of that doctors visit and had no prior knowledge of it.
Some academics accept that due to compelling accounts it is likely that near-death experiences show that consciousness exists outside the body, but say that ordinary out-of-body experiences are only subjective experiences in which the brain creates its own model of reality. Now logically if you accept NDE’s as showing the existence of consciousness beyond the body then clearly out-of-body experiences could show the same thing. There seems however to be a resistance in the scientific community to even speculate that this could be the case, because there is currently no way of proving it and the means to discovering something more meaningful about it does not fit in with its current line of thought. Although the repercussions of consciousness existing outside the body would be very challenging to science, it would rock the boat too much to even consider thinking outside the box.
There are enough anecdotal accounts of travel out of the body that are either unexplainable to science or are ignored by it to show that it is futile to try to get widespread scientific acceptance for out-of-body experiences, no matter how compelling the account of the experience of the traveler. It remains for the individual to prove it for themselves.
It's clear that waiting for science to give all the answers in relation to out-of-body experiences is futile, at the end of a lifetime's wait very little if any progress will have been made and if someone wishes to explore this subject the only way is to personally have out-of-body experiences and to explore from there.
Belzebuub
Extract from A Course in Astral Travel and Dreams