Astral Projection: What It Is, the Science and the CIA File

Astral projection is the belief that a person's consciousness, often called the "astral body," can deliberately leave the physical body and travel, in this world or on other planes, while the body rests. The underlying experience, the vivid feeling of being outside your body and sometimes seeing yourself from above, is real and well documented; scientists call it an out-of-body experience (OBE) and have triggered it in the lab by stimulating a specific brain region. What has never been shown under controlled conditions is that anything actually leaves the body or brings back information it could not have gotten otherwise. This guide covers what astral projection means, where the idea comes from, what the research says, the CIA Gateway document people keep asking about, how practitioners say they do it, and when out-of-body sensations are a reason to see a doctor.

What Is Astral Projection? A Plain Definition

In esoteric traditions, astral projection (also called astral travel or soul travel) means intentionally separating a subtle, non-physical body from the physical one. Practitioners describe a sequence that often includes vibrations or buzzing, a sense of paralysis, a "pop" or rolling-out sensation, and then floating near the ceiling or moving through the house. Some say they travel to distant places or to an "astral plane" populated by other beings.

Researchers use more neutral language. An out-of-body experience, as defined in a 2005 review by Silvio Bünning and neurologist Olaf Blanke, has three features: the sense that your self is located outside your body (disembodiment), the impression of seeing the world from an elevated, distant viewpoint, and the impression of seeing your own body from that viewpoint (autoscopy). That definition describes what the person experiences without deciding what it means.

Term	What it usually means	Who uses it
Astral projection / astral travel	Deliberately sending the "astral body" out of the physical body	Esoteric, occult and New Age traditions
Out-of-body experience (OBE)	Feeling and "seeing" from a location outside your body; may be spontaneous or induced	Neuroscience, psychology, medicine
Lucid dream	A dream in which you know you are dreaming and can sometimes steer it	Sleep science and dream practitioners
Near-death experience (NDE)	A cluster of experiences, often including an OBE, during life-threatening events	Medicine, psychology, religious traditions
Remote viewing	Claimed ability to describe distant targets with the mind	Parapsychology; studied in past US government programs

Where the Idea Comes From

Out-of-body experiences "are abundant in folklore, mythology, and spiritual experiences of most ancient and modern societies," as Bünning and Blanke note in their review. The modern Western vocabulary of the "astral body" and the "astral plane," however, largely comes from 19th-century occultism.

• Theosophy. The Theosophical Society, founded in New York in 1875 by Helena Blavatsky, Henry Steel Olcott and others, popularized a layered model of human beings with physical, astral and higher bodies. Its writers spread the term "astral" into English-language spirituality.
• Early 20th-century manuals. In 1929, Sylvan Muldoon and psychical researcher Hereward Carrington published The Projection of the Astral Body, a practical how-to that described the "silver cord" said to connect the two bodies, an image still common today.
• Robert Monroe. A Virginia radio executive, Monroe described spontaneous episodes of vibration, paralysis and leaving his body that began in 1958. His 1971 book Journeys Out of the Body is widely credited with popularizing the term "out-of-body experience." He followed it with Far Journeys (1985) and Ultimate Journey (1994).
• The Monroe Institute and Hemi-Sync. Monroe's work grew into The Monroe Institute in Virginia, which teaches the Gateway program and markets Hemi-Sync, audio built on binaural beats (two slightly different tones played to each ear) that Monroe claimed help synchronize the brain's hemispheres and ease altered states.

Notice the overlap with sleep paralysis. Monroe's first episodes, as he described them, began with paralysis and vibrations, which sleep researchers recognize as a common entry point for out-of-body feelings. Our guide to the sleep paralysis demon explains that state in detail.

The CIA Gateway Process Document

Much of the recent search interest in "CIA astral projection" traces to a single document: "Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process," a memo dated June 9, 1983, written by Lt. Col. Wayne M. McDonnell of the U.S. Army and addressed to the commander of the U.S. Army Operational Group at Fort Meade, Maryland. The commander had asked him to assess the Monroe Institute's Gateway Experience "in terms of its mechanics and ultimate practicality." The memo was later declassified and is widely reported to have been approved for release in 2003; it is held in the CIA's online FOIA reading room, which is why it is usually called "the CIA document." Its page 25 was missing from the released copy for years, which fueled speculation online.

What the memo is and is not matters:

• It is an Army officer's theoretical analysis that draws on physics, holography, psychology and consciousness literature of the era to explain how the Gateway techniques might work.
• It reflects Cold War-era government curiosity about unconventional intelligence methods, the same climate that produced the government's remote-viewing research.
• It is not a controlled study, and it does not report experimental evidence that consciousness leaves the body. A government agency filing a document is not the same as a government agency confirming its claims.

Reading it can be interesting as history. Treating it as proof is a misreading of what it is.

What Science Says About Out-of-Body Experiences

OBEs are not rare. Survey estimates vary with how the question is asked; a large telephone survey of 13,057 people in the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy in Psychiatry Research (2000) included out-of-body experiences among the hallucinatory experiences reported by the general population, and they are a well-recognized part of sleep paralysis, near-death events, migraine, epilepsy, anesthesia and drug use. In the three-factor model of sleep-paralysis hallucinations developed by J. Allan Cheyne at the University of Waterloo, floating, flying and out-of-body sensations form their own cluster, which he called "unusual bodily experiences."

The temporoparietal junction

The most influential finding came in 2002, when neurologist Olaf Blanke and colleagues in Geneva reported in Nature that electrical stimulation of the right angular gyrus in a woman being evaluated for epilepsy surgery repeatedly induced an out-of-body experience. Stimulation of the same area also produced illusory changes to her arms and legs and whole-body displacement sensations. The authors concluded that OBEs "may reflect a failure by the brain to integrate complex somatosensory and vestibular information."

In a 2005 review in The Neuroscientist, Blanke and Shahar Arzy pulled together evidence from neurology, cognitive neuroscience and brain imaging pointing to the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), the area where the temporal and parietal lobes meet, as a key hub. Their argument: normally the brain fuses touch, balance, body-position and visual signals into a single sense of "I am here, in this body." When that integration breaks down at the TPJ, you can experience your self as located somewhere else, see from an illusory perspective and even see a double of yourself.

Voluntary OBEs

In 2014, researchers Andra Smith and Claude Messier published an fMRI case study in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience of a participant who said she could produce out-of-body sensations at will. The brain activity during her experience differed from ordinary motor imagery and overlapped with areas near the temporoparietal junction, along with the cerebellum and regions involved in monitoring actions. The authors interpreted it as an unusual type of kinesthetic imagery, a vivid felt sense of movement, rather than evidence of anything leaving her body. It is a single case, so it shows that voluntary OBE-like states exist, not how common they are.

Is astral projection real?

Claim	What the evidence shows
People really feel they leave their bodies	Supported. OBEs are reported by healthy people and can be induced by brain stimulation, sleep paralysis and certain drugs.
The experience has identifiable brain correlates	Supported. Multisensory processing at the temporoparietal junction is the leading explanation.
Consciousness physically travels and can gather real information	Not demonstrated. No controlled study has reliably shown accurate "remote" perception during an OBE.
Binaural beats or Hemi-Sync trigger astral travel	Not demonstrated. Binaural beats are a real auditory effect, but evidence that they reliably produce OBEs is lacking.
You can get "stuck" outside your body or have it taken over	No evidence. This is a common fear on forums, not a documented event.

None of this means the experience lacks meaning for the person. Many people describe OBEs as among the most memorable experiences of their lives, and spiritual interpretations are a matter of personal belief. The science simply explains how the brain can produce the feeling.

Astral Projection vs. Lucid Dreaming

Many experienced practitioners, and many sleep researchers, see a large overlap between astral projection and lucid dreaming. Both usually happen at the edge of sleep, often during or near REM sleep, and both feature vivid, controllable environments. The difference is mostly in interpretation and in how the experience starts.

	Astral projection (as described by practitioners)	Lucid dreaming
How it starts	From a relaxed, near-sleep state; vibrations, paralysis, "exit" sensations	Becoming aware you are dreaming while already in a dream
Environment	Often your own bedroom first, then elsewhere	Any dream setting
Interpretation	The self has left the body	The brain is generating a dream world
Scientific status	Experience documented; external travel unproven	Studied in sleep labs and linked to REM sleep

The bedroom-first pattern is notable. In sleep paralysis, the brain overlays dream imagery onto the room you are actually in, so the first scene of many "astral" journeys looks exactly like where you fell asleep.

How People Say They Do It

Search data shows "how to do astral projection," "astral projection meditation" and "binaural beats for astral projection" are among the most common related questions. The methods below are what practitioners and popular books describe. They are presented as practices people use, not as techniques proven to separate consciousness from the body.

1. Choose a time near sleep. Many practitioners recommend early morning: wake up after five or six hours of sleep, stay up briefly, then lie back down. This "wake back to bed" approach is also used for lucid dreaming because it lands you close to REM sleep.
2. Relax deeply. Progressive muscle relaxation, yoga nidra or a body-scan meditation, often with a guided recording or binaural-beat track.
3. Keep the mind awake while the body falls asleep. Often described as "mind awake, body asleep." Practitioners focus on breathing, counting or a mental image.
4. Notice the vibrations. Buzzing, heaviness or paralysis are interpreted as signs you are close. Physiologically, this is the transition into sleep and can include sleep paralysis.
5. "Exit." Techniques have names like the rope method (imagining pulling yourself up a rope), rolling out, or floating upward.
6. Return and record. Practitioners write down what they experienced immediately, as with a dream journal.

Practical cautions: these methods deliberately push you toward the sleep-wake boundary, so they can also trigger frightening sleep paralysis, especially if you are already sleep-deprived. Do not use them while driving or operating anything, and do not combine them with alcohol or drugs. If you have a seizure disorder, ask your doctor before using flickering-light or audio-visual "brain entrainment" devices.

Is Astral Projection Dangerous?

For most healthy adults, the relaxation and meditation parts of astral projection practice are low risk. The real-world risks are less dramatic than the forum stories about "astral entities" or a severed silver cord, which have no evidence behind them:

• Sleep paralysis and fear. Pushing toward the edge of sleep can bring on episodes with frightening hallucinations.
• Sleep loss. Repeated "wake back to bed" sessions cut into sleep, which raises the odds of more paralysis and daytime fatigue.
• Anxiety and dissociation. For some people, practices that loosen the sense of being in one's body can worsen anxiety or feelings of unreality (depersonalization). If that happens, stop.
• Substance use. Some online communities pair OBE attempts with drugs. Research links ketamine use, for example, to out-of-body experiences, but that adds drug risks, not spiritual safety.

When Out-of-Body Feelings Need a Doctor

A rare OBE at the edge of sleep, during meditation or during sleep paralysis is generally not a medical concern. Because OBEs can also arise from brain disorders, talk to a doctor if:

• OBEs happen while you are fully awake and not trying to induce them, especially if they come with a strange smell or taste, a rising feeling in the stomach, staring spells, confusion or lost time. These can be signs of seizures; the original 2002 stimulation finding came from a patient being evaluated for epilepsy.
• They come with a new severe headache, weakness, numbness, vision changes or trouble speaking. Call 911 for these stroke warning signs.
• You often feel detached from your body or that the world is unreal, and it is causing distress (possible depersonalization-derealization disorder, which is treatable).
• You are extremely sleepy during the day or have sudden muscle weakness with laughter or strong emotion (possible narcolepsy).
• The experiences follow trauma, or come with hearing voices or beliefs others find hard to follow.

If you are in crisis, call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Related Reading

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