If you’ve ever felt like you left your body during sleep, you’re not alone — you’re just easily impressed by dreams and gravity.
According to the believers, astral projection is the ability to separate your soul (or “energy body,” if you’re allergic to theology) from your physical self and float around like a ghost with travel envy.
Proponents claim to have visited loved ones in their sleep, hovered over hospitals, explored pyramids, and, in one memorable blog post I found, watched a neighbor eat lasagna through a second-story window. Clearly, the spirit realm has no concept of privacy laws.
Here’s the problem: no one can prove it.
All evidence for astral projection is anecdotal — usually fuzzy memories collected right before waking up, possibly influenced by dreams, movies, or the full pizza they regret eating at midnight.
There are dozens of “how-to” guides available, of course. Most involve lying down, closing your eyes, and concentrating very, very hard — while listening to music that sounds like a didgeridoo had an existential crisis in a wind tunnel.
Eventually, they say, your soul “lifts free.”
Spoiler: that’s not transcendence. That’s sleep paralysis with a soundtrack.
Scientific explanations abound: lucid dreaming, hypnagogic hallucinations, misfiring sensory signals. But none of them involve your spirit body flying through the ceiling to hover over your houseplants before heading off to the Akashic Records.
I say this with confidence as someone who suffers from frequent sleepless nights. I’ve had moments that felt like my soul was trying to evacuate the premises — only to realize I’d made the profoundly bad decision to eat stuffed peppers at bedtime.
That wasn’t transcendence. That was sodium and regret.
And yet the movement thrives — because astral projection, like most paranormal concepts, offers something irresistible: the idea that you are special. That you can see beyond the veil. That you can access hidden knowledge without having to pass a physics class or, God forbid, read a peer-reviewed study.
Astral projection is just another beautifully marketed delusion dressed up in velvet, incense, and spiritual jargon. If your soul really wants to leave your body, it’ll let you know.
Until then, stay grounded — and maybe cut back on the stuffed peppers late at night.