astral projection

astral projection (usually uncountable, plural astral projections)

1. (uncountable, parapsychology) The ability to deliberately detach one's mind, or a ghost-like replica of one's body (one's astral body), from one's physical body and to send it to distant places or into alternate realities or into people's dreams.
   • 1901, Jack London, “The Man with the Gash”, in The God of His Fathers‎, New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., page 118:

     A select number of these robbers haunted him through his dreams, and he came to know them quite well. […] [H]e believed in omens and thought-transference, and he deemed these dream-robbers to be the astral projection of real personages who happened at those particular moments, no matter where they were in the flesh, to be harboring designs, in the spirit, upon his wealth.

   • 1998 April 3, Stephen Holden, “Movie Review: Eden (1996)”, in New York Times‎, retrieved 11 March 2014:

     Her adventures in astral projection in which she has the sensation of flying over the earth and being connected with everything on the planet are accompanied by prosaic images of mist and stars.

   • 2002 May 12, Walter Kim, “Luke Helder's Bad Trip”, in Time‎, retrieved 11 March 2014:

     "Whether it's logic, meditation, channeling, astral projection or ghosts, all are ways of knowing," he wrote.

2. (countable, parapsychology) An instance of using this ability.
   • 2007, Pane Andov, Extraordinary Powers in Humans‎, →ISBN, page 101:

     [I]f you remain close to your physical body in the first few astral projections by observing the details in your own room, you will have much stronger and clearer consciousness.

• Out-of-body experiences are sometimes differentiated from astral projections by considering the former experiences to be involuntary and uncontrolled and the latter to be deliberately initiated and controllable.

• astral body
• astral plane
• out-of-body experience
• subtle body

• “astral projection”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.