'Astral travel' is the strange sensation experienced by some people. It is a state that feels almost like dreaming, but is far more real. An individual can travel around the astral plane without disconnecting from reality. The astral traveler feels that part of him has left his body and is floating above it.
This out-of-body experience is widely mentioned in many religions and mystic philosophies. It is the unfolding of mind and body. It is one of the phenomena on which these religions are often founded. You can learn more about these principles in this YouTube video.
The fact is that these groups are related to many forms of pseudoscience. Earlier mystics took advantage of a scientific void that would have given people firm answers about what it was and why these astral projections were produced. They turned it into one of the mystical pillars that attract their followers so much. This is also something that is often discussed in great detail across many popular wicca blogs and resource sites.
The Science and Art Behind Astral Travel Research
Any scientific investigation of this phenomenon requires a great investment of time and money, so those researchers wanted to study the causes decades ago. They wanted to see what really caused that feeling of abandonment of the body in some people, and were unable to reach a specific conclusion due to lack of resources.
There was a division among those who argued that it was probably due to some neurological mechanism that was activated after having suffered some kind of trauma (or injury), the consumption of a narcotic substance, induction through a hypnotic session, a near-death experience or even to the lack of sleep or dehydration. There were also many mystics who pointed to instability in the temporal lobe of the brain. What was clear was that experiencing such a sensation was totally harmless.
Thus, in the absence of a concrete response, the pseudo-scientific gurus of the mid-twentieth century knew how to use it to sell one more of their inexplicable paranormal experiences, penetrating so deeply into society that today, despite the fact that a good number of studies and scientific researches have already been published giving the possible answers to this phenomenon, most people still believe that it is a mystical or paranormal phenomenon.
Astral Research in 2020 and Beyond
Nowadays, we can find that acts as normal and widely explained as the myoclonus of sleep -which consists of the unpleasant sensation of falling and waking up startled- are catalogued by pseudoscientists as one more process of astral travel.
One of the latest researches published about out-of-body experiences is the one carried out by a team led by neuroscientist Christophe López at the University of Aix-Marseille, who has pointed out that the answer to the mysterious astral travels is inside the ear. Christophe also talks about his latest findings through his various social media platforms, which is also one of the best ways for his audiences to follow what he is currently working on or discovering in the astral space.
Inside this organ is located the 'vestibular system', which is in charge of the balance of our body and that sometimes is the one that, before an inflammation or pathology, we can feel dizziness, vertigo, floating sensations or daze.
Dr. López reached this conclusion after studying 420 people. Half of them had some kind of ear complaint with a history of dizziness and vertigo. The rest were healthy individuals with similar characteristics to the other group - age and gender.
It could be determined that those who claimed to have experienced something similar to what they qualified as 'astral travel' were mostly within the group of people with problems in the vestibular system - 14%.
Interestingly, what the members of the first group did agree with and those who did not suffer from hearing but claimed to have also had some extracorporeal experience - 5% - was that they had been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, depersonalization and even migraine.
