Outofbody experiences    I am taking this piece out since it is tagged  lets cut it down to basics and refer to other articles for detail Discuss  There are currently no scientific research programs that take the astral projection interpretation seriously as there is no scientific evidence that astral projection represents anything more than anecdotal accounts of spirituality and meditation Attempts to collect and classify accounts of these experiences date to the early s While some research before the s sought to objectively validate outofbody experiences most treat reports as anecdotal accounts of spirituality and meditation References to astral projection have appeared in parapsychology and transpersonal psychology and have overlapped with other subjects essentially consciousness or death related The term outofbody experience OBE is often used interchangeably with astral projection although the latter term is more anitiquated OBE was coined in  by Charles Tart primarily as a replacement for older terms such as astral projection   Robert Crookall a geologist interested in validating religious concepts of the soul and an afterlife published hundreds of accounts of astral projection reported by people from all walks of life in several books through the s and s He divided these into naturallyoccurring outofthebody experiences people who nearly died people who were very ill people who were exhausted etc and people who were quite well and enforced OBEs from anaesthesia suffocation accidents and hypnosisCrookall Robert The Study and Practice of Astral Projection copyright  before ISBN  Robert Monroe founder of the Monroe Institute likewise published several accounts of his personal experiences and beliefs in astral projection in books like Far Journeys Monroe said he developed a method for inducing the experience which he called HemiSyncMonroe Robert Far Journeys ISBN   Charles Tart a parapsychologist conducted laboratory experiments to determine if these experiences have objective validity For example in a  study a subject was asked to discern a five digit number written down and placed face up in an adjoining room Tart concluded that the subject was unable to read the number but did provide some details of the activities of the technician monitoring the experiment Tart summarizes Thus there is some indication that ESP may have been involved with respect to the technicians activities but it is not at all conclusivehttpwwwparadigmsyscomcttarticlescfmid Psychophysiological Study of OutoftheBody Experiences in a Selected Subject by Charles Tart Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research  vol  no  pp httpwwwparadigmsyscomcttarticlescfmid Second Psychophysiological Study of OutoftheBody Experiences in a Selected Subject by Charles T Tart Published in the International Journal of Parapsychology  vol   Various other experiments along these lines were similarly conducted Laboratory experiments like these which attempted to validate astral projection experiences however met with little acceptance even within the psychical research community where they were conducted Many psychical researchers regarded OBEs as simply a form of traveling clairvoyance and criticized the experimental methodology for failing to distinguish between the two  While interest in paranormal aspects of outofbody experiences has largely been relegated to nonacademic fringe communities a  neurological experiment was conducted to examine what may lead subjects to feel they have experienced a mindbody separation Experiments along these lines support the conclusion that the experience is an illusory product of sensory perception rather than anything extrasensory  Robert Monroe an altered states of consciousness researcher who has written extensively on astral projection a