The Spaces Between: Astral Space and Time (GAP)

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Want to truly know the Astral Plane, berk? Take two thin sticks and spread them about a foot apart. Then, brings them within six inches of each other — about half the distance they previously were apart. After that, move them to half the distance again — three inches apart — and then again, and again, until they almost touch.
Then imagine half the space that sepS( arates the sticks, and then half l "H that, and again and again until the distance is virtually infinitesimally small. The sticks will r—| never actually touch, because as they move together, they must first cross half the distance, and then half the remaining space, and then half that, and so on into infinity.
See, between everything, there is a space - in some cases a space so small that it can only be imagined and never seen. The Astral Plane is somewhere within that space. How can that be? How can anything — let alone a whole infinite plane — fit into literally no space? Simple. The Astral's not a place. It has nothing to do with space at all. It's a realm of the mind. That's why even though there is no distance to measure or space to occupy, it appears that there is. It's all a matter of perspective — or rather, perception. The mind sees distance, feels space around it, and perceives what it thinks is a plane.
This is because no matter where a body goes, he's on a plane, right? Wrong. A person can leave the planes. When he's not on a plane, he's on the Astral. The Astral is not like the Beastlands or the Plane of Ooze. It's certainly not like the Prime Material. In fact, it's not really a plane at all. It's not a plane, it has no space — it is the absence of space, the absence of a plane. It is the void between all true spaces. (For the purposes of this book, as well as all other PLANESCAPE products, the Astral will still be referred to as a "plane," as opposed to the unwieldy term "nonspacial nonplane.")
Many think of the Astral as a means to get from one plane to another — and they're not far off, or at least originally they weren't. If a body supposes for a moment (depending on her beliefs and faction) that an intelligent force created the multiverse, then it's safe to say that the force never actually intended for anyone to ever go to the Astral. The conduits are there for a purpose (which'll be covered later), and beyond them, there is nothing to see. Then some berk flubbed a plane shift or some such and wound up physically traveling to the Astral Plane. Despite the fact that it had no dimensions of space (no true width, height, or depth), the berk perceived there to be such and "saw" things within the Silver Void.
This describes what happened when the first basher (whoever he was) physically entered the Astral Plane. Physically? Well, that's what it's called. What really happened was that his body was "translated" into its astral equivalent, as all matter is "translated" when it "physically" enters the plane. (See the section "Getting to the Astral" for more information on translation.) Something physical can't truly exist where no space exists, at least not as most people look at existing. Instead, it becomes a kind of mental energy that exhibits the same sorts of properties that normal matter does on a real plane.
At this point, however, a body should remember that until someone stumbled onto it, no one lived on the Astral. (The githyanki, the Astral's most infamous natives, aren't natives at all.) The Astral was just what the rest of the multiverse was built upon - the scaffolding of the universe, a body might say. Another might call it the mental realm of conscious foundation that forms and supports the underpinnings of concepts like space and even time. It's the backstage area that no one was ever meant to see.