`  ==Out-of-body experiences==    I am taking this piece out since it is tagged - let's 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 1920s. While some research before the 1980s sought to objectively validate out-of-body 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 out-of-body experience (OBE) is often used interchangeably with astral projection, although the latter term is more anitiquated (OBE was coined in 1960 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 1960s and 1970s. He divided these into naturally-occurring out-of-the-body 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 hypnosis.Crookall, Robert. The Study and Practice of Astral Projection, copyright 1960 (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 ``Hemi-Sync``Monroe, Robert. Far Journeys. ISBN 0-385-23182-2  Charles Tart, a parapsychologist, conducted laboratory experiments to determine if these experiences have objective validity. For example, in a 1967 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 technician's activities, but it is not at all conclusive.``http://www.paradigm-sys.com/ctt_articles2.cfm?id=31 Psychophysiological Study of Out-of-the-Body Experiences in a Selected Subject, by Charles Tart Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1968, vol. 62, no. 1, pp. 3-27http://www.paradigm-sys.com/ctt_articles2.cfm?id=32 Second Psychophysiological Study of Out-of-the-Body Experiences in a Selected Subject by Charles T. Tart Published in the International Journal of Parapsychology, 1967, vol. 9, 251-258 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 out-of-body experiences has largely been relegated to non-academic fringe communities, a 2007 neurological experiment was conducted to examine what may lead subjects to feel they have experienced a mind-body separation. Experiments along these lines support the conclusion that the experience is an illusory product of sensory perception, rather than anything extra-sensory.  Robert Monroe, an altered states of consciousness researcher who has written extensively on astral projection a