What's the difference between astral projection and soul travel..actually does soul travel exists?
I saw on threads about astral projection a member was asking something about soul travel. She said that soul travel is the soul with consiousness who travels.
But is this true? Is it possible to seperate the soul with consiousness? Maybe, our consiousness is our soul??? When we die our soul goes out with our consiousness, or our soul is our consiousness too?? Anyway I should not start another topic right now. And what's the difference??
Closest thing I can think of that's not a personal definition would be the difference between astral travel and etheric travel, in this case, out of body experiences (noting that OoBEs and etheric projection/travel is expanding your consciousness of your physical surroundings beyond your physical senses. Think of the etheric plane as in between the physical plane and the astral plane).
In cases of what I call "deeper etheric projection", such as near death experiences and some cases of OobEs, the physical body loses consciousness. The difference between this and astral projection during dreaming is the state the physical body is in. Where people are clinically dead, yet have an experience they remember upon dying and being revived shortly after, is an example of such "soul travel".
I personally differentiate the spirit and the soul as the astral plane is more cosmic in my eyes, whereas the etheric is more bound to the physical, hence the etheric body being the soul and the astral body being the spirit. Souls, like the etheric plane, are denser in energy and not as easily worked with if one does not have prior experience to work with. Spirits and cosmic energy are a lot easier for many people to work with as it is not as dense in energy.
What you call soul travel in this instance is simply what I call etheric projection. I would also like to note that one can have "lighter etheric projection" experiences where one experiences the etheric plane without such heavy effects on the physical body.
As for your question of the soul and consciousness, I would like to bring up a belief called Subtle Body Theory, which states that we exist in all planes at once; we have a physical body for the physical plane, the etheric body for the etheric plane, an astral body for the astral plane, and so on if your cosmology is expanded beyond this concept. This belief lends to projection not being a separation of the bodies, but a shift in awareness. Because of this, it is easier for some to partially project through having experiences with the subtle planes while awake. I personally have these experiences and I've not lost consciousness during projection (though I have projected during altered states of consciousness as trance is easier for me to achieve such shifts in awareness due to waking consciousness being very linear and analytical, which the subtle planes are not).
People have an experience that is like...being outside of their body. That's where the English word "ecstasy" comes from, it means "ex-stasis" or "outside situation/position".
In the materialistic way of thinking, this is impossible. How can you experience something that is not within your senses? If you see your own body, you must be using vision, which means that you're using your eyes, which means you have a body with eyes. So, you are not out of body.
But if you know that you are not looking at a mirror, then how to explain that? Like Eissy said above, some people conclude that we must have another body. Some people call it the Subtle Energy Body, or the Astral Body, or the Etheric Body...or, yes, the Soul.
The experience is real. I have had a number of out-of-body experiences myself. However, the interpretation of it still needs more data, as well as the empirical uses of such an ability. For example, I shuffled a pack of playing cards and put them on the top of the bookshelf without looking. When I go out of body, I try to look at the cards. They have never been correct.
However, I have had experiences of being outside of my physical body, that was not a dream or imagination. Robert Monroe describes it better and wrote a lot of books about it. If I recall correctly, Robert Monroe was a test subject with Dr. Charles Tart who investigated this sort of travel. It was an anonymous test subject that succeeded with a similar experiment that I described, but with numbers, the specific number was 25132. But if even Monroe couldn't make the data significant, then it's difficult to navigate even though the experience is very real.
Eissy yes I have thought too that it could be etheric projection and probably that's it...
I have heard the subbtle body theory and I believe in it I think. Since we have an astral body and an etheric one and since we can project some of them, doesn't that proves it?
Thanks everyone for your answers now I umderstand the difference. :)
I during my personal travels I have actually had physical contact with another person. Which makes me even more curious about this particular subject. However, unlike what you have described with EP I do not feel completely disconnected with my body. I can still feel an itch so to speak.
I can confirm this information. The person stated to me during the travel that he'd call the following day and he did.
