Sadhguru: See most of the people, I know there are lot of stuff going on here in United States,
everybody is doing astral journeys, it’s just hallucination, okay.
You lie down and just imagine that you're flying here, flying there. That's not it.
See what is being referred to, unfortunately, everything becomes ridiculous when all kinds of people start handling it.
What is being referred to as astral is, there are five kinds of bodies.
Physical body, mental body, energy body, etheric body and bliss body – these are five dimensions of the body.
The physical body is that which you can obviously see is an accumulation of the food that we have eaten.
So the type of food that we have definitely has an impact on what type of body you gather.
The next one is the mental body. When we say mind, we are not referring to any one particular part.
Every cell in the body has its own intelligence. So there is a whole mental body.
And these two are like; this is your hardware, that is your software.
Your hardware and software are no good unless they're plugged into quality power.
So the third layer of the body is the energy body. The first three – the physical, the mental and the energy body are physical in nature.
They're just getting subtler, but they're still physical in nature.
The fifth layer of the body which is referred to as the bliss body is totally non-physical.
And the fourth which is known as the etheric body, the nearest word we call this Vijnanamaya Kosha.
The nearest word or the common word that is used is etheric. It doesn't describe that.
This means it's a transitory nature, from physical to non-physical.
What is being referred to as astral bodies, leaving the physical body, mental body, energy body and the bliss body intact,
and just allowing the etheric body to float around.
That means, you can conduct your activity here because your physical body, mental body, energy body is intact,
but just allowing the etheric body to go, that's a certain kind of mastery.
You can't just psych yourself into it; it needs enormous sadhana for a person to do that.
Now, leaving the body, when we say, we are just allowing the pranic body to move out which is much simpler.
It is a much simpler thing to do and it is more concrete thing. Compared to etheric body, pranic body is physical.
It's more physical kind of presence – its energy, but it's a physical energy.
Etheric is a transitory energy it is neither physical nor beyond, it is a transition. Bliss body is totally beyond the physical.
So, getting the pranic body out and putting it back is easy.
And it's a much stronger experience because a physical part of you goes out and gets back.
Etheric body needs much more sadhana because that is not even in your experience.
It is not something that you can touch unless you're in a certain level of sadhana and intensity within yourself.
But every street corner, they are doing astral travel these days. That's just hallucination.
See, these things were done for a certain purpose (Laughs). It's called Parakaya Pravesha.
There have been schools which have been fundamentally focused towards this in… in India, simply for entertainment.
It's not worth exploring those things, because it takes enormous effort to get mastery over those things and in the end what… what you achieve,
it is of no spiritual consequence.