The Astral Body

The Astral Body
The astral body is said to be a transitional bridge between the soul and the physical body. Plato originally introduced the idea but it has been picked up and developed by many philosophers, theologians and parapsychologists over the intervening centuries. It is the astral body that leaves the physical body when a person dies taking the soul with it and, perhaps, explaining out of body experiences, dreams, imagination, visions and hallucinations.
Usually it will remain internal and move entirely in sympathy with the physical, external body. It has been described as being in the shape of the external body with an oval aura extending from this, which some claim to have seen in the form of transparent and interwoven shimmering colours. Its appearance may be of a younger or alternative version of the physical body. It is said to be connected to the body by an umbilical like cord, sometimes called the silver cord. This cord does not restrict the movement of the astral body as it can extend infinitely, but always maintains a connection with the person’s chakra.
Some say that it connects us with our consciousness. It is believed by many psychics that it is the astral body that gives humans their psychic powers as well as the linked abilities of imagination, desire and emotion. It covers all the emotions from love to hate and from fear to happiness and ecstasy. It also covers the negative aspects of desire as well as the positive. Meditation can be used to connect with the internal body and develop and control the emotions, desires and related psychic abilities.
The five senses connected with the astral body are:
• Clairaudance: psychic hearing
• Psychometry: psychic touching and feeling
• Clairvoyance: psychic sight
• Emotional idealism: psychic aroma
• Imagination: psychic taste experience

As an example of how these senses work normal vision depends on the physical eyes, but clairvoyance (psychic vision) depends on the sympathies between psychic matter of the external world and the astral body. The various kinds of matter are attracted to each other and allow the psychic sensitive person to experience this as a vision or image of the future. Similar interactions take place for the other psychic senses.
So this internal body is made up of and interacts with the psychic energies that surround us in the world. It is what connects us to the realities of the physical and spiritual worlds. It creates our experiences of both worlds by allowing us to interpret them through our psychic and physical senses and providing an unbreakable link between the two. It is also the link between the conscious and the unconscious and can be engaged with to allow people to grow their awareness of this and their latent psychic abilities.