I have always been fascinated with the idea of astral projection and out of body experiences, and more so recently. 

This probably stems from my absolute fear of dieing, and is constantly reinforced by nightmares about taking my final breath and finding that there is nothing there, no afterlife, no white light guiding me, no sight, no sound, no god, no hell, nothing.

It seems to me that the gaining of such a skill could give a person the ability to escape death. To arrive at this conclusion does require two beliefs, firstly the belief that the body is not just matter, but has an existence in another plain, call this a soul or a spirit or whatever. Secondly the belief has to be maintained that this astral projection stuff is real and possible for an average person to attain, rather than being reserved for Hindu priests.

I stumbled across a website called www.spiritweb.com that has pages and pages of instructions on how to astral project. To be honest a lot of it is shit, but the core idea is there, separate body from mind using some exercises and open yourself to a whole other world of possibilities. The site talks of being able to astral project into a dream like world, or to do a real-time projection in which you can go and see what people are up to at that time.