You are more than the physical body that you sense. Your mind, emotions, and soul have their own bodies. These bodies are distinct from yet connected to your physical body. You have many bodies. Highly sensitive people have always been able to perceive one or more of these nonphysical bodies. Recent advances in science and technology are verifying their existence. Our day to day experience confirms their reality.
Function:
The Astral Body gives you the ability to have desires, emotions, imagination, and psychic abilities. To thought it lends power which is essential for effective action and manifestation.
Range of Consciousness:
Astral consciousness includes the full range of emotions from fear, hate, and sorrow to love, happiness, and ecstasy. (See Mechanism of Pleasure) It also includes the full range of desire from totally selfish and destructive desire to common personal desire to high spiritual aspiration to selfless service oriented desire.
Astral experiences include dreams, fantasies, out of body experiences, near death experiences, hallucinations, imagination, and visions.
The five astral senses are: Clairaudience (astral hearing), Psychometry (astral touch/feeling), Clairvoyance (astral sight), Imagination (astral equivalent of taste), and Emotional Idealism (astral equivalent of smell).
Astral consciousness and the Astral Universe includes anything imaginable, from the worst possible hells to the most glorious heavens. The Astral Universe contains an astral replica of the higher universes. It is filled with imagery, feeling, and above all a personal point of view. (For more information about the Astral Universe go to The 7 Universes.)
Form/Structure:
The Astral Body has a figure form in the shape of the Physical Body and an aura usually in an ovoid shape pointed at both ends. The aura extends about 4 to 9 feet from the Physical Body. It has 7 major energy centers, 21 minor energy centers, and many smaller centers, just like the etheric body.
It is constantly changing color, dark to brilliant colors depending upon your mood.
It has a total of 4 spatial dimensions. (For more information about this go to Understanding Spatial Dimensions.)
How Awakened:
Astral/Emotional consciousness is primarily awakened through the stimulation of desire.
Awareness of the Astral Universe is awakened by meditation, psychic development techniques, out of body (astral) travel techniques, shamanic practices, lucid dreaming, drugs – especially psychedelics, certain pranayama practices, certain types of trauma, biochemical imbalances, and certain types of energetic stimulation.