Last night as I was in a twilight sleep I experienced my body levitating off the bed which was followed by one of the most vivid light induced kaleidoscope like hallucinations I've ever seen. This was followed by a feeling of peace. No, I was not on any kind of pill of any sort. I had a small amount of saki a few hours prior, but that's never caused any problems before.
In my early 20's I was into the new age movement and read books about astral projection. I would follow techniques in the books in hopes of traveling around the world to meet up with people on the astral plane. Today, this can be similar to what people do in the virtual world in Second Life, something I'm not interested in at all. People fly around in that world to see whatever they want to see and meet whomever they want to meet.
Levitation Sensation
Years later I renounced my having wandered into occult studies because my out of body experiences became scary. What I began to experience was truly frightening because I had no control over it. I'd be sleeping and all of the sudden I'd feel a strong force of gravity pulling and hear a powerful wind as my body seemed to levitate into the air. I never had any evidence my body actually levitated, it seemed to happen in another dimension through a lucid state. The levitating from my bed seemed very real but I observed it never resulted in any detectable physical evidence of it actually happening. I heard no thud from my crashing back on the bed, or ever felt my body land. Such is why I came to the conclusion the levitation sensation was happening in my brain which caused the sensations to happen.
Years later when I did a lot of research on the human brain for a web site I designed, I studied about the God Helmet, in how a neurologist Dr. Michael Persinger, was able to artificially induce spiritual experiences in those who wear it.
Subjects wear the helmet, and it electromagnetically stimulates the aforementioned areas of the brain. Roughly 80% of those who undergo this experiment report spiritual experiences. These experiences vary among the subjects and are understood within the context of the subjects’ respective beliefs. A Christian, for example, might see Jesus. A Muslim might find herself before Allah. Even the nonreligious report things like out-of-body experiences.
I'm not the only one whose had these experiences. Here are a few links: