Why do we have an astral body?

[RyanParis]

I've astral projected by accident, that I know of, maybe around three times... exactly as described in Astral Dynamics.

I'm curious... why do we have astral bodies? Are they what The Bible calls, spirits? Were our astral bodies around, before our physical births? Do they survive physical death?

Why do we have an astral body? Does it simply come along with a subconscious?

[sleeper]

why do you have a physical body? or any body for that matter?

[Korpo]

Hello, RyanParis.

Someone who incarnates as a human being with the experience of separateness and a physical body has - according to theosophy - a causal body, or individual soul. This is the storehouse of your experiences over all your lifetimes as human, and basically your higher self.

In order to incarnate as human you need a body. In the process of incarnating a body the soul touches on the three lower planes - the mental, astral and etheric/physical. This generates the mental, astral and etheric bodies, respectively.

You have an etheric body to regulate the energy of your physical body. It exists as a link to the higher planes and also stores your ideal body image.

You have an astral body to experience emotion and sensation. In Yoga it is called the "desire body," because an undeveloped astral body is purely driven by desire.

You have a mental body to experience concrete thought and to a degree abstract thought.

All of these together exist for the purpose of taking in the full range of human experience on the lower planes. Their exact nature is also partially derived from our biology - there seem to be some links how these bodies work and how our physical bodies work, but don't ask me for details. ;)

It would be way too easy to think that the astral body is identical to the subconscious. It is an integral aspect of your personality and part of your existence on this plane. Astral projections are not simply projections into the subconscious. They are projections into the energetic background of reality that creates our experience.

Cheers,
Oliver