@sascha

There is no evidence for a soul or etherial body or really anything that you mention. What you write goes against every bit in of knowledge we have about the human brain. You just reinforce public belief and as we all know, truth is not democratic.

Dreams are simply random images one has. They accumulate from daily experiences. They might be played out in the order of emotional magnitude but this is not always the case. They are meaningless most of the time, except if an issue bothers us for some time.

Astral projection, or walking state of sleep occurs when the brain is unease or anxious and the individual keeps phantasizing about out of brain experience. The person merely watches themselves dream as if they recorded at will what they want to see in their dream. This can be trained to be done by everybody but it doesn't mean that you are actually travelling in the stars or sleep walking.

One of the most important scientific principles, Occam's Razor, is that if you have a phenomenon to be explained and several different theories are proposed as solutions, the simplest one (or the one with the fewest assumptions) is likely to be the correct answer. (One common illustration of this is the statement, "When you hear hoof beats, think horses, not unicorns" — or, in this case, "When you have a dreamlike experience while sleeping or resting, think dreaming, not astral projection.")

more here

http://www.livescience.com/27978-astral-projection.html