Opinions regarding the objective reality of OBEs are varied. An appreciable number of people believe the phenomenon is exactly what it feels like, and involves the soul or subtle body leaving the body and exploring.

Many OBE accounts are positive that the usual explanation, that the experience is illusory or purely subjective, is insufficient and often cite the experience as having a spiritual effect. See examples:
"If it was [a dream], why am I still so affected by it?"
"I just don't understand this – how can this happen?"
"I realized at that instant my body was just a vehicle, a work horse, so to speak."
"The experience changed my life, and was profound."
"It has made me want to explore and learn as much as I can."
"This experience is as vivid to me today, as it was the night it actually happened. I will always remember it."

Despite claims of some "projectors" who aver that they can initiate the experience at will, there is to date no reliable evidence that any imagery or information acquired during the experience could not have come from normal sources (see near-death experience for some inconclusive attempts to test this skeptical hypothesis).

English psychologist Susan Blackmore , suggests that an OBE begins when a person loses contact with sensory input from the body while remaining conscious. The person retains the illusion of having a body, but that perception is no longer derived from the senses. The perceived world resembles the world he or she generally inhabits while awake, but this perception does not come from the senses either. The vivid body and world is made by our brain's ability to create fully convincing realms, even in the absence of sensory information. This process is witnessed by each of us every night in our dreams. Technically all dreams could be called OBEs in that in them we experience events and places quite apart from the location and activity of our normally perceived body and world

Astral projection

Astral projection is an interpretation of forced out-of-body experiences achieved consciously, via visualisation techniques, lucid dreaming or deep meditation. Proponents of astral projection maintain that their consciousness or soul has transferred into an astral body (or "double"), which moves free of the physical body in a parallel world known as the "astral plane," which is said to exist via the "collective unconscious". Unlike the typical OBE, astral projection does not typically posit that one's consciousness or soul actually travels through the day-to-day physical realm.

Part astral and part real time (as mentioned above), called Virtual Reality Projection by most, is when a projector moves on the physical plane, yet interacts with the astral plane at the same time. An example of this is if one walks into a "real" poster or picture, they are transported to a perfect reconstruction of this place/world by concentrated experiences and thoughts of every beholder of the concept of the picture. This is part of the reason many try to project, but admittedly only a speck in the (literally) infinite possibilities. This concept is associated with the occult and the New Age movement, and is not accepted by the majority of the scientific community.

In some instances, astral projectors have described details of the outside world whilst in projection that they could not have known beforehand. This has been studied extensively and is known as remote viewing. In remote viewing, however, the viewer does not leave his or her body, but "sees" remote sites by other means.

In some instances, such as patients during surgery, people describe OBEs in which they see something they could not possibly have seen while under anesthesia (for instance, one woman accurately described a surgical instrument she had not seen previously, as well as conversation that occurred while she was clinically dead).