Question: What do you think about travelling outside the body? Does such travelling help the soul develop?
Answer: Certainly it is a reality, astral travelling it is called. When the soul leaves the gross body, it is still covered by the subtle body. It can travel in this dimension but it is still material, it is the subtler aspect of the material world. It doesn’t help the soul develop love for God. It is not a part of the bhakti yoga system. And we do not recommend it.
Sometimes it happens automatically like these millions of recorded clinical deaths where people have left their bodies in hospitals and so on during an operation. And they are outside, they see their body but then they come back.
So the most benefit this can give us is that we now without a doubt know we are not the body. So that can be good. But we do not recommend you try to do it.