Well my experiences I believe were real and were not due to an "overactive imagination. I could feel every cell in my body vibrating at a high frequency and hear almost excruciatingly loud static/tuning noises while my astral body/soul or whatever it is was separating from my physical body. With my low level of experience I really didn't have to much control of the places I went to in the astral realm and found it difficult to control my movements while in this state. And there would really be no way to prove it by coming to visit you as this would probably take years of practice and you would not be aware that an astral body was there to visit you. I have had out of body experiences while under the influence of psychedelic substances but its a different thing to me as it is more of a visit to the subconscious depths of your mind. So all that matters Is that I know that these were real occurrences and I am not here to embellish anything and was just trying to share my experiences with this strange phenomenon. So take it or leave it, doesn't matter too much to me
I had an experience when I was a teenager before I had ever taken drugs. I was practicing yogic relaxation technique when I felt and saw myself rising up from my comatose body. As soon as I saw what was happening I was startled and I felt the characteristic, falling dream jerk. I was awake. I have tried many times to recreate this experience but have been unsuccessful.
Yes whenever I would come back into my body it would return very rapidly and hit you with a sudden jolt upon return.
Because I have not been able to repeat the experience, I have questioned whether my perceptions were accurate. Further the experience I had was not of a different dimension, an "astral plane." It looked like normal consensual reality to me, only my angular perspective was changing.
I don't know about "astral projection" but peyote and similar cacti sometimes put me in a very powerful dreaming state while i am awake. This can be accomplished by eating a lot of cactus over the course of an evening.